Modder Recreates Half-Life 2’s Opening Set Piece in Half-Life: Alyx’s Engine

A nimble modder has grafted parts of Half-Life 2's opening into Half-Life: Alyx's Source 2 engine. Vect0R has recreated the moment that Gordon Freeman walks out into the City 17 courtyard at the start of Half-Life 2 in VR with Source 2, the engine that powers Half-Life: Alyx. The location is eerily quiet save for a few roaming Combine, with Wallace Breen's looming face yet to be implemented, but features better lighting than the original version, which released on the first Source engine in 2004. Instead of being planted to the ground, the player uses the VR control scheme from Half-Life: Alyx, including her pistol which must have the slider manually pulled back to reload. This quickly turns the courtyard into a shooting gallery. The modder started work on the reimagining on March 24th but had been planning the project since January. Vect0R doesn't plan on sharing it for public use just yet and created it to serve as a showcase for what could be done. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/23/the-first-17-minutes-of-half-life-alyx"] "I took the original map file and converted to Source 2 format and added to Half-Life: Alyx," said Vect0R in the description of his YouTube video. They also mention that they were limited by the fact that Valve's Source 2 SDK isn't public just yet. It's a seriously impressive sight to behold and is clearly just the start for Source 2 tinkering off the back of Half-Life: Alyx. Who's to say that we couldn't see a full remake of Half-Life 2 within Alyx's upgraded Source 2 engine, thanks to the hard work of modders like Vect0R? We do live in a post-Black Mesa world, after all. For more on Half-Life: Alyx, check out this teacher who delivered a lesson on Angle Vocabulary using in-game markers and windows! [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN who would play the hell out of Half-Life 2 in VR using Alyx's control scheme. Follow him on Twitter.