Hey guys, it's Geoff Keighley,
and I am here at Valve in Seattle, Washington.
This is such a special day for me
and I'm sure for many of you, because
Valve is ready to reveal its next project.
In 1997 when I was going to college, I came up here
to Seattle and met with Gabe Newell and the team
when they were making their first game,
of course "Half-Life", and I wrote a story about
the making of it called "The Final Hours of Half-Life".
I did it again for "Half-Life 2", and today
I'm happy to announce that in 2020,
I will be writing another Final Hours
about the next project, so what is it?
Well, it's a new "Half-Life" project.
It's called "Half-Life: Alyx", a full blown
virtual reality prequel to "Half-Life",
and right here on floor 14 just off the lobby
for the past few years, a team of more
than 50 folks at Valve have been working
in absolute secrecy, building this project.
They're workin' on it right here, now.
I've been up here, quietly, over the past couple of years
chronicling the development of that game.
I'm sure you have lots of questions about this,
I can't believe it's actually happening.
And today we're gonna give you a little bit of a taste
of what's been going on at Valve over the past decade,
why now is the right time to talk about this project,
and bring it out in 2020.
Here we go.
I know there's, we'll get into this in Final Hours,
but there have been a lot of other games
that you guys have worked on in the past nine years
that people have just never heard about
or never shipped, right? Yeah, that's true,
I mean, along the way, building Source 2
we tried various games in different franchises.
And each of them kind of moved the engine forward
in some way, and explored some idea,
and they were all back-burnered for good reasons, I think,
but they were more like milestones along the way
to get to where we are now with "Half-Life: Alyx".
And I think it'd be really fun to delve into those.
Yeah, yeah. You know?
We will! Yeah, in the future.
Well that's exciting, somebody will think that,
oh Valve's off counting its money, or not,
not making games and you guys have been here
workin' on a bunch of projects.
But then again it brings obviously to this one,
and why this, why now?
Some people would probably cynically say,
oh Valve has to go back to making games now
that Epic's chippin' away at Steam,
and "Artifact" wasn't necessarily the hit
everyone wanted it to be, and that's not what happened,
but can you maybe kind of talk about it,
like how you got to the point of "Half-Life: Alyx"
and we'll get into the fact that it's VR and what not,
but how did this sort of begin as an idea?
Yeah, I mean, I think you have to go back
to around 2016 or so when the Vive shipped,
and I think there was, our feeling after we shipped the Vive
and "The Lab" was aligned I think fairly cleanly
with what we were seeing a bunch of customers say
at the time which was, "Where's the big VR title?"
A lot of people could see the promise of VR as a platform--
Well "The Lab" was awesome.
Oh that was amazing, yes. I loved that,
that was an amazing little experiment, right?
Yeah, very happy with "The Lab".
I think "The Lab" was a combination of our efforts
in understanding the mechanics of VR,
and a lot of the industry as a whole
was doing all kinds of really interesting
experimentation in the mechanics of VR.
And then so, when customers are saying
where's the big VR game, one of the things
we had to do around that time is to sort of ask,
"Well, what do they mean then?"
because we thought "The Lab" was a big game,
we thought a lot of those other great indie devs
and so on were making great VR games, as well.
And so it seemed like to us that a bunch of people
were asking, "Where's the big, sort of all encompassing
content sprawl that you get in a big,
AAA title of some kind.
High production values. Yeah.
And there are many reasons why it was and still is
hard to justify building something of that scope in VR.
We felt like that was a role we could fill,
'cause we can certainly invest in sort of
longer term strategies around putting more effort
and money and time into something then we may expect
a return then, for an audience like with VR.
So back in 2016 we shipped "The Lab",
and we started doing experiments
on what other things we can do with this.
I just remember when Gabe was saying,
"We're workin' on two or three VR things,"
or something, where there was ideas,
and so it wasn't like let's do a "Half-Life" VR game,
it was let's do a big VR game? No.
No, it was definitely let's do a big VR game.
Okay. Yeah.
And then we explored different franchises.
We kinda ruled out multiplayer
just because of the small audience for VR,
and I mean, other issues as well with VR,
avatars and things like that.
And we kind of settled on "Portal" or "Half-Life"
as interesting, and "Portal" is so much about
flinging yourself through space and through portals
that we thought, well we're gonna make
a bunch of people sick with this game.
That's why "The Lab" or the Aperture Hands,
that was in the "Portal" universe and that kinda worked,
but you're right, like a full on "Portal" game would be
disorienting. Yeah, a full on "Portal" game
seemed challenging, and then we looked at "Half-Life"
and kind of the DNA of that product, and a bunch
of the elements seemed really enhanced by VR.
You know what I mean, "Half-Life" is about this cadence
of story, combat, puzzle, exploration, interaction,
you know, environmental art, vistas, things like that,
and they all seemed to be enhanced
or reinvented in interesting ways by VR,
and so as we explored that, I mean, you guys were.
I wasn't on the team at the time
but when you guys were doin' the prototype?
Yeah, Dario and a small group of us,
we basically, literally started with "Half-Life" assets,
the "Half-Life 2" assets, so we built this short,
like 15 minute, I think it was.
Yeah it was pretty basic. Our intention was to build
15 minutes of a "Half-Life" experience using
"Half-Life" textures, "Half-Life" assets.
I think we stole "Counter-Strike's" gloves
that they hadn't even shipped yet.
And "Counter-Strike" at the time--
Combat stuff? No we needed hands for the--
Right, yeah. But yes,
all the combat stuff in the game was just running
straight "Half-Life 2" AI, just in VR.
All the assets were 12 years old.
Yeah, it was-- Pretty funny.
(Robin laughing) No, well I was saying.
I remember-- It's very nostalgic.
Over the years, I've always been wondering,
it's like, "Oh when are they gonna touch those assets?"
or secretly I'd ask about getting the G-Man for something,
and it's like, see if they had a new model
but no, it's the same model from--
Is there, yeah. Yeah.
Dario, you were on, shipping the original game
when I was here in like 1997. Long time ago.
Even though you guys said, "Hey, it would be cool
"to do something "Half-Life" with this,"
you know sort of what comes with that, right?
Touching that IP again, and I think a lot of us
watching this today, we never thought this day
was actually gonna come. (Dario laughing)
Was there trepidation when you guys finally said,
"Yeah, we could do "Half-Life", but like..."
(Robin and David laughing) There was a reason--
There's a lot at stake with that.
There was a reason it was a small team
for a time. Is it good?
Maybe that was easier, because we started this
as an exploration of VR mechanics, rather than, "Hey,
"we're gonna start on "Half-Life" whatever it's gonna be."
So it was-- Say it!
kind of focused around that. We can say it.
(laughing) "Half-Life" Whatever!
And that made it a lot easier 'cause we were just sort of,
what can we do, how can we translate
the "Half-Life" mechanics to the VR,
and the hands and the headset, and it was
immediately really obvious there was
a lot of potential here with the stuff,
and just one after another we put these
"Half-Life" mechanics into VR.
Some of them worked really well,
some of them were pretty comical up front,
but there were enough that were really promising
that we just sort of organically grew, as we saw.
As Dave was sayin', the sort of cadence,
the DNA of "Half-Life", as we started
to put people through this 15 minute prototype,
they would spend 45 minutes in it,
doing a bunch of stuff that we'd never really see.
They exhibited a bunch of behaviors we'd never
really seen players exhibit in the sort of
more flat screen 2D desktop environment,
where they spend a lot more time paying attention
to the environment and looking around and exploring,
and all that kind of behavior really dovetailed
very nicely with the sort of core DNA of "Half-Life".
So we were really excited because
if players are exhibiting that kind of interest
in exploring their environment before we've even
really got any reason to explore it in this prototype--
And, the fact that it was so incredibly low fidelity,
that it was almost comical, but it didn't seem to matter,
'cause the sense of immersion, the sense
of being there was powerful enough that...
No, and now having played through it,
I mean it's that sense of immersion.
It's just, I mean what you guys have done
visually with it, and the look,
I mean it is absolutely "Half-Life".
I think that's something that will
probably surprise people, I think.
There was rumors, oh you guys might be doin'
some kinda "Half-Life" VR thing
and people were probably expecting it,
small room with old assets, I mean this is like
a full blown, AAA production
which is absolutely incredible to see
kind of what you and the team have put together.
But the big question that I think everyone is going to have,
VR is an emerging market, a very small percentage
of probably "Half-Life" fans and customers have VR,
so I'm sure some people are like,
"Great, you're doing "Half-Life",
"we're super excited that that's happening,
"but why does this have to be VR only?"
Which you know is a fair concern for people, right?
It's like, are they forcing me to buy VR
to have the next "Half-Life" experience?
Is that just 'cause you think the opportunity for innovation
was sort of in the VR space with this?
You're not doing a flat screen version of this game, right?
Yeah, I mean we would love to be delivering
a version of this that you could play
with a mouse and a keyboard, but like as we said,
it began as an exploration of VR,
and the more we used the controllers and the headset
we realized the amount of interactions this gives,
the amount of possibilities these things give us,
the more we explored it and the more we realized that
there's so much opportunity that we can't
really translate back to the keyboard.
When you can track your hands separately from your head.
They're all 3D space, all simultaneously
tracking and moving, you just can't really
get that with a mouse and keyboard.
And when you put that into game mechanics,
the kinds of interactions that we can do now
we couldn't possibly do with a mouse and keyboard.
Like interacting with doors is one
of the most obvious things, I mean you've played
so you've seen. No, but it's so fun,
and I think the thing with what I'll say
about the combat stuff is when, you know,
you're pulling a clip and put it in the gun,
and ducking for cover, I mean there's funny videos
of me playing this thing where you're literally
on the floor and ducking, I mean it's like
the combat is truly immersive and visceral
and it reminds me of classic "Half-Life",
but it's so much different, and I mean
you could potentially map some of that
to a mouse or a controller but it's just,
I think it's just better, yeah.
The amount of complexity that's going on there,
it's just so hard, we would have to map
an entire section of the keyboard dedicated
just to interacting with doors if we wanted
to have that kind of functionality,
where as it's so intuitive for you
'cause you know how a door works and you can sort of
crack it open a little bit with one hand
and put your gun through with the other.
No, I can put the gun through,
and shoot and then I pull it back.
You can peek through, you can knock it open,
you can drop a grenade in and close the door,
and you couldn't do any of that--
Oh there, and there's one sequence in the game
where it's literally like you open it,
throw something and close it,
and that's what makes it so unique and fun,
and that's what I think "Half-Life" has always represented,
is innovation in play style and what it is,
and I think there's innovation there in how you play,
which I think as you said might not translate to
the traditional thing. Yeah, and the more
we explored those mechanics, the more we realized that
in order for us to deliver a keyboard and mouse experience,
we'd have to ship a game that's missing
a lot of those interactions, and they were
playtesting so well that we didn't feel
like that was a good idea.
Well yeah, you'd end up watering down the VR experience,
to try to do both at the same time,
and the process was really what can we do
with these controllers and the HMD,
and so as we explored that idea it just drove us
into this place where the game became
essentially VR rather than just kind of superficially VR,
you know, and it would be like Dario said
really hard to support those mechanics on a keyboard.
In a lot of cases, almost impossible.
I just can't see how you would pull it off.
And you are supporting other,
it's not just Index right, it's supporting
Vive and Oculus so it'll be on multiple
PC head sets, right? Yeah we want everyone,
everyone that we can get to be able
to play this, we want to be able to play it.
And our requirements, maybe, track controllers
is sort of one of the main things, just 'cause
as Dario says we do much with them,
whereas we're constantly asking the player
to be doing things simultaneously with both hands.
Oh, it's a work out when you're going through it.
The amazing thing is that it's all intuitive.
You're not learning bindings of a keyboard,
you know you press this and then something happens,
it's all exactly as you-- No, I was saying,
when you were pulling the clip and reloading the gun
and it's a whole other, it's a new way of playing
but is really deep and immersive,
and then you layer on, I think the fact that you've got
great story here and great characters,
and those things that people love about Valve
kind of in this environment, as well.
It's a prequel, if people don't know starring Alyx.
I'm sure the question of course will come up,
you wouldn't even say it, but Half-Life 3,
I'm sure some people are like, "Why is this not Half-Life 3?
"Why is this a prequel?"
So, can you sort of explain, like time line
how that all kinda came together?
'Cause you said, let's do "Half-Life",
but it's like, let's carry it forward, guys.
Yeah, I think Robin is the perfect person
to answer this question. (Geoff laughing)
I believe. (Robin clearing throat)
Yeah, I mean in all honesty,
back in 2016 when we started this
I mean "Half-Life" was just terrifying.
Half-Life 3, terrifyingly daunting prospect, right?
And I think to some extent, VR was a way
we could fool ourselves into believing
we had a way to do this, 'cause
by starting with VR and then trying to think
about "Half-Life" and how it worked with it
and playtesting those, you're immediately in a space
where we have something we understand well,
"Half-Life's" core gameplay, and a new platform
with new prospects and new possibilities
and we can do that translation,
and then we can watch people play it,
and so within a week or two we're starting to learn.
We are able to watch someone go through it.
And so it was really easy to not try and think about
the big picture of, oh we're making Half-Life 3,
and just focus on, let's figure out what people
enjoy in this and then let's make forward progress.
And in some ways VR was a little bit,
like the way the gravity gun helped us in "Half-Life 2"
where it just, that became the tent pole
that you could wrap so much around.
That innovation around it. Exactly, and so VR
became this thing that we could wrap everything around.
Kinda like a rail to slide along for design, you know?
Yeah-- No actually,
I think that's fair-- Where as Half-Life 3,
if it's like, "Hey tomorrow you're workin' on Half-Life 3!"
and you're like, oh God! No, and they said
the expectations-- Terrifying!
They said there's a safety to sort of doing a VR thing,
where as you said, doing a full blown Half-Life 3,
you said, has crazy expectations.
Yeah, sort of how it's completely wide open
in terms of what you're gonna amount to.
And we were handed, well, we found this VR
as the platform, as the backbone of this project.
We didn't have to find it, it was right there.
Yeah, and then by the time we started to realize,
we'd started making a bunch of progress
and seeing things that were working long before
we'd get to the point of deciding
how big is this thing we're building,
and so we were able to, by the time you start,
I think really dramatically increasing our aspirations
for the product and realizing,
no this is, this should be big,
we've got a lot already, then.
We've already got a bunch of success behind us.
It's the scale of what you're doing, I think you said,
the characters and the world and the combat,
and when you see City 17 realized in true high definition,
and that's the thing it is to me, the characters
and the world, it's deeply immersive
and it's in your mind's eye what you want.
On a real scale.
Oh yeah! The scale is--
The first moment in the game, not to spoil
too much of the game, but when you first walk outside
and you're like, "Wow, there's the Citadel,"
and the way that the sound and the visuals,
it touches you and it's the kind of thing
that I think a lot of us thought
we would never get to see from you guys.
(David laughing) And even I'm sure some--
So much never in this interview!
Well, but, the thing is I would also say
what I like about this project is that
a lot of folks that have come to Valve
in the past decade are working on this as well, right,
and they probably came to Valve saying,
"Hey maybe one day I'll get to work on a "Half-Life"!"
and I think if the Campo Santo guys are involved in this,
Jay, Erik, writing "Portal 2", they're now working on this.
A lot of the folks that came here
never got to work on a "Half-Life" game,
so it must be kind of, is there kind of
a motivation to the team now which is exciting
that everyone's like, we're finally doing this?
Oh everyone is-- For sure.
There was a heck of a lot of excitement.
It was really easy to recruit for this project.
(Geoff laughing) Yes.
Yeah. Surprisingly enough!
Once we had something that a bunch
of the company could play, then yeah.
Yeah I think, I mean it is really exciting
having this combination of a bunch of people
who have a deep understanding and experience
building content that uses the kind of DNA
Dave was talking about, the sort of core of "Half-Life",
but then having a bunch of this new, fresh perspectives,
in some cases from people who have built games elsewhere
that were inspired by some of that original DNA,
and then returning, learning their own ways of doing things,
and then having that join sort of the experience we have,
I think we were really able to get to some places,
especially around narrative, I think in this product,
that are the best stuff we've ever done,
and we're really excited about that.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
I think you're not just doing a "Half-Life" VR game,
you're kind of pushing not only the VR medium
but I think just the industry forward
with some of the stuff you're doing in this game
and how you're blending combat and gameplay and dialogue,
and that's why I said it's classic Valve,
and those moments I remember from the first "Half-Life"
where my CD would spin up with the audio,
and we'd go into great combat scenarios,
and the DNA of that I feel is in this,
it just happens to be in VR. That's very flattering.
Cool, that's good to hear. No, believe me, I'm excited
to tell more of that story next year
of how you guys got here, and again
all the things that have happened behind the scenes.
But I think one thing, everyone will probably see this
and say, "Okay, Valve's back," right,
in a sense of making these games, not that far away we hope.
Right, March, you're callin' it?
In March, yep. The trailer.
But I think people probably wonder, okay, moving forward
does this mean that Valve now is just making VR games?
Are we going to get that Half-Life 3,
or that new big, epic kind of Valve game down the road?
Or is it, oh now we're makin' VR games, that's what we do?
I mean, we're very excited about this,
but you know, until we ship, you never know.
Maybe we're all really wrong, and it's terrible.
We have to wait and see what the reception is like.
That, to some extent, wait and see.
But you know it is, it's been such a long wait
I think people are like, okay, and I, personally,
this is just me saying this, but I think
it feels to me like a bridge to more
because the tech that you guys have there,
the way it looks, the way it plays, the way it feels,
it gets me excited about where you guys can go.
We're very excited about building more "Half-Life",
that's for sure, we have had an absolute blast
building this game, in some ways for a bunch of us
who have been off on a lot of multiplayer stuff,
other things for years, is incredibly fun
to be back building single-player products again.
It's so much fun just to work on them,
be watching one playtester after a time,
one playtester after another just go through
this experience and just hone it so carefully
around them, especially in VR where
playtesters emote so much more in there.
You can see their whole body--
Respond to the situation.
You know, panicking, dropping clips on the ground
as they fumble their weapons 'cause a zombie's
in front of them, all these things, they're just,
it's been really fun watching playtests.
Anyway, so yeah, it's been really fun to build this.
I think wherever we go next, or whatever platform,
whatever we focus on, I think we're excited--
Come on Robin, say it! We wanna know why--
No but as you said, the engine is now at a point
where it's like, you can do this stuff now, right?
Yeah, the engine is ready now.
I think it's like Robin says, we want to put this out
and see how the world reacts to it
before we make any concrete plans about what we do next.
No, it does feel, but I love that you've got the team
and the energy here it feels like to ship stuff and do more.
Definitely have that. Yeah, for sure.
Whether that's another "Half-Life" or a brand new IP,
I think what I just get excited about
is this group makin' new stuff, yeah, I'm for it.
So, can't wait to see what's next.
All right, well we get-- So can we!
March 2020, "Half-Life: Alyx" comin' out,
and again, yeah, we'll do "The Final Hours" next year.
You know, it's been so fun to do those
with "Half-Life", "Half-Life 2", "Portal",
and that will take everyone through
really the past decade at Valve
and all that you guys have been through,
all the experiments that you don't know about,
and obviously the making of this game,
so thanks for doing this for everyone watching,
'cause I think this is the day that we didn't think
was ever gonna come, so-- Yeah. (laughing)
Well, it was really fun getting there, that's for sure.
Awesome, all right, thanks guys.
Thanks, Geoff! Thank you!
So there you have it, Internet!
"Half-Life: Alyx" is real, thanks to the guys at Valve
for allowing me to really chronicle their story,
and I've always appreciated Gabe just kinda
letting me come in here and hang out, talk to the guys.
And "The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx"
that I will bring out in March alongside the game
will take you through everything that has
happened at Valve for the past decade.
I think you will be very surprised about
some of the things that have happened
and excited that it has all lead to this point.
Speaking of "Half-Life: Alyx", The Game Awards,
December 12th, yes we will have more to share with you
on the game there so I hope you get to tune in.
I'm excited to show more of the game there.
Thanks for watching, and get ready.
"Half-Life's" back in 2020.