Half-Life Alyx can be played without a VR headset, and mouse and keyboard controls seem to work fine as well.
Earlier today, Valve News Network founder Tyler McVicker discovered that Half-Life Alyx can be played without a VR headset thanks to some commands. He also managed to enable mouse and keyboard controls, and they seem to work decently without any major tweaking.
You can check out a video showing the game being played with a VR headset by heading over to Twitch.
Thanks to this discovery, it likely won't take much to see a Half-Life Alyx mod that allows those without a VR headset to experience the game in all its glory. Valve itself expects this to happen soon, as recently revealed by Designer Robin Walker.
The answer to this diverges significantly depending on which members of the team you talk to, so this answer is definitely just from me. There are a set of people on the team that are concerned about that. Personally, I’m not concerned about it at all. It will clearly demonstrate to people why we did Half-Life: Alyx in VR. It will be a very crisp way of seeing all the stuff we got for the move into VR. If people play a modded version on a standard display and say this is is just as good, that will teach me a lot. I will realize I’m wrong, and we didn’t get as much as we thought, and I love to know whenever I’m wrong.
Half-Life Alyx is now available on Steam. We will keep you updated on any mod that will allow the game to be played without a VR headset as soon as they are released, so stay tuned for all the latest news.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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