It’s been a big couple of days for Half-Life: Alyx news and gameplay.
Yesterday, we got three new gameplay videos from Valve that added up to over 10 minutes of footage of Half-Life: Alyx. However, IGN also posted 9 minutes of uncut footage to their own channel, which featured a few extra tidbits of information that we’ve summed up down below.
The IGN footage takes place in the same section of the game as the first gameplay video from Valve that was released yesterday, with the abandoned train and subway station. However, it starts slightly before the Valve footage and also features much more dialogue between Russell and Alyx. Here are the things we learned:
The Russell Gloves
In all footage and screenshots of Half-Life: Alyx so far, we’ve seen the titular character equipped with the Gravity Gloves. However, in the IGN footage above, some dialogue between Russell and Alyx sees them refer to the gloves as ‘The Russells’ (first heard around the 1:53 mark). We can only assume this is referencing an earlier scene where Russell jokingly names the gloves after himself, or something similar.
In the footage Russell notes that the gloves’ built-in display shows ammo, health and more, which suggests that this section takes place early on in the game’s campaign. This is later confirmed at the 6:15 mark, where the menu indicates that the player is midway through Chapter 2 of the campaign, ‘The Quarantine Zone’.
The Combine Fabricator
Around the 4:25 mark, Alyx comes across a ‘Combine Fabricator’. Russell notes that the machine will allow Alyx to upgrade her pistol (and presumably other weapons) but also makes a point to say that it won’t be able to make any upgrades to her gloves.
The fabricator offers Alyx four upgrades for her pistol — Reflex Sight, Bullet Reservoir, Burst Fire and Laser Sight. In the IGN video, they chose to upgrade to Reflex Sight, which adds a sight to the pistol that highlights weak points on enemies. You can see the sight in action around the 6:30 mark.
Resin
In the footage, Alyx exchanges resin in order to pay for weapon upgrades via the Combine Fabricator. Resin can be found throughout the environments — there are several instances in both the IGN and the Valve footage where the player finds a piece of resin and stores it in their inventory. Resin is shaped like a small circular puck, and stacks in groups of five. When upgrading, Alyx deposits two five-stacks of resin into the fabricator (around the 5:30 mark) and all of the fabricator’s upgrade options in the footage require resin amounts in multiples of five (10, 15, etc).
Hard Hats
Around the 2:05 mark, you can see the player pick up and put on an industrial hard hat. Amusingly, the hard hat actually serves a practical purpose later on, when it saves the player from a barnacle attack around the 2:35 mark.
Changing Movement Types
Half-Life: Alyx will feature three main movement types, which were shown off in each of the gameplay videos from Valve yesterday — teleport, continuous/smooth and shift/dash. At the 6:15 mark, the IGN footage shows the player pulling up the menu and quickly switching from teleport to continuous movement. Although it was already likely, it’s nice to see that players can easily and quickly switch between movement options mid-game.
Photo Mode and Other Settings
The same menu at 6:15 also lists a photo mode option, as well as showing a difficulty setting, which is set to normal for the IGN footage. This could potentially mean the game features easier and harder difficultly settings in addition to normal, or that normal is the baseline option, with harder settings scaling up from there. An ‘interface’ option is also available in the settings, suggesting that users will be able to customize the game’s UI to their liking.
That’s everything we spotted in IGN’s Half-Life: Alyx footage. Did you catch anything we missed? Let us know in the comments below.
