Half-Life: Alyx Team At Valve Includes Firewatch Devs

Just after the official reveal of Half-Life: Alyx, the upcoming game in the series following a 12-year hiatus, games journalist Geoff Keighley released a new video in his Final Hours series focusing on its development. During this extended look at the new VR game, he spoke with Valve developers Robin Walker, David Speyrer, and Dario Casali to learn the inside story of the making of the next Half-Life game and what's been going at Valve Software. As the developers spoke more about the making of Half-Life: Alyx, it was revealed that Firewatch developers at Campo Santo had been brought on to work on the game as well.

What's interesting about this news is that in the days leading up to the reveal of Half-Life: Alyx, Campo Santo developers updated their social media and the official site to remove mentions of their follow-up to Firewatch, In The Valley Of Gods. Revealed back in 2017, the next game from Campo Santo would have been in a similar style to Firewatch, except that it was set in 1920s Egypt, and would follow the story of a young filmmaker exploring ancient ruins. The reveal trailer showed a lot of promise, and it featured a similar art-style from their previous game, blending cartoon-like visuals and colors with more realistic characters and a mature story. In April 2018, Valve acquired Campo Santo, and since then, things have been quiet in regards to their next game.

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As of this time, the fate of In The Valley Of Gods hasn't been revealed, though the fact that developers removed mentions of the game on their official site and social media is usually not a good sign. Campo Santo devs Claire Hummel and Olly Moss--who created the iconic art for Firewatch--have confirmed they're working on the game on social media. In an interesting note, however, Claire Hummel's Twitter profile notes that she is working on multiple projects at Valve. Whether that means other games from Valve's library are getting new entries, or if In The Valley of Gods is still in the works, still remains to be seen.

With all that said, it is interesting to learn that Campo Santo will be offering up their creative talents to the Half-Life universe, especially for the first game in over 12 years. As a VR game, Half-Life: Alyx leans further on the franchise's level of immersion and in-the-moment storytelling, which could make for an exciting return for the series. During the interview with Geoff Keighley, Valve developer David Speyrer stated Half-Life's style and presentation made it the right game to bring to VR.

"We looked at Half-Life and the DNA of that product, and we saw that VR could enhance many of the elements," said the developer. "Half-Life is about this cadence of story, combat, and puzzles, exploration, and interactions--and they seemed to be enhanced and reinvented in interesting ways by VR."

For more, check out our roundup of everything we know about Half-Life: Alyx.