[Scourge of Ages]

Half-Life: Alyx is out today. Have you got it and started playing?

Nope. Waiting for a sale.
Also not entirely sure my 1st gen Vive and midrange graphics card can do it justice.

[Kiloku]

What surprises me the most about this that people still care about Half Life.

He says, on hard-light.net

Yeah but

we're like 10 people.

Stop telling the truth, it's too painful!

<snip>
Yeah, HL3 in its intended form will never happen, since none of the orignal team is there anymore.
If you need closure, just read Laidlaw's story outline and move on: http://www.marclaidlaw.com/epistle-3/

I'll forever argue that this is the plot to HL2:Ep 3, not HL3.

[Ghostavo]

Half-Life: Alyx is out today. Have you got it and started playing?

It feels both like Half-Life 2 and like Arizona Sunshine. Compared to the latter one, they managed to improve pretty much everything.

[Scourge of Ages]

It feels both like Half-Life 2 and like Arizona Sunshine. Compared to the latter one, they managed to improve pretty much everything.

Oooh, and Arizona Sunshine was one of the best shooty adventure games I've played! I've heard only good things about Alyx, too. Can't (well technically I can) wait to play it myself!

[manwiththemachinegun]

I just can't believe they actually advanced the story, however minor. But that was a good twist.

[Su-tehp]

Question: in terms of the sequence of events, isn't Half-Life: Alyx technically a prequel to the events of Half-Life 2 (as well as Episode 1 and 2)? That's the impression I got from the trailers I saw a few months ago.

I'm just wondering where Freeman is during Half-Life: Alyx.

[Scourge of Ages]

I'm just wondering where Freeman is during Half-Life: Alyx.

I've always assumed that immediately after the events of Half-Life 1 and immediately before Half-Life 2 begins, he's in some sort of magical G-Man stasis, and not actually existing in the world anywhere.

[theperfectdrugsk]

I'm just wondering where Freeman is during Half-Life: Alyx.

I've always assumed that immediately after the events of Half-Life 1 and immediately before Half-Life 2 begins, he's in some sort of magical G-Man stasis, and not actually existing in the world anywhere.

Yeah, that's always been my assumption as well. I remember they sorta hint at that in HL2 during one of Breen's rants at the prison too. He says something like "Freeman has been in a state preventing his learning combat skills, so why can't you ****ers kill him?"

[Su-tehp]

So Half-Life: Alyx is an interquel taking place between Half-Life1 and 2, while Freeman is still in stasis? That's what I thought from the trailers. I remember between Half-Life 2 and Ep 1, when the Citadel was blowing up, the G-Man tried to put Freeman back in stasis and left Alyx to die in the explosion, but the Vortigaunts pulled a Big Damn Heroes and got both of them to safety.

Damn, it's been a loooong time since I played Half-Life 2 and Ep 1; I never got around to Ep 2. I own all the HL games on Steam but never got around to playing Ep 2 or replaying HL2 and Ep 1. I need to remedy that sometime.

[theperfectdrugsk]

So Half-Life: Alyx is an interquel taking place between Half-Life1 and 2, while Freeman is still in stasis?

That's my understanding (haven't played it since I'm miles away from being able to afford any kind of VR), but I have watched a few 'let's play' type vids (and thus seen the big reveals at the end). It doesn't really advance the HL story or timeline at all.

Spoiler:

unless you consider un-killing Eli and having Stella Gordon get her groove his crowbar back "advancing the timeline". Really just altering the timeline, and not even in a way the necessarily says "we're definitely making HL3," since they could have easily done that and still had Eli deaded. Having G-Man be the prisoner was a really cool, if somewhat predictable twist though.

Still, looks really really cool, and I wish I had the setup to play it...but honestly by the time I can afford a VR rig to do it justice, there will probably be a billion other things on my play queue and I'll never get around to it.

[Mongoose]

There has been word that some people have managed to hack together a mostly-playable 2D version of the game. If it gets to a polished enough state I might consider picking it up.

[manwiththemachinegun]

There is a twist at the end of Alyx which is kind of a big deal. Especially if you've read Marc Laidlaw's draft of a potential HL2: Episode 3.