Our research revealed that Alyx is too aimed in her design— aimed at the young videogame-playing men who are too genteel to slaver for the plebian oversized and impractically exposed tit or the common man’s leather-swaddled buttock, while still being susceptible to yammering on about whom they would acquiesce to bone.

Figure 1: The urbane male’s perspective.

The asian features, the measuredly tomboyish denim and jersey knit clothing, the de-fetishizing lack of glasses despite the technobabble words coming out of her un-glossed mouth, her faithful giant robot— it’s all designed to make the lonely sensitive boy say, “There’s a pretend woman I can unashamedly admit is to my taste. I will do so now on an internet forum.”

Alyx, to critical ladies in their mid-20s, is still fanservice— just to a different sort of fan. It’s her unending congeniality, mostly. That, and the plucky science girl routine, her pet-like convenience and utility, and probably even her “y”. She’s just too slick and attendant to Gordon for them to believe her as a character.

Figure 2: The uncompromising female’s perspective.

Conclusion: For maximum appeal to women, when Alyx says something unauthentic and pisses them off, causing them to take revenge by chucking paint cans and concrete blocks at her face, she should at least say “Ow.”

And as a plausibility footnote for the plot, the part in the beginning of Episode 1 with the van ride turns them right off as well, even though it is Dog-related. The eyes start rolling and the tongue starts clicking right after the first turn. That might have been some lingering Alyx hate, though.

But now I’m happy again; a little because you can get Half-Life 2: Episode 1 for a normal price, but mostly because there are no boats or dune buggies in it, just a lot of high-quality action. Not that I don’t like boats or dune buggies— well actually, dune buggies are pretty stupid no matter what. If you think about it, sand is just not that interesting. There aren’t any man-eating sharks or whale-wrestling squid in sand, and if you spray it at someone at high pressure, it actually hurts them really badly instead of being the one kinda funny part of their struggle for civil rights.

Anyway, the problem with those parts of Half-Life 2 was that they went on way too long. In fact, if you listen to Episode 1’s commentary, they’ll talk about how they wanted to make sure to avoid “fatigue”. They don’t explicitly say they’re sorry about the dune buggy and its twin messages of boredom and racial intimidation, but it’s only the first episode. We’ll see.