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The developers behind Half-Life: Alyx seem to be looking into development elsewhere in the iconic franchise. In a Zoom call with Phil Spencer and Geoff Keighley (via Valve News Network), Valve co-founder Gabe Newell said that the team behind the VR title was excited about further development of Half-Life games.
Newell says that “Half-Life: Alyx got everybody excited and the Half-Life: Alyx team has actually been very productive. Rather than them being like ‘oh, we need to take a break, they’ve actually been incredibly fired up about development within the Half-Life franchise and VR.”
It’s definitely not clear what direction that motivation could lead to. Newell mentions that Valve’s approach is to keep quiet about its plans until it can be sure it’ll deliver, discussing previously-cancelled projects in the Half-Life and Left 4 Dead series. What’s more, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, productivity at the company “is only 50-75% of what it would be,” meaning we could be waiting a long time to see anything new, even by Valve’s standards.
Half-Life: Alyx was a VR exclusive, but Newell doesn’t imply that a follow-up would definitely take advantage of that technology: “[Valve is] of the school of thought that the quality bar [for VR] isn’t high enough yet,” a point-of-view in direct contrast to Facebook’s attempt to lower the cost of the tech as much as possible. Newell has personally invested in research into VR innovation, but there’s no guarantee that will yield results in time for a new game.
While Covid-19 has caused problems for Valve which they haven’t managed to find a good way of working around, Newell says he’s considering temporarily relocating certain sections of the company to New Zealand, where he has been staying since the pandemic began. That might help speed up certain aspects of development, but not enough to suggest we should be holding our breath for a new Half-Life game anytime soon.
Most of these upcoming games should be in your hands before the next Half-Life games.
