Don’t worry VR fans; you’ll be able to play Half-Life: Alyx with the locomotion method of your choice.
Valve just launched a new website for its triumphant return to the Half-Life series. One page confirms a bunch of accessibility options for the game. It reaffirms a lot of stuff we already knew, like that the game can run on any SteamVR compatible headset. It even mentions that you can play the game with the Oculus Quest using the newly-released Link feature.
But Half-Life: Alyx has a variety of ways to play, too, based on the user’s preferences. It can, for example, be played using roomscale tracking, which allows players with enough space to walk around their environments physically. But it can be played with sitting and standing options too, so this isn’t a necessity.
Half-Life: Alyx Locomotion Options
As for Half-Life: Alyx’s locomotion? You’ll be happy to hear there three different methods are supported. For the comfort-inclined, there’s the usual teleport option, in which you fade between locations based on where your hand points. There’s also a smooth locomotion option, in which the player glides through the world using an analog stick. And then, in the middle, is a Shift option in which the camera glides between points you choose.
Options such as these are important to maintaining both immersion and comfort inside VR. Some players, for example, find the odd sensations that come with smooth locomotion to be too uncomfortable. For others, smooth locomotion represents the most immersive way to move in VR. Providing players with different options means no one gets left in the dark.
Plus there’s two control styles; one with finger tracking on Valve’s Index controllers and a trigger-based solution for the rest.
Half-Life: Alyx is due for release in March 2020. We can’t wait to learn more about the game in the coming weeks and months.
