This piece contains SPOILERS for the end of Half-Life: Alyx.
Set five years before the events of Half-Life 2, Half-Life: Alyx’s story is simple but consequential. I thought it was worth taking an extremely spoilery look at it in order to see where it leaves the series. Please, please, please do not read on if you haven’t played the game and want to experience all this for yourself! Also: I’ll be talking about the main beats of the story, but I won’t be talking about any of the set-pieces, which tend to occur as complications on the way to a narrative objective. The set-pieces in this game should not be spoiled at any cost!
Let’s Play Half-Life: Alyx Episode 1: DREAMIN’ OF CITY 17 – Ian’s VR Corner Watch on YouTube
Right. So in a lot of ways, Alyx stays pretty close to the narrative template laid down by Half-Life 2. Valve likes to keep things straightforward, so once again there’s a big object on the horizon and you’re headed towards it for most of the game. (The game also uses the Half-Life 2 trick of giving you a massive OP damage boost in the final sequences – pay-off for all that trouble it’s put you through up until then.)
In this case, the big object in question is a Combine facility suspended in the sky about City-17. Eli Vance, Alyx’s dad, who you spend the first part of the game rescuing, has discovered that the Combine is storing something special in this place. The idea is that it’s a super-weapon of some kind that will maybe allow the Resistance to really stick it to the Combine.