Half-Life: Alyx

Half-Life: Alyx is a 2020 virtual reality (VR) first-person shooter developed and published by Valve. Set between the events of Half-Life (1998) and Half-Life 2 (2004), players control Alyx Vance on a mission to seize a superweapon belonging to the alien Combine. Players use VR to interact with the environment and fight enemies, using “gravity gloves” to manipulate objects, similarly to the gravity gun from Half-Life 2. Traditional Half-Life elements return, such as physics puzzles, combat, exploration and survival horror elements.
The previous Half-Life game, Episode Two, was released in 2007. After several failed attempts to develop further Half-Life projects, Valve began experimenting with VR in the mid-2010s, and released a collection of VR minigames, The Lab, in 2016. Recognizing the demand for a large-scale VR game, they experimented with prototypes using their various intellectual properties, such as Portal, and found that Half-Life best suited VR. Alyx entered full production using Valve’s new Source 2 engine in 2016, with the largest team in Valve’s history. Valve initially planned to launch Alyx alongside its Index VR headset in 2019, but delayed it to rewrite the story from scratch following internal feedback.