DISPATCHES JULY
That’s Life
Ever since Half-Life: Alyx was announced as a VR exclusive, I suppose it was inevitable that modders would convert it for a flat screen. Having now played through it twice in VR, and watched a bunch of increasingly sophisticated non-VR mods, my feelings about the conversion are ambivalent.
On one hand, the VR install base is about 1.3% on Steam, but the ending of Alyx is shocking and significant enough that I think as many Half-Life fans as possible need to see it. Likewise, one can hardly begrudge a Half-Life fan wanting to play the first Half-Life in 13 years.
On the other hand, while I think Alyx is incredible in VR, I doubt it translates very well outside it. Alyx was designed hand-inhand with the Valve Index: built, play-tested and iterated on for years to be a tailormade VR experience. That means there are many sections built around environmental exploration in small spaces that revel in the tactile immediacy and interactivity of
VR. It feels like a holiday visit to City 17 (well, a mortally dangerous holiday). There is a joy to picking up and eyeballing every item, in opening every door and cupboard, in leaning around, under and over furniture, in walking through and around holograms, that I suspect might seem like selfindulgent over-design outside VR. There is an intensity and panic to fighting even one Civil Protection commando – literally ducking, leaning and rolling for cover – that’s probably too easy with a keyboard and mouse. There is a slowness to the movements of the player and the enemies, and to the general pace of the thing, that mostly feels exactly right in VR but
I suspect feels sluggish outside it.
So I guess, for what it’s worth, my point is cautionary: if you play Alyx outside VR and think it’s rubbish, try to find a way to play it in VR before you make up your mind. Leo Tarasov
Will Valve produce a PC port? It’s doubtful – Alyx feels as though it was very much created as an exemplar for making virtual reality games solely for the headset.
High hopes
Like many Edge readers, my childhood was spent poring over copies of The One Amiga, CVG, and eventually, Next-Generation before discovering its English counterpart. I’d obsess over screenshots of expensive games for systems I didn’t own, imagining what it would be like to play them. (I was an Amiga kid in Australia, which made the SNES import scene all the more exotic).
Flash forward to the present day, and I’ve had to move home due to you-know-what. Which is tough to swallow at 35, but I count myself lucky. And while the Amiga is gone, I’ve brought along my PS4 and Switch, and have an absurd backlog of games to keep me busy (bless PlayStation Plus and eShop sales!)
Now I find myself back in my childhood bedroom, reading your review of Half-Life: Alyx, knowing that it might be years before I get to play it. Of course, I’m gutted – but the vicarious enjoyment of reading about it (and your excellent feature on Valve) is more than enough to tide me over for now. It’s a strangely familiar, not to mention comforting feeling, and part and parcel of my enthusiasm for the medium.
Eventually I’ll get back on my feet – as I hope for Edge readers everywhere. Hopefully by the time the next-gen rolls around. And with it, more affordable VR and an Alyx port.
Jonty Bell
Ah, Valve. Who could have known its pricey comeback effort would come at a time when
“I look back to 2017, and the absolute deluge of quality that propelled Switch to success”
we’re all scrabbling to save our pennies? We hope your new 8BitDo controller will tide you over until a headset is within your budget – we’ll send it as soon as we’re allowed back in the office.
Under my skin
Your last two Making Of articles ( Eliza and Arise) interviewed designers explaining how they consciously limited the player’s abilities. One features a character restricted by their depression, the other by old age. This is often a part of indie game rhetoric, from The Stanley Parable to Life Is Strange (Kate’s suicide) to Neo Cab (choices are limited by how you feel). It’s a device mainly used to critique a problem outside of the game, such as society, mortality – even bad game design.
Long have I wondered why many a player has had problems with games becoming ‘political’. Until recently, I thought it was because some folks don’t want their experiences in games to be coloured by realworld propaganda. I get that – there’s enough cacophony about our societal problems, and it’s nice to be sheltered from all that in pleasant, virtual worlds.
I’m chewing on another theory, and this section being named ‘Dialogue’, I was wondering what others think. The same folks who shout #keeppoliticsoutofgames also tend to be the ‘hardcore’ type that get defensive about what a game should be. Many will complain that story-driven indie titles don’t feature enough ‘gameplay’. What I’m thinking is: perhaps they get defensive because such games don’t deliver the fantasy of their perspiration rewarding them fairly (ie practice will eventually lead to success). So maybe players not only lament the themes of artsy-fartsy ‘we live in a society’ indie titles, but also the way these games take away their agency.
I’m going out on a limb here: videogames might have become a large part of our everyday identity. I know I lost thousands of hours of real life in World Of Warcraft. Why?
Because it was utopia for me, owning the means of production, a true meritocracy. I wouldn’t enjoy my character being restricted and the game replying: ‘That’s life, deal with it.’ I just want to do my own thing! WoW features its fair share of politics, from Orc civil rights symbolism to environmental protection, but nobody seems to complain, probably because in that world you are able to do something about it.
From now on, the next time I see somebody complain about politics in a game, I’ll wonder how much it has an effect on the mechanics. How much does the artistic message infringe on effort/reward? Is this what players are actually complaining about? Robert August de Meijer
As ever, Robert, you’re a generous soul. You only need take a look at what’s happening online with The Last Of Us Part II leaks to understand that the ‘anti-politics’ people aren’t even bothered about playing the game before beginning to stamp their feet.
Strangers in the night
May you live in interesting times, right? Our own anxieties aside, the world is taking on a massive shift in terms of what ‘interactivity’ means. I remember back in the days of Edge 1 when virtual reality was discussed as the next stage of human contact – now it feels like one of the only ones. I have been reassessing in this time of chaos, and I expect Edge staff have too. My job demands discussions with people, and Zoom and other clients have provided a tenuous link to the outside world.
All of this has got me thinking about the ‘original’ communicators – concepts like World Of Warcraft or Everquest (of which the latter was a particular thing of mine). I don’t know if it’s a symptom of the time we live in, or the current virus, but I’m absolutely gasping for playing games live with someone, whether online or through streaming. Whilst my streams get 1-2 viewers, there is a satisfaction in knowing they are seeing me power through The Division, or in Catherine.
I don’t know where we are going to go with online content, but I do know that we need each other to comment, like, subscribe and the rest. Is our future about to become watching others complete games for us? It’s come close before, but now… I don’t know. Martin Hollis
You’ve hit on something here – the social aspect of livestreaming feels more important than ever right now. We’re not watching Shroud for the headshots nowadays, but for the entertaining team chat.
Get happy
Don’t tell your outgoing editor, but for many years I have mastered the art of reading through your magazine’s beautifully observed news and features, then skimming through what sometimes would feel (please don’t hate) like pages and pages of Hype articles and reviews of what I would kindly describe as “another firstperson shooter with guns the size of which Freud would have a field day with” or “a dark action-adventure game about saving a world where only four colours exist”.
Don’t get me wrong, I play some of these games from time to time, but I always had a lingering feeling that my true videogame passion was a bit out of step with the gaming consciousness which you so accurately reflect. And so I would devour any inch of your magazine devoted to games drenched in forever-sunshine, primary colours and what my partner would call “plinky-plonky music”.
So thank you for your ‘Feel Better’ games issue – a whole Edge magazine dedicated to the Peter Pans of the world! And you even mentioned “blue skies in games”. I shed a little tear. Once this crisis is over, you can go back to Destiny, loot boxes and the fascinating oeuvre of Goichi Suda. I now know I was never alone. Thank you.
Javier SP
He does still read the magazine, you know. We'd lock our doors, if we were you – he's got an awful lot of free time nowadays.