Half-Life: Alyx's First Modding Meme Has Arrived

Half-Life: Alyx's first modding meme has arrived, with players swapping out the game's opening scene with absurd videos (and it's pretty easy to do yourself). Multiple users have been posting the results to Reddit, with the r/HalfLife subreddit increasingly covered in altered versions of a conference call between Alyx Vance and her father Eli. Users are able to replace the in-game video files to display a different video on the TV screens in Alyx's greenhouse, swapping the file out for a range of videos from the internet's past and present. Here's one featuring a viral video from comedian Casey Frey, and another utilising the endless font of memes that is the Super Mario Brothers Super Show. [caption id="attachment_2326893" align="alignnone" width="1280"] An opening call replacement video in Half-Life: Alyx.[/caption] If you want to experiment with this yourself, you need to head to a specific folder in Half-Life: Alyx's files. Consider this a warning: this folder contains all of the cutscenes from Half-Life: Alyx, and at least one video title could be considered a spoiler. Probably best to finish the game first, before you begin messing with it. If you're still interested, head to SteamApps/Common/Half-Life Alyx/Game/HLVR/Panorama/Videos and find the file 'intro_world_heist.webm'. Now make a copy of that file so you don't lose it and drag a WebM video file of your choosing into the folder. Then all you have to do is rename the file to intro_world_heist.webm and you're good to go. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/23/the-first-17-minutes-of-half-life-alyx"] The game has been inspiring lots of creativity under quarantine, with one teacher delivering a maths lesson using in-game markers and window panes. For more on Half-Life: Alyx, check out our 10/10 review of the game, which we think "sets a new bar for VR." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.