I can’t stop rewatching the Half-Life: Alyx trailer, and it’s not just because it’s one of the more elegantly put-together teasers of recent years. It’s not just because it’s another Half-Life game. It’s not just because I’m scanning it for clues of what’s to come.
It’s because of the flow of the thing – and I guess that means the flow of the main character. Half-Life: Alyx takes the gravity gun and puts it on your hands. Ingenious! Even so, look at the handling here: pushing objects aside to get a better view, plucking doodads from distant guards, insouciantly flicking ammo clips into pistols and ramming them home.
Half-Life: Alyx Announcement Trailer Watch on YouTube
I have seen movements like this before, and they belong to magicians – the studied lack of care, the ease that comes through repetition, through mastery. To have a whole game built around this stuff is thrilling even before you think about Half-Life, about Alyx and Eli, about Rhys Darby, about slick gun micro-management that calls to mind brilliant oddities like Receiver.