Remember when Konami announced a new Metal Gear game, but it was a big mess with zombies? Or how Nintendo finally acknowledged the existence of F-Zero, but it was just to put F-Zero stuff in Mario Kart? Well, prepare to put your expectations at about that level for the news you are about to read: On Twitter, occasional video game company Valve—the studio behind some of the greatest titles in PC gaming history and also Steam, the online storefront that has demanded all of the company’s attention for many years now—has announced… a new Half-Life game. For reference, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the most recent installment in the series, came out in 2007. That means it’s been over a decade since Valve really touched this series (not counting the Portal games, which are only tangentially related), but now, at long last, Half-Life coming back.
But again, focus on that feeling of seeing F-Zero stuff in Mario Kart, because this is not the long-awaited, never-gonna-happen sequel. This is Half-Life: Alyx, some kind of spin-off VR game about Half-Life 2's breakout character—though, to be fair, any character who speaks in a Half-Life game is going to automatically pull attention away from nerd-ass silent protagonist Gordon Freeman. All we know about Alyx comes from that tweet up above, but we’ll apparently learn more on Thursday.