'Half-Life: Alyx' update adds three hours of developer commentary

If you were looking for an excuse to replay the excellent Half-Life: Alyx, now you have one. Valve has added more than three hours of developer audio commentary to the VR title, detailing nearly every aspect of its creation. To begin listening to the audio tracks, you’ll need to start a new game and select the “Developer Commentary” option before diving back into the world of City 17.

As you play your way through the game, you’ll encounter floating headphone icons strewn across the environment. To listen to a particular commentary track, all you need to do is pick up the cans and place them on Alyx’s head. In all, you’ll encounter 147 audio clips as you play through the game. Each one is in English, but you can follow along with subtitles in 10 other languages, including Chinese, French, German, Korean, Japanese and Russian.

Including audio commentaries in its titles is something of a long tradition for Valve that dates back to Half-Life 2: Lost Coast’s release in 2004. The global pandemic complicated making a developer commentary for Half-Life: Alyx, as much of the team that worked on the game had to record their voiceovers “in closets and blanket forts.” Valve strongly recommends you play the game to completion before you start listening to the commentary; some of the tracks include significant story spoilers.