Half-Life Alyx took almost four years to develop, of which Alyx Vance held the crowbar for about a year and a half; this iconic Half-Life melee weapon was eventually cut as testers were stuck with all manner of things while pretending to be Gordon Freeman, who is not the main character of Half-Life: the Alyx

conversation scenes were cut because playtesters were fidgety and impatient, and the introduction was fairly short. The problem with the crowbar became apparent when the tester got his hands on it, just as the conversation scene was cut short because the playtesters were fidgety and impatient, and the introduction was cut considerably short: Alix

The crowbar's problems became apparent when Kotaku's interview, Half-Life: Alyx programmer Robin Walker said that a major reason for cutting the crowbar was that it often got caught on things when players were walking around

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"Because of the lack of force feedback, players often had the crowbar out of sight. 'But you hook it on something. You hook it on a door as you're walking by.'

Valve tried several solutions to avoid the crowbar getting tangled in the scenery. They include turning off crowbar collisions when the crowbar is held at the player's side, and buzzing the controller with tactile feedback when it connects to something. Neither approach proved effective.

Also, the presence of a crowbar means that players assume it is a melee weapon. We have been beating up monsters, soldiers, and crates with crowbars for over 20 years. But Valve couldn't make melee combat work the way they liked it, so they decided to make Half-Life a shooter: Alyx is only a shooter.

There was another major reason for leaving Gordon Freeman's signature weapon out of Half-Life: players with a crowbar would simply assume that they were playing as Gordon Freeman, not as Alyx Vance. After playtesting, Valve would ask players to describe the story and events they experienced, but they would assume that they were playing as Freeman the whole time, and there was little Valve could do to change their minds: they would simply assume that they were playing as Freeman, and that they were playing as Freeman.

"Literally at the start of the game, no amount of telling them they weren't Gordon was going to help," Walker says.