Valve confirms Half-Life: Alyx, its 'flagship VR game'

Valve, the company best known for the Half-Life franchise and Portal, among others, in a surprise announcement on Monday, announced that its next title will be for VR and will be titled Half-Life: Alyx.

It announced that the title will be Valve Software's "flagship VR game. The company also said it'll reveal more details on Thursday Nov. 21 at 10 a.m. PDT. We'll be sure to bring you the latest on that.

If you need a refresher on the Half-Life series, I wouldn't blame you. The last entry in that franchise, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, came out in 2007. That game, which worked as an episodic sequel to Half-Life 2, continued the events set up in the main entry but ended on a tragic cliffhanger. Spoiler ahead for a 12-year-old game, but the episode ends with the death of Eli Vance, one of Gordon Freeman's main allies. The last image of the game is Alyx, his daughter, holding his body.

Considering that this VR title is called Half-Life: Alyx, we can assume that she'll play a key role in this story. However, no other details have been confirmed.

While it's been steadily releasing games — with Artifact and Dota Underlords being its major releases since 2018 — Valve been focusing more on hardware and software development over the past decade. With the purchase of Campo Santo, the studio behind Firewatch, in 2018, many wondered if Valve was getting back into game development.

In the Valley of the Gods, from Campo Santo, was expected to be Valve's next games release. It's still listed on the company's website as a future project, but there hasn't been much movement on that front.

While it's unknown yet if Half-Life: Alyx will be available on specific headsets, we can guess from the tweet that it'll at least be available on the SteamVR platform. You can then sideload SteamVR onto an Oculus Quest, for example.

Interestingly, this week marks the 21st anniversary of the original Half-Life's release.