The release of Half-Life: Alyx in early 2020 was a huge event for gamers. More precisely, we must add that it is exclusively for those who owned a VR headset compatible with Steam. Regardless of how great the game is, a large group of fans of one of the most famous game series was angered by the release of the next installment and felt very much on the part of Valve tricked. That is also why, almost immediately after the launch of the game, work began on various modifications that would make the entire experience accessible even without a VR headset, but it was very difficult to avoid such a close connection of content and design with the possibilities that virtual reality offers to players. After three years, however, a script has finally appeared that does not force players to make too many compromises, and according to the feedback so far, it seems that even those who are not fans of virtual reality can finally buy Half-Life: Alyx with peace of mind and start playing in the usual way .
After a number of previous attempts, a group posing as GB_2 Development Team, which only started preparing its solution at the end of this year. The first video on the channel mentioned groups of enthusiastic fans appeared at the beginning of March and presented players with a basic version of the script, named rather unambiguously – Half-Life: Alyx NoVR. It then took approximately a month for the authors to reach the sixth update, which completes their work and not only through Githubbut a popular portal ModDB fulfills the dream of the disappointed fans mentioned in the introduction during Easter. Simply put, Half-Life: Alyx is playable from start to finish without having to put on any headset, and with GB_2’s script, you can use all the mechanics of the game without any restrictions.
As the authors of the script describe, the latest update is the biggest they have brought for their project so far, and in the detailed list of changes and news, they confirm that the gravity glove works, including endgame powers, at no point do you need to use any cheats or feature noclipto get further, the combine fabricator also works and everything should be stable and functional as you would from placard version they expected. The only thing left at the moment according to GB_2 fine tune, are the very final parts of the game, which they will inform about and ideally without spoilers. However, this should be the absolute minimum of the remaining things, which in addition do not prevent the comfortable completion of the game and the revelation of the next part of the story, which greatly shakes up what you knew from the previously released parts and episodes.
It is also important to add that the authors of the script did not rely only on functionality, but also addressed the visual side, so they added, for example, animations that would otherwise be fully under the control of the player in VR, they also worked on the reachability of most achievements – currently you can get 33 of them without VR 42 – and they modified the user interface slightly so that the information that the player had on the glove was clearly visible and could be conveniently looked at at any time. Of course, the script also handles more complex interactions with some elements in the environment, and the script can even be used in some story modifications that added additional parts to the story. Namely, these are the Levitation, Extra-Ordinary Value, Belomorskaya Station and Overcharge mods, which are more or less playable and thus give players without VR headsets the opportunity to enjoy content from the Workshop on Steam. In conclusion, we just note that while the script is free as a fan work, you of course need to have purchased Half-Life: Alyx to play it, just like if you wanted to play it in standard VR.
