In March of this year, the atmospheric shooter in virtual reality was released Half-Life: Alyx – the next full story chapter in the legendary series. This is the first major release. Valve for the whole 12 years.
Just a year ago, many fans would never have believed that the company Gabe Newell will return with such triumph and give users exactly what they have been asking for so many years.
At the same time, many questions remained: what exactly Valve dealt with in recent years, why did the company prefer to keep absolute silence? Journalist tried to dispel the veil of secrecy Jeff Cayley, author of a large-scale interactive book Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hoursdedicated to the inner kitchen Valve and what the developers have been working on over the past ten years. She came out directly with the blessing of a company that decided to tell the truth.
As it turned out, in different periods of time Valve worked immediately on several independent developments. Among them were Half-life 3 and zombie action movie Left 4 Dead 3.
Below is detailed information on all failed Valve developments..
- Half-life 3. The working concept was worked out between 2013 and 2014. The creation of the game was carried out on an early version of the Source 2 engine. According to the authors’ ideas, certain elements of the game process should have been adopted from the Left 4 Dead dilogy, and the structure of the project was noticeably different from the previous parts – the traditional story segments were planned to be diluted with gameplay-oriented sections created thanks to the procedural content generation. For example, an engine would create some kind of building and define your task – for example, save a hostage. Further, the algorithm would think over the path through the level, after which it would fill it with opponents and other difficulties. Thus, Valve hoped to significantly increase replay value and turn each passage into a unique adventure. However, by that time, the Source 2 toolkit was far from complete, the project was moved several times, until in the end the whole concept was simply cut down. It is interesting, however, that the developers managed to scan the face of Frank Sheldon – the actor G-Man.
- Left 4 Dead 3. This project was supposed to be a shooter in the open world, and the action was going to be transferred to Morocco. One of the features they wanted to do battles with hundreds of zombies at the same time. However, as in the case of the prototype Half-Life 3, the idea did not work out due to the crude version of Source 2.
- RPG. This mysterious project existed under a similar inexpressive code name. First, Valve created a role-playing game inspired by several successful titles at once – The Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls and Monster Hunter. The distribution model resembled episodic – the developers were going to release in small parts. But things did not go beyond the primary concept. After this project was formally abandoned, they wanted to redirect some of the plans to a single role-playing adventure based on Ax, one of the DOTA characters. But even this option Valve ultimately decided to bury.
- A.R.T.I. A game with a light tone, created on the basis of voxel technology. It was a project in an open world where it was possible to build and destroy all sorts of structures. Something reminiscent of Minecraft. In the created prototype of one of the heroes, the screenwriter Portal and Half-Life 2 was voiced by Eric Volpo, the players needed to save his character from prison. At one point A.R.T.I. began to collect as a game for VR helmets, but when Half-Life: Alyx captured the attention of the team, “Artie” went into oblivion.
- Simtrek. Another VR entertainment. Its creation was carried out by the developers of the Kerbal Space Program. In the fate of this project, the creation of Alyx also put an end to it.
- Shooter. VR game. As the name suggests, a shooter. The Half-Life universe was chosen as the theme, a significant part of the assets had to go directly from the second part. The emphasis on the plot was minimal, the prototype was more like an amusement park, where you would simply take part in the shootings based on the famous series. Initially, “Shooter” was supposed to be part of The Lab, released in 2016, but the authors did not meet the deadline, and this led to a halt in production.
- Borealis. The next VR project in the Half-Life universe. Screenwriter Mark Laidlaw was appointed its leader. As a plot basis lay time travel: players had to move between significant events and milestones, jumping in chronology, for example, from the Seven-Hour War to the end of the second episode. The gameplay details are kept secret, but it is known that in one of the iterations there was a mini-game in the form of fishing.
- Hot dog. The next attempt to create a new Left 4 Dead. The name was chosen specifically so that no one could guess that the development was somehow connected with the killing of zombies. No more data was disclosed.
- Vader. Not a game, but a virtual reality helmet. Valve’s first attempt in the field of VR technology. The device was created without any compromise, until the engineers realized that their ambitions had gone too far. In the form in which the technology was supposed to reach the end user, its cost would be about five thousand dollars. At first it was planned that Vader would be launched simultaneously with Half-Life: Alyx.
Release date Hafl-Life: Alyx took place on March 23. Our review of the game can be found here..
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See also: Here’s what the game boxes for the PlayStation 5 will look like – Sony showed the cover of Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
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