Valve says he is probably a little too optimistic to think that a Half-Life game after Half-Life: Alyx 2020 is “hot on his heels”.
Robin Walker of the team told IGN this weekend after taking home the Game of the Year award for Alyx at the SXSW Festival. When asked if a sequel to Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was coming after the release of Alyx, the developer replied, “I think hot in your heels can be a little optimistic.”
“I think one of the rewarding things about Alyx was seeing the community’s reaction to the game itself, which we were very happy with at the end of the game,” Walker continued. “The moment we sent it, we were very happy with what we created and very excited for people to get their hands on it.”
Moving on to the end of the game (which we won’t spoil here), the developer said the team was less confident that people would react well to the choices made, but ended up pleasantly surprised. “So, yes, people’s reaction to the story and the narrative choices we made at the end was really – energizing is probably the right term and so we are very excited to be there,” added Walker.
The question of what Valve will do after Alyx, which has set a new standard for virtual reality games, is at the tip of everyone’s tongue. A backstage experience narrating Alyx’s production suggested that some at Valve wanted to do Half-Life 3, but it may not be in VR, while the team is also working on a top-secret project. We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed for the studio to be planning more VR content of Alyx caliber.
In another part of the interview, Walker noted that he expects to see a wider range of VR games in the near future. “I think, if I had to guess, in the next few years we will see a lot of other types of games come to VR and have this rich content, in addition to just the mechanics,” said Walker. “And then, in between, I would hope that we would start to see, in the ways that we did the translation of Half-Life into VR, we can begin to see the ways in which VR could add Half-Life.”