Half-Life 2: Episode 2was never supposed to be the end of the beloved shooter series. A third episode taking us to the Arctic to find the interdimensional time-travelling Borealis after Eli Vance’s death at the hands of the Combine was supposed to have launched shortly after, followed bythe Arkane-developed Return to Ravenholm. Valve was bursting at the seams with ideas on where it could take this world, but then everything went silent.
Episode 3 was eventually cancelled in favour of Half-Life 3, but that too was quickly and quietly abandoned. Years went by with no word from Valve, and fans were left in the lurch wondering what happened to Gordon Freeman. And then, in 2020, the silence was finally broken withHalf-Life: Alyx, a prequel following the titular Alyx Vance in City 17, months before Gordon would wake up from stasis.
It’s an incredible game, highlighting not just how versatile VR is, but also showing that triple-A, narrative-driven shooters can thrive in the medium.However, after a 13-year wait, locking a new game behind expensive, inaccessible tech was an understandably controversial move that alienated much of the fanbase. Thankfully,the Half-Life: Alyx NoVR teamhas been working tirelessly to ensure that everyone is capable of experiencing this amazing, long-overdue comeback.
“GB_2 started the project after playing [Alyx] for the first time in early 2023, and wanting as many people as possible to be able to experience it, especially those who can never use VR,” project manager Anthony ‘Spider-Man-Dev’ Marrelli tells me. “Circumstances can change for people with limited space for full-body VR or [who] cannot afford it. However, for those with health limitations, those circumstances may unfortunately never change.”
For many, the idea of ripping Alyx from VR is sacrilege. The game was intended to be played with a virtual reality headset, immersing you in the totalitarian Combine regime like never before, but as Marrelli says, it’s an incredibly demanding medium that some people simply can’t access. If you’ve waited over a decade for a new entry in a game series you love, only for it to be completely walled off from you, it’s going to sting. This mod simply opens the doors for those fans, it’s not supposed to replace Alyx.
Playing the game in ultra-wide on a high-resolution monitor at a blazing-fast framerate is an experience in itself too. If you can play it in VR and NoVR do both!
“We will never say that NoVR is as good as playing the game in VR. It never will be. Valve created this game with VR in mind with every interaction,” Marrelli says. “It truly is the ultimate VR game that still feels like it’s from the future. Our team will do the best to translate everything we can to a flatscreen, but it will never be better than experiencing it in VR.
“We started NoVR to make the game accessible to even moreHalf-Lifefans around the world. The rest of us joined shortly after as big Half-Life fans, from programmers, animators, community managers and more, our team all have one thing in common, the love for Half-Life.”
Meet The Team
The project has been active for 16 and a half months now, and in that short timeframe, it has madeenormousprogress, despite keeping with a “lean” team; “We have maintained a small number to ensure we don’t create [the] bloat and poor management that a lot of teams end up experiencing,” Marrelli explains. “Our core team has remained the same for a while now, with us reaching out to animators as we look to add more flourishes to the game […] We are really proud of how much we have accomplished”.
Working so closely with Alyx has led to some exciting discoveries, like Dr Kleiner being cut from the game to unused Combine troop types, to a backpack system that was ultimately swapped out for the wrist-pockets.
Marrelli tells me that he “feels spoiled” as NoVR has completely avoided crunch, despite its small numbers, while everyone still gets along and works together well. He shouts out a few of the leads who have managed to bring this defining VR classic to an entirely new audience; “Withoutaface has been an amazing animation lead, along with help on a lot of programming. Tarek is a fantastic community manager. GB_2 is of course the one who started it all and the main programmer and lead. LiLPiF, kz, Seal, and many other animators have helped us and they have all been a joy to work with!
Recently we did have one team member leave the project due to time constraints. They started the work on getting workshop campaigns working in NoVR and we are continuing their work, thank you so much HyperCycle! Plus we have worked with various amazing key people in the Half-Life community such as [YouTuber] Half-Peeps and[Valve social network site] LambdaGeneration!The Half-Life community is an amazing place!”
The Challenges Of Making A VR Game Work Without VR
We’ve seen a lot of fan-led and even official projects bring gamesintoVR,like Half-Life 2 and its episodes, but not the other way around. That in itself comes with a whole host of challenges, like translating fiddly puzzles and frantic combat encounters into a medium where they would feel nauseating, but it’s just as challenging to do the reverse.
For one, it’s “lonely”—with no other major projects of this scope, Half-Life: Alyx NoVR has nobody to bounce ideas off of or share the workload with. Typically, fan projects collaborate,like how the Fallout 1 and 2 remake teams share assets. However, Marrelli and the rest of the NoVR team are on their own. But perhaps the biggest hurdle they have to overcome is keeping thefeelof Alyx in an entirely new medium.
I mention the moment in which you’re running from a Strider, fighting Combine soldiers through multi-storey car parks. You’re a lot more vulnerable than Gordon, since you don’t have an overpowered exo-suit, which means you have to physically take cover and avoid attacks while also running away from this three-footed behemoth. How do you keep such an exhilarating moment exhilarating without the physical action?
“There is no doubt things are not going to make you sweat like that with NoVR,” Marrelli says. “But we have tried to ensure that we keep the same parameters that Valve set out to keep gameplay thoughtful and strategic, like in VR.
“For example, Alyx’s inventory hasn’t changed, you can still only hold one item per wrist-pocket and grenades can’t be stockpiled. Along with other limitations the inventory has, which forces the player to really think about how and when to use their more limited items. Alyx is also wearing regular clothing and not an HEV suit, so her health is lower than Gordon’s and can be cut down to nothing in a matter of seconds. Our playtesting has shown that players will still take more careful approaches, using cover, strategising item use, which is very similar to how it plays out in VR.”
Marrelli tells me that the team would love to meet Valve to either bring NoVR to Steam in an official capacity or “maybe for some work”—come on Gabe, give them a ring.
The other major hurdle that the NoVR team has run into is working with Source 2, as Valve hasn’t shared the Software Development Kit with the community yet; “With Half-Life: Alyx, they gave us the Steam Workshop tools a few months after release, which mostly gave us the power to change things in VR… but nothing for flatscreens. An example is viewmodels, the model of Alyx holding her gun, there is no real system for implementing a regular 2D flatscreen type of model like this using these tools, but there is much more control to do these things for a VR project, like Gunman Contracts which has tons of custom weapon viewmodels.
“The release of Counter-Strike 2 saw the Source 2 Hammer editor come out, which is fantastic for creating and editing Source 2 maps, but not helpful for changing code, creating your own custom menus, proper model and animation pipelines, and much more that we need for Half-Life: Alyx NoVR. Then of course, on top of all this, we are trying to translate gameplay meant to be full-body and interactable unlike any other VR game into a 2D flatscreen experience.”
A big help was being able to pull from past games, using previous Half-Life titles to their advantage to build a framework within Alyx that makes for comfortable 2D play. “We have pushed the leftover Half-Life 2 and Source 1 code in Half-Life: Alyx and Source 2 to base our gunplay, movement, and locomotion on. Therefore, other than the adjustments we have made to make the game more strategic and thoughtful, like in VR, it controls and feels very similar to Half-Life 2.
“This works in our favour in two ways, it allows us to push the Source 2 engine even further in 2D for Alyx, and it provides players with a control method that feels familiar and easy to use.”
You can even play Half-Life: Alyx on your Steam Deck now.
Against all of the odds,you can now play Alyx in totality without a VR headset, making the game more accessible and more widely available than ever before. With leaks and rumours ramping up of a new Half-Life game, codenamed ‘HLX’ and ‘Project White Sands’, a project like this isvital,ensuring that everyone can catch up before Valve’s newest entry. Thankfully, it looks like we won’t have to wait 13 years for this one.
“We want to thank all our fans who have supported us for over a year now, we started this project in March 2023, so we just crossed the one-year mark not that long ago and have achieved a lot in such a short time thanks to their support, positive words, feedback, and more, giving us the motivation and energy to continue doing this.”
Half-Life: Alyx
WHERE TO PLAY
Half-Life: Alyx focuses on Alyx Vance, companion to Gordon Freeman in Half-Life 2, in a story that takes place five years before her appearance in that game. Developed solely for VR headsets, it is ia FPS game that was launched to great acclaim.
