“It was our version of Kleiner’s Lab from Half-Life 2,” Reidford explains. One of the earliest set pieces in the game is Russel’s Lab, which is full of VHS tapes and CRTs with old-school screensavers, the brutal architecture looming outside. In fact, it’s quite comforting how much Alyx feels like a Half-Life game, down to the paraphernalia of City 17, a somewhat Soviet society that is lost in time between the technology of the 90s and a futuristic alien invasion. This, alongside the new lighting technology of the Source 2 engine has contributed to a softer, more Team Fortress 2 look to some of the characters, but it never feels distant from the hallmarks of Half-Life. Whilst working on the look of Alyx, Reidford tells me that the character design team was wary of the “uncanny valley” when striking a balance in their art direction between the old games and this new project, which makes sense given how up close and personal you are with the assets in VR. “I think for a lot of us in the company at large… we had a lot of ideas for Half-Life over the years, and it was really fun trying to figure out if those ideas would be a good fit for this product,” Reidford adds. “There's a few other bits and pieces that made it into the game - 10-year-old model fragments and content models which the team found and brought back.” “The pistol that you have is eventually going to become Alyx's Gun from Half-Life 2 through upgrades - and that model was originally built for Half-Life: Episode 3 in… whenever that was,” Reidford explains. They explain to me that, when it comes to the past decade of mysterious Half-Life experiments, some elements did survive and make their way into Alyx.
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