Despite a clear focus on VR, Valve is certain you’ll see a non-VR mod for Half-Life: Alyx eventually. The experimental prequel game pushes VR to new places many fans never thought they’d see fully realized. However, while speaking to Polygon, Valve’s Robin Walker said that he expects someone will make a mod to cut virtual reality out of the equation before long.
Walker says he personally isn’t concerned about a mod that allows Half-Life: Alyx to be playable in a way other than originally intended, mainly because the results probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble: “It will clearly demonstrate to people why we did this in VR. It will be a very crisp way of seeing all the stuff we got for the move into VR. If people play [a modded version on a standard display] and say this is just as good, that will teach me a lot. I will realize I’m wrong, and we didn’t get as much as we thought, and I love to know whenever I’m wrong.”
Interactivity is the key here, as the team at Valve specifically designed the game so players can interact with nearly every object in Half-Life: Alyx’s world in meaningful ways. We’ll have to wait and see what a mod for the game will look like, but Walker doesn’t think the outcome will live up to those hoping to play without VR: “I think people will then hopefully have an even greater understanding of why we decided to build the product in VR than they do now.”
The Escapist recently delved into why we think the series’s newest entry is just as revolutionary as the games that came before it, and in other Half-Life news, Valve explained why we never saw a conclusion with Half-Life 2: Episode 3.
