Half-Life: Alyx now fully playable without VR thanks to mod
I got a brand-new Combine harvester.
You can now make your way through Half-Life: Alyx from start to finish without a VR headset to your name. This is thanks to the appropriately named NoVR mod, which has been in the works for a while now.
But even though this may be the case, this is the first time the mod has allowed the full campaign to be completed without a VR headset.
"This is our biggest update yet and we have no plans on slowing down," the NoVR team shared earlier. "With thousands playing Half-Life Alyx NoVR we are happy to announce our largest update yet! As the titles state the entire game can now be played from start to finish, with the Gravity Gloves fully implemented along with combine fabricators providing weapon upgrades."
The mod's developers stated that they are now in the process of "updating the final parts of the game" and warned anyone following along with their updates there may be spoilers.
"We will do our best to not spoil anything while ensuring we communicate these late game areas have been updated along with their gameplay mechanics," the team wrote.
Just as a general FYI to anyone debating playing Half-Life: Alyx with this mod in use, VR saves are not compatible with NoVR. The same goes for the other way round, as well.
Valve News Network creator Tyler McVicker previously demonstrated Half-Life: Alyx without VR. He did this by making use of a pre-release build of the game, mistakenly made accessible through Steam, that still included tools enabling Valve's developers to test Alyx without strapping on a headset.
However, while it can be done, McVicker didn't seem too enthusiastic about a VR-free version of the game. "Non-VR mods are going to exist," he said in 2020, "[but] they're not going to be very fun, the game wasn't designed to be played like Half-Life 2".
This was a sentiment shared by Valve itself, with Half-Life: Alyx's designer and programmer Robin Walker previously saying: "What I'm confident will happen is that when people get that butchered version, and they'll have lost all the things that we'll have got from moving to VR, they will then understand very clearly why we made that choice."
"There's a part of me that's eager for people to be able to have that experience," Walker continued, "and realise, 'Oh, now I get it. Now I see everything we lost in that transition back to non-VR and I understand why they did it.'"