Why HL:Alyx is Half-Life 3

After decades of waiting for a Half Life 3, we're given Half Life Alyx instead. But grief takes many forms and mine makes me argue that it's Half Life 3 in disguise. Fight me.

[Phigas-ftky]

Imagine hl3 coming out and philip like. No this is half Life 4

[BigladSam]

It’s been too long, I need to wake up and smell the ashes

[Exnem]

Calling it Half-Life 1.5 is such a Valve audience thing to do. I love it.

[shurbrrt]

"its the third BIG half-life game"
_sad opposing force noises_

[zambo]

counterpoint - it isn't half life 3, because it isn't called half life 3.

[abatross_]

I think Valve did choose Alyx because... major change of writers. Laidlaw isn't main writer anymore and also they wanted a normal game "to push VR". They tested Portal and L4D(I guess) and only HL just left.

HL3 is indeed hyped but maybe to decrease expectations(that anyway is too high for them) they decided to make a HL2 prequel, that no one thought about for serious. Maybe to make HL3 better in future, they literally said "if HLA will be a success, maybe we will make more".

[Stephen_]

For Valve to leave episode 2 in such a large cliffhanger and to go dark for over a decade will never be forgotten.

[cottereyre]

The title "Half-Life 3" is symbolic for something much more than just the next game in the series. The reason HLA is not Half-Life 3 is because Half-Life 3 would bring closure to the decade-old cliffhanger of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, in a playable format.
Since Half-Life: Alyx will not do this, it cannot be considered Half-Life 3, no matter how groundbreaking it is.
People will only accept HL3 as a sequel to HL2E2, and nothing less.

[Devetite]

I was born in 2002, and thus never experienced the magic of playing the original half life or hl2 when they first came out. It wasn't until 2014 when I got around to playing them, and I never understood why the game was so popular, sure it was fun, but I was playing from the perspective of someone who had already seen story telling in shooters, or someone who had already seen detailed physics in a game, and I had played portal 2 in 2011 so I was already well aware of the source engine. But I bought a VR headset on the announcement of Half Life alyx, and now after playing the game, I finally understand just how world changing the half life series has been. I hope that in the future, games will follow off of half life alyx, and people will wonder what made it so special. I'm happy to be alive during this new age of gaming technology.

[Coxick]

I already said it many times:
"People also hated Steam, and look at it now"

[Captainnsaneo]

The next half-life was always going to be VR. Each HL is used to show off some significant advancement of tech.

[IHDHI]

I was worried you wouldn’t tell me to open my eyes, thanks for that.

[Fenrize]

6:56 Everybody knows that moment when something causes a barrel catch fire and it starts the chain reaction and you panic and try to run behind something trying to look all cool like while clenching and hoping the tsunami of random stuff flying around the place doesn't fckin kill you

[RedmotionGames]

Half Life Alyx is the game I expected Valve to drop soon after they launched the Vive. After a couple of years passed, I'd given up hope anything HL would come out for VR. Visited the Valve offices with the Black Mesa team in 2015 but they weren't giving anything away! HLA looks amazing and finally, we can look to Valve to move a stagnant industry forward again.

[TheSpyrexian]

I was really hooked in the first 10 seconds by all the exciting footage and movement. I think this will definitely increase not only my retention rate but also that of the wider viewing audience

[nitrous]

From what I learned with Valve and their games, Half-Life is their flagship IP. Each game at least has shook the gaming industry with it's underlying technology. Half-Life 1 showed us narratives through a first-person perspective, Half-Life 2 showed us physics can be a part of gameplay, Half-Life: Alyx showed us VR is viable for gameplay.

Not only that. If we only listened to Gabe Newell earlier before in an interview where he said (paraphrased) "I'm jealous of Nintendo being able to make a game side-by-side with a console" taking a jab at Super Mario Odyssey and the Nintendo Switch, we could've deciphered that this was coming all along as part of his vision.

[tehFozzeY]

"Today's increased standards for games"

Bwahahahahaha! That's a good one, Philip.

[Aluminum.K]

"You'd have to be blind not to see the appeal of VR."
Well, that's one reason...

[bicnicky]

Half Life: Alyx is a tech demo to move the industry forward before they release Half Life 3 alongside a cheap, affordable and accessible Valve produced VR rig

[Lunar-YT]

0:08 "Half-Life 3 isn't Half-Life 3", nice touch