Those of you who maintain that a flatscreen, traditionally-controlled Half-Life Alyx is feasible, even now that the game is out... imagine something with me.
It's the year 1996. You've got a small stack of this month's gaming magazines and they're all effusively praising Nintendo's latest big game - Super Mario 64.
Now, you're a big Mario fan as it is. You've played SMB and SMB3 on the NES, and Super Mario World on the SNES. You're seriously hyped for more Mario. Everything you've read about Mario 64 sounds pretty damn cool, to boot. It's not the same Mario you grew up with, of course, but by all accounts its something that's even more novel and interesting. You want this game.
...but you're not interested in a Nintendo 64. Maybe you just can't afford it right now, since it's still new. It would cost you $260 plus tax to buy the console and the game, and that's a bit much, you've got other shit going on in your life, so that money is better spent elsewhere. Or maybe you've already purchased a different gaming platform, and you're comfortable gaming there. Or maybe you just can't stand the idea of using the N64's wonky-looking controller, or paying $60-$100 to play games that look like simple cartoons, considering that Quake just released and Final Fantasy 7 is just around the corner, and you could spend the money to play those, instead.
Man, Super Mario 64 sounds neat, though. You've been waiting to play a brand new Mario game for years. And you know what? The SNES96 emulator runs pretty well on your gaming PC. Honestly, you'd be fine with a 2D version of Mario 64 on the SNES, and you feel that many other existing SNES owners would, too. I mean, who wouldn't? 2D platforming is what made Super Mario so big to begin with. People would buy that game in droves. Shit, people would buy Super Mario World 2 in droves, so Nintendo might as well serve up something to that existing paying audience. It just makes sense.
So you take to Usenet. You visit your gaming newsgroup, and posit a simple question -
"Why doesn't Nintendo make a version of Mario 64 for the SNES? If hackers made their own 2D platforming version of Mario 64, you'd play it, right?"
That's you, right now. Not you, OP, but the people I addressed with this post's first sentence. Think about that for a minute. Think about the answers that Super Mario 64 players of the time might have given you, and whether or not history would go on to prove them right.
Could Nintendo, or some of the most gifted modders/game 'hackers' of the 1990s, have made a half-decent 2D approximation of Mario 64? Sure, if they put in a monster amount of work. And what would that amount to? A completely different game top-to-bottom, one that could never facilitate the intended experience of the original - only small parts of its aesthetic and mechanical trappings. Any player who played Super 2D Mario 64 expecting the Super Mario 64 experience would walk away having experienced a novelty, a facsimile. Perhaps a decent game in its own right, but certainly not a genuine alternative, or a comparable experience. Just a novelty, relatively speaking, one which jettisons the most important and innovative elements of Super Mario 64 in favor of the familiar. And the familiar is clearly not Nintendo's ambition with Super Mario 64, so what you're getting with Super 2D Mario 64 isn't close to what the SM64 hyped suggested you'd get.
Of course, that's all hypothetical, because those most familiar with Super Mario 64 in 1996 would tell you, flat-out, that a 2D version is just never going to happen. Too much would have to be changed, too much would be lost in the transition, and the developers would never see that version as a justifiable expenditure of their time and effort.
And that's what you're seeing in this thread. Half-Life Alyx is about being a VR game. Half-Life Alyx is meant to give players a new understanding of and appreciation for VR's potential, and the unique game design that VR enables through its controls and perspective. Just as Super Mario 64 was meant to give players a new understanding of and appretiation for 3D gaming's potential, and the unique game design that 3D gaming could enable with new controls and perspectives. Anything less, or anything different if you will, would be just that - a lesser monument to new gaming possibilities, and a completely different game, to boot. A different game that, for what it's worth, you're not necessarily unreasonable for wanting - I share with you the desire for a new, traditional Half-Life game after all - but it's certain that Half-Life Alyx could never be that game, and that that game could never be Half-Life Alyx.
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(So you log off Usenet, deciding that maybe, you'll stick with games like Quake and Final Fantasy 7 for the time being. It's not like there aren't plenty of other amazing, novel, and innovative games for you to play on the platforms you own and have access to right now!
Timeskip to the year 2000. PS2 is right around the corner, and you couldn't be more hyped. You've seen footage and read stories of games that might just blow your mind, of 3D games that look or sound too amazing to miss. Many of which, unbeknownst to you, were developed by people who were inspired to utilize - and even innovate upon - the design concepts and practices introduced to them by, among other titles, Super Mario 64.
To help pass the time, though... you decide to buy an N64, the very console you chose not to purchase only a few short years ago. Of course, it's 2000, and to purchase an N64 and a copy of Super Mario 64 would cost you only a fraction of what that purchase would have cost you in 1996. That's when you finally play Super Mario 64 - and you end up having as much fun with SM64 in 2000, as you might have back when N64 and its weird-ass controller and oddball games were prohibitively expensive for you, or alien to you, back in 1996.
Suddenly, you fully see the appeal and potential of 3D gaming, and you're ready to see what the future holds. And though your opportunity to play Super Mario 64 didn't come until years after the game debuted, you hardly think less of the game for it - maybe it even made its mark as one of your favorites, because as it turned out, so much of what made SM64 special did not fade with time.
That could be you, too.)
