Modding communities continue to be some of the greatest forces combining popular video game franchises, and this Half-Life: Alyx fan exemplifies this with an interesting BioShock mod. The project is called Return to Rapture, and it's an intriguing addition to the creative Half-Life modding community.
Return to Rapture combines Half-Life: Alyx with BioShock by taking one of the most powerful antagonistic forces in the Half-Life universe, the Combine, and having it set its sights on BioShock's city of Rapture. Half-Life: Alyx is a VR experience where players guide the titular character Alyx to steal an incredibly powerful weapon that the Combine owns, the Combine being a sinister conglomeration that wants to absorb all of the multiverse into itself.
In Return to Rapture, the Combine has pinpointed the location of Rapture, BioShock's underwater city that served as the primary setting in the series' first two games. The mod's creator, Wim Buytaert, posted the mod to the Steam Workshop with the taglines "No gods or kings, only Alyx" and "Where the great will not be constrained by the small." That second tagline is in reference to the libertarian ideals of Rapture, while the first tagline is obviously in reference to Alyx herself.
The mod's description paints Andrew Ryan, founder of Rapture, as supposedly holding a suitcase with the key to ADAM (a genetics-manipulating chemical) and BioShock's iconic plasmids (serums that can mutate "superpowers" into the ingestor's genetic code). In the mod, the Combine wants access to these, so Alyx has to go in and get it first, similar to the original set-up of Half-Life Alyx. The structure of the game is the same, but the "flavor" is what's different, plus the incorporation of another popular sci-fi franchise.
The mod creator provided their own voice as original voiceover to guide the player through the events of Return to Rapture. Also, BioShock's Vita-Chambers are present and repurposed as save points for Alyx. The mod is still pretty short, running just under half an hour, but the creator may develop the mod later.
Rumors that BioShock 4 will be in a new setting other than Rapture (or Columbia) mean that players may not get to return to Rapture outside of replaying BioShock 1 and 2. Of course, replaying old favorites can still be fun, but as usual, the modding community makes a big effort in keeping franchises fresh and providing new spins on old content.
Half-Life: Alyx is available for PC.
Source: Steam Workshop