>>297503075
I don't feel like it's significantly more scripted or railroads the player much more than 2 did, but it's been a while since I last played that.
>>297503097
I'm completely with you on the akimbo stuff, swapping hands, holsters, teleport jump, and lack of weaker enemies.
I don't think the lack of challenge/survival/coop modes and the presence of voice acting and cutscenes are a problem though if you're thinking of this as a Half-Life game in VR. I wouldn't ignore workshop modding either for the same reason, since I don't feel like there's much reason to replay any of the Half-Life games without mods.
I also don't think you're giving Alyx enough credit for the story, atmosphere, or general level of polish either, but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree there. It feels more like an actual game than most of the other stuff we've gotten recently, and I think it's one of the best VR games we've got so far. That's not to say that there's not room for improvement though.
If you want something that's pushing more boundaries though, give Boneworks a shot if you haven't yet. [spoiler]I'll be giving Arizona Sunshine a shot soon since it apparently still holds up okay.[/spoiler]
>>297503331
Yeah, but it's not like Half-Life 2 was entirely free of that stuff either, and even if you go back to Half-Life 1, it was pushing plot way harder and trying to be more "cinematic" than other FPS games at the time. I think going further in that direction is just Valve's trend over time, and I think it's part of why they didn't know what to do with Half-Life until now.
>>297503550
I feel like the lack of vent crawling is because it's a VR game and they didn't want to work around people standing up in the middle of the vents or people playing in seated mode.
As far as open locations go, weren't most of the really big ones in HL2 part of the vehicle sections? I feel Alyx isn't far off what you'd see in HL1, and that's completely intentional.