The challenge for Valve was even trickier, because Half-Life: Alyx isn't a game like, say, Outlast or Soma that people play specifically for a horror experience. "Will a horror game give you the same physiological reactions as being in a horrific situation for real? Horror movies can be very scary or very cathartic or very terrifying, but horror VR will take it beyond that and do we want to be entertained like that?" Suddenly it becomes more real rather than abstracted," he said. You’re surrounded by it and immersed in it. "The trouble is that means it’s more intense. Four years ago, Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley warned CNBC that VR horror games risk being too intense because it "makes you no longer just a participant in terms of watching but you are present in this story." Valve isn't the only studio to have concerns about the heightened impact of horror in VR, and it's also far from the first. "We really did recognize that we didn't want to overwhelm people from the very beginning."
You get the gun and you get the ammo before you have any kind of threat to you whatsoever," Casali said. "We deliberately played with the pacing of introduction of elements that could feel overwhelming or anxiety-ridden, like being approached by an enemy for the first time and shooting a gun and reloading for the first time. The desire to avoid inflicting sensory overload on players also informed the speed of basic game mechanics. "I was very respectful in not trying to push it too far, because I didn't want to lose a certain segment of people who might not have been able to continue." "It started scarier, for sure," level designer Dario Casali told GameSpot. "Even the act of healing is gross, as I insert a glass cylinder containing a living alien grub into a wall-mounted health station and watch as it's crushed into a bilious liquid just inches from my face, followed by skittering needles jabbing into the backs of my fingers." Yum.īut perhaps surprisingly, we're learning that Valve toned down Alyx's horror in order to help ensure that players didn't leave the experience altogether. Apartment walls are covered with pulsating tendrils and toothy alien blossoms that gibber and snap at my fingertips if I hover too close," Chris writes. "Barnacles with their sticky, dangling tongues belch and barf human remains directly onto me when they expire, giving me another good reason to avoid standing under them. Half-Life: Alyx promised to take that part of the experience even further by strapping it directly to your face, and as Chris said in his glowing review, it succeeded.
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