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The subject of this article is featured in the new Half-Life: Alyx; therefore, its content is subject to change as more information about it is added.

 
"Well Russ, it's official. There is nothing left of your gun in this gun. This is just... this is my gun. "
―Alyx to Russell after fully upgrading the pistol[src]
 

Alyx Vance's trademark weapon in the Half-Life franchise is colloquially referred to as Alyx's Gun. It is introduced as an unobtainable custom gun in Half-Life 2 and its episodes. It is later featured in Half-Life: Alyx as a usable weapon initially called Pistol, starting in the form of a traditional pistol that can be upgraded throughout the game, eventually turning into the weapon Alyx uses in Half-Life 2.

Overview[]

Ep1 c17 02a0011

Alyx using her gun against Zombies and Overwatch Soldiers in the hospital.

Alyx's Gun is an average sized, easily concealed pistol with a 30-round magazine housed in the grip, and is capable of both semi-automatic (seen in Half-Life 2) and automatic fire (seen in Episode One).

Though it is unknown what kind of ammunition it fires, it does roughly the same amount of damage as the USP Match.

In Half Life 2 and its episodes, Alyx is the only NPC ever observed using this weapon, and the player never acquires it in normal gameplay. Alyx appears to have unlimited ammunition for this weapon, possibly due to her being a NPC. When she is not using it, she either places it in her back pocket (Half life 2) or inside her jacket (episodes).

In Half-Life: Alyx, Alyx acquires the gun in its initial form (Para-Ordnance LDA) from Russell. When initially obtaining the weapon from Russell, he remains adamant that the gun is his, and has only been loaned to Alyx for the heist. After upgrading the weapon twice, Alyx states that it should be called "our gun" and upon receiving all 4 upgrades, she declares to Russell that she has modified it enough to warrant calling it her gun, which Russell finds reasonable.

Tactics[]

  • In Half-Life 2 and its episodes:
    • During the first two chapters of Episode One and a brief period in Episode Two, Freeman only has the Gravity Gun and has to rely on Alyx to dispatch enemies, depending on the availability of physics objects to use as ammunition. Alyx is a fairly good shot, but she must not be left to deal with with too many enemies by herself, as she can be overwhelmed and killed.
    • In Half-Life 2, Alyx's Gun has the advantage of being automatic and having high accuracy (even better than the MP7 or the OSIPR when used by Rebels); at longer ranges Alyx has little trouble to handle most enemies and rarely gets killed due to most enemies having poor accuracy combined with her own health regeneration.
      • On the downside, it has low damage, a problem can be when engaging a high health enemy or enemies who are in groups, in fact the firepower is quite insufficient at closer ranges and enemies armed with weapons like the shotgun or the MP7 can sometimes outgun her weapons especially if they are in pair. Alyx often requires assistance from other allies; protecting her is necessary.
  • In Half-Life: Alyx:
    • The player can keep an eye on how many bullets are left in the magazine from an LED strip indicator on the side of the grip. As is common with guns in the real world, the magazine can be empty while there is still a bullet in the chamber: the player can eject the magazine and load a new magazine at this point and continue firing the gun without having to slide the pistol.
    • With the bullet reservoir upgrade, in some cases the player may need to reload twice, ejecting the empty magazine in between, in order to have the full 20+1 bullets.
    • Though this is unlikely to happen in game modes other than Story and Easy, the player can store a maximum of 100 magazines (1000 bullets) in their backpack: the game does not register any magazine stored beyond that.
    • Once the burst fire upgrade is applied, some enemies can be killed with a quick trigger pull, at the cost of using up more bullets.
    • The reflex sight, as the first and lowest cost upgrade, is extremely helpful in practicing aim, as it also has a targeting dot, though this may require more time on the player's part than finding enough resin to acquire the laser sight.

Related achievements[]

Half-Life: Alyx[]

Achievement Up in Arms
Up in Arms
Install your first pistol upgrade.

Upgrades[]

In Half Life: Alyx, the Pistol has 4 upgrades from its original form received from Russell:

  • Reflex Sight: costs 10 Resin. Adds a yellow holographic sight that is projected above the barrel. Weak points of enemies are highlighted when viewed through the sight.
  • Burst Fire: costs 20 Resin. Adds a togglable three-round burst mode. Double-tapping the magazine release button switches between single and burst-fire modes.
  • Bullet Reservoir: costs 30 Resin. Adds a reservoir off the side of the weapon that holds an additional 10 bullets. When inserting a magazine into the weapon when empty, the reservoir will draw the bullets into the gun and out of the magazine, holding up to a maximum of 10. The then-empty magazine can then be replaced with a full one, resulting in an effective 20 rounds of available ammunition in the weapon.
  • Laser Sight: costs 35 Resin. Adds a red laser that is projected off the side of the weapon.

Trivia[]

  • In Episode One and Episode Two, Alyx's gun must be manually picked up by pressing "USE" key; walking over it will not work.
  • When the player spawns a Civil Protection with Alyx's gun, the gun won't inflict damage, and there is no sound when they fire it. However if player spawns a Resistance member with one, they do inflict damage, but only female rebels can fire the gun in automatic mode. When used by male rebels, they fire the gun in semi-automatic mode and will run away when they approach Headcrabs and Zombies as if they were unarmed (Citizens have "fear" relationships to zombies, and male citizens do not have strafing animations for pistols).
  • Alyx's Gun in Half-Life 2 doesn't have its own firing sound. Instead, it uses the firing sound of the USP Match. Each time Alyx fires her gun, the captions will read [Pistol Sound]. In Episode One and Two, Alyx's Gun has its own unique firing sound, which appears be more suppressed and silent. The subtitle will no longer appear when she fires it. If the player uses Alyx's Gun in Episode One and changes the firing mode to semi-automatic and fires it, one can hear a three round burst sound effect of the MP7 but it only shoots one bullet at a time.
  • When Alyx is aiming or shooting, her gun's magazine will go through her hand, likely because Alyx's Gun uses the same animations as the USP Match.
  • In the playable Half-Life 2 Beta as in the retail Half-Life 2, the weapon can be spawned and used by the player. The viewmodel is however missing and the weapon will improperly appear on the left of the screen as the worldmodel. Furthermore ammunition does not exist, although it can be overridden with the console code "sk_max_alyxgun #", which sets the maximum ammo. Default maximum amount is 150.
  • In the Half-Life 2 files, several texture files for HUD weapon icons can be found, most of which still containing the icons for almost all of the cut weapons. Alyx's Gun is among them, giving more clues about a possible original use by the player.
  • Closer look at the model's animations in the Source SDK show it can be converted to both a rifle and a submachine gun, having a retractable stock, front folding grip and extended barrel with a suppressor, never seen in-game.
  • During the elevator ride with Mossman in Black Mesa East, one of the Rebels working on the generators with the Vortigaunts is holding Alyx's Gun in his right hand.
  • In Half-Life 2, Alyx's Gun appears to be custom-made from parts that come from USP .45 and the PM-63 (with a possibility that an M1911 was used for the pistol grip).
    • Half-Life: Alyx indeed reveals that the gun's original appearance is a Sci-fi modified version of the Para-Ordnance LDA, an M1911 derivative.
  • The ammo's HUD icon is reused from the beta MP7's ammo icon.
  • The model for Alyx's Gun in Half-Life: Alyx is an asset recycled from development on the cancelled Half-Life 2: Episode Three.[1]

Gallery[]

Half-Life 2 and its Episodes[]

Half-Life: Alyx[]

List of appearances[]

References[]

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