Alyx Vance


 * Alyx's face and body were based on Jamil Giovanni Mullen, an American actress and television host.
 * Mullen spent several days in a motion capture studio recording running, jumping, and combat animations, which were used as the starting point for Alyx's animation library.


 * Actress Merle Dandridge voices Alyx. According to Valve's Bill Van Buren, she was chosen among the last five over more than one hundred actors auditioning for the part. The team wanted "someone with a beautiful voice, who could be charming, very feminine, and warmly intimate, but could then go into intense circumstances and be a strong, confident, and believable action character.


 * "Alyx" is a very rare feminine variant of "Alex", the short form of "Alexander" / "Alexandra",which is from "Alexandros", "defender of men" in Greek. Being intended or not, it fits the character very well. "Vance" is an English surname meaning "dweller by a fen, marsh", derived from the Old English "fenn".


 * A study found in Raising the Bar and named "I.A. Latham", simply referred to as "female protagonist", likely refers to a very early version of Alyx (being "protagonist" and not "antagonist"), where she was to wear leather straps and probably a breathing mask with a single "eye", recycled in the Combine Assassin. The outfit could be some sort of HEV Suit.


 * In the early stages of production, Eli and Alyx Vance had no relation, and she was the daughter of Captain Vance, leader of the Conscripts. Therefore she was not half Asian/half African-American, but Caucasian.


 * She had also a slightly different appearance: red hair (she still has streaks of red), a green jacket with a white fur collar and a blue-green bodysuit. It consists of her first known model, as seen in the playable Half-Life 2 Beta game files (only as its textures and a screenshot used in the E3 2003 video "Psyche"; the model used in the Half-Life 2 Beta is almost identical to the retail one), the first Half-Life 2 trailer, Raising the Bar, and several pre-release screenshots set in Kleiner's Lab. Late in the development process, the team agreed on the fact that she was not very different from other video game heroines, and they redesigned her whole appearance except the head in a very short time, based on sketches by Dhabih Eng. During several design meetings, the team considered giving her braces or glasses, along with making her more of a tinkering mechanic. In the end, the team ended up with an attractive young woman without being over the top like many female video game characters.


 * Early concept art depicts her with a socket wrench that she could have probably used as a basic weapon, in the vein of the crowbar for Gordon or the pipe wrench for Shephard.[4] It is however unknown if she is portrayed with it only for aesthetic reasons or if it actually was to be scripted, as no information is given about the picture. However it is the vein of the early concept of her being a tinkering mechanic, and her model still has sockets attached to the belt.


 * In her playable Half-Life 2 Beta model, similar to the final one, her panties are red instead of purple.


 * Alyx was to own a female pet alien named "Skitch".


 * At one point of the game's development, Alyx and Skitch were to be first met at the start of the Air Exchangechapter, where Gordon was to crash with his train at a nearby depot. They were to be attacked by "tripods" and "Combine Elite".


 * As seen on a board at Valve's seen in early 2004 where it is listed as a cut item, a love scene between Alyx and Gordon was at some point to be featured in Half-Life 2.
 * Very early Alyx sound files can be found in the folder "\temp\alyx" in the playable Half-Life 2 Beta files (made by other actress than Merle Dandridge):
 * One gives some information about a prototype of Half-Life 2's final Citadel scene. Alyx can be heard saying "Let go of me, you bitch!", referring to Helena Mossman (as confirmed in the concept art below), and also lectures the Consul about him being "just another cog in the Combine machinery".
 * Other sound files relate to the Skyscraper chapter, where she is wounded after the plane crash and asks Gordon to find her father, Captain Vance, in his headquarters near the city's inner gates.
 * A sound file also mentions she was to bring Gordon to her place at some point during the game.
 * Another sound file reveals that Eli was to explain to Gordon at Black Mesa East that after the Resonance Cascade he found Alyx alone with her mother's wedding ring in her hand, suggesting the jewel carried by Alyx was originally a ring instead of a necklace, and that Alyx does not remember anything about that day. While Eli still wears his wedding ring in the final game, no ring can be found in Alyx's model, and no reference to that is ever made.
 * In the WC mappack maps, the Alyx's model appears often. It was used for measurements, lightning tests and placeholders (Odell's model also alternatively fills this role).
 * As seen in the first Episode Two teaser released with Episode One, at the very start of the game Alyx was to be hanging to the twisted barrier of the partially collapsed train bridge (at that point all concrete), on the brink of falling in the canyon below, calling for Gordon, instead of safely being out of the train as seen in the final game. David Speyrer revealed she was to fall right after, thus being wounded differently than in the final game. He stated there were a lot of issues with that early sequence, the worst being that Alyx falling as a result of the train crash did not create any interesting tension between the player and the Hunter as an adversary. He added that testers mashed the Use key to try and figure out how to catch her before she falls, and then they go down below, see her unconscious and really want to help her, realizing there was nothing to do but wait for the Vortigaunt. Speyrer felt that the sequence they eventually created with the Hunter was much more effective, as the player knew very clearly that Gordon was trapped and immobile, and simply had to watch helplessly as the enemy punctured Alyx.
 * Originally there was talks about an expansion pack featuring Alyx as a playable character (just prior to the release of Half-Life 2) however this never came to pass and not much on the project has been talked about.