Acclaimed VR shooter Half Life Alyx just got some new DLC, but from a modder who successfully made the first portion of 2K’s BioShock into a playable experience.
Its footage shows an impressively recreated Rapture using the original game’s assets, tweaked for use with Alyx‘s Source 2 Engine. It’s worth noting the entire world was also scaled for VR in a true-to-form atmosphere. This means VR players can walk and explore a life-sized Rapture for the first time in their headsets.
Called Return to Rapture, the mod is also filled with Combine enemies for players to engage in gunfights with. There is also some dialogue between Alyx and Russell taken straight from the main game, but repurposed for the mod’s own story. The modder has even stepped in with some additional voice lines as part of an original story that makes use of BioShock‘s setting with Alyx Vance’s library of dialogue.
Making the Half Life Alyx mod more intricate is its use of BioShock‘s environment to hide ammo and other goodies for survival. Players start off with their arsenal of weapons and continue down towards the beginning of its 2007 game. It’s all there, from the sinking airliner in the water to Andrew Ryan’s bronze visage staring at players in the lighthouse. Unlike the original game’s jaw-dropping descent into aquatic hell, players in Half Life Alyx go through a trimmed-down trip in the bathysphere. But it makes up for it by giving VR users an underwater elevator sequence with Andrew Ryan’s nostalgic introduction speech intact.
Players dying in the Return to Rapture mod will even spawn in the Vita Chambers in VR. Resin is also available for weapon upgrades, suggesting the level is big enough to include progression at Gatherer’s Garden. In true BioShock fashion, players can be detected with surveillance systems and be alerted to some pretty challenging Combine soldiers. They can also make use of Rapture’s environment for cover, coordinated flanking and grenade lobs with their sophisticated AI. Making the mod more suspenseful are the inclusion of headcrabs and zombies from the Half-Life Alyx campaign.
The Rapture mod adds another iconic set piece into Half Life Alyx‘s Workshop content for free now. Modders have taken full advantage of its open source tools to also build fully-explorable/playable campaigns around GoldenEye 007‘s Dam, Halo 3‘s space stations and even originally crafted levels using the game’s assets and architecture.
