If I requested you to inform me what the core parts of Half-Life 2 have been, you’d most likely record a few of the following: puzzles, pacing, gunfights, selection, crowbar, physics, and automobiles.
Most of these issues are current and proper in Half-Life: Alyx, although Valve couldn’t get the crowbar to work. As for automobiles, they have been by no means even thought-about as a result of they have been a ache sufficient to implement outdoors of VR.
“It wasn’t because we don’t think they work in VR or anything,” programmer and designer Robin Walker instructed me. “We didn’t get to the purpose, actually, the place we spent any important time enthusiastic about automobiles.
“At a guess, I’d say a cause that by no means actually got here up critically onto the set of issues we have been was every thing that we have been seeing was telling us that gamers wished denser worlds. They have been going to maneuver by house extra slowly, discover extra rigorously, and our response to that was so as to add much more element to the world. We put that in entrance of playtesters, and they’d pay much more consideration.
“I keep in mind again in Half-Life 2, we struggled to reconcile, even then, the density implications of gamers in automobiles. If you keep in mind the Half-Life 2 shoreline space, with the buggy, we needed to set up, primarily, a visible language with gamers for the place it’s essential get out of your buggy and discover.”
Because Valve’s worlds are hand-crafted, playtesters in Half-Life 2 have been consistently frightened about lacking one thing through the automobile sections. This led to frustration because the builders watched on whereas they drove just a few meters, obtained out and explored, drove just a few meters, rinse and repeat.
“They were just really worried about missing anything, which is a really natural thing to be worried about in a Half-Life game,” Walker defined. “You know in a Half-Life game that something that’s there was considered and designed and positioned. It’s not simply painted down by some computerized factor that’s filling the world with rocks and timber and nature.
“And so, in Half-Life 2, we established this design language, which was these human buildings. Things that have been constructed by people. Things that really have been areas that we have been at all times going to place design and construct content material into. Natural stuff, rocks, timber, the seashore, all that, we wouldn’t. And so, you possibly can drive as a participant alongside the coast, drive for some time, after which see a home, and cease on the home. Jump out, discover the home, get a novel expertise, after which drive alongside, cease on the subsequent human landmark.
“So, even again then the place we had primarily an order of magnitude much less element in our world, you needed to set up these kinds of guidelines to assist gamers perceive, ‘How do I know when I should explore, and when I shouldn’t?’ I feel that was most likely all a part of the pondering in our heads.”
Have a learn of our Half-Life: Alyx review to see why it’s best to play it, even with out automobiles.
