Chapter 3: Is Or Will Be - Half-Life: Alyx Guide - IGN (2024)

Welcome to the Chapter 3: Is Or Will Be section of the IGN Half-Life: Alyx wiki guide. You just cleared the quarantine zone and are en route to rescue your father, Eli, from the Combine.

You'll begin the mission in a hallway filled with sewer pipes. Move through the hallway and stop at the first yellow crate you see on your right. Open the latch with either hand and pick up one pistol clip. In the next room, you’ll see a whole bunch of armored headcrabs fenced in with a dead Combine in a hazmat suit.

On the far side of the room, pick up two pistol clips on the operating tables. Shoot the lock on the nearby door, kill the armored headcrabs inside of the fenced enclosure, and pick up a battery laying on the ground next to the hazmat suit corpse.

Use the battery to open the door, then travel into the next area. Detour off of the bridge to the right, then go underneath it to find a Resin. Back on the main path, travel up a staircase and find a hanging zombie corpse with a shotgun. Before you leap off the stairwell, pick up the two pistol ammo clips hidden to your left and right.

The next section is tricky. You have to jump down to the rotary that’s keeping the zombie strung up in the air, and you have to pull out a white bar that’s got the rotary locked in place. After you pull it out, the zombie will begin to descend. What you want to do here is get the rotary in the position you want it, then re-insert the white bar to lock the zombie in place once again so you can grab the shotgun.

The tricky part is that headcrab zombies will barrel down on you from all sides, crashing through the walls before you can get the shotgun if you take your sweet time. If the dead zombie with the shotgun falls too far into the hole in the floor, you won’t be able to grab the shotgun, and you’ll have to reel the zombie back in, making this a tightrope act. Of course, the other zombies will crash through the walls anyway; it’s much harder to kill each of them if you only have your pistol.

Once you’ve killed everything that stands in your way, explore the openings where walls previously stood. One of the three openings contains a headcrab guarding a Resin, another one contains barnacles, and the third will take you back onto the critical path.

Continue killing zombies and headcrabs until you find yourself in an open hallway with several side-rooms and corridors. Turn right on your first turn, and you’ll see a ladder and a yellow crate. Open the crate with the latch to get at the loot inside, then take another right to find a weapon upgrading station and a health station. Another headcrab will jump out, shoot it, and take the pistol clip sitting on the cardboard box behind it. Find another Resin sitting on a ledge across the room.

In one of the nearby grates is the grub that goes to the health station. There’s a pipe with an ammo box nearby. Break that open to find a pistol clip.

The weapon upgrading station puzzle should look like this:

If you travel up the ladder, you’ll find a couple of headcrabs, some shotgun shells, two pistol clips (one inside of an ammo box, one outside) and a Resin. Head back out to the main corridor and continue on down the hallway. Turn right once again to find a passage with a Resin and a pistol clip on the ground inside of it.

Continue down the passage until you find some stairs. Behind the stairs is an ammo box. There’s also ammo lined up along the railing to your left, and if you turn all the way around, you’ll find a Resin on the floor in the corner. Before you enter the next corridor, at the top of the stairwell, turn to your right and collect a Resin on the opposite ledge. As you move through the next corridor, you’ll find an oil canister. Look to your immediate right for a Resin and a pistol clip. Throw the oil canister down the hallway and shoot it to blow up the headcrab zombie and armored headcrab zombie.

You’ll walk up to an enclosure with several shields blocking the way, and a pile of armored headcrab corpses. Surprise! One of them is still alive, so shoot it and keep moving.

Pull out your Multi-Tool and touch it against the sensor on the right-hand wall. Follow the powerlines slightly to the left, then hit the “trigger” button to twist the conduit junction and shut off the shield immediately in front of you.

Move to the next room and do exactly the same thing again, this time following the powerline up from a socket near the ground and up slightly to the right. Once the next shield is lifted, you’ll move into a room with a closed garage door. Lift it up with both hands to reveal the passage to the next area.

Shoot the zombie that wakes up immediately in front of you, then leap off the ledge into the dark abyss below. Just kidding, it isn’t really that much of an abyss. It sure is dark though, which is why you’ll want to loot the corpse that has a flashlight hanging off of it. As you move forward, pay attention to the right-hand side of the wall, which has a couple of shotgun shells located on it.

Grab a few more shells behind the corpse, then grab the flashlight off of it. Physically attach the flashlight to your non-dominant hand, where it will sit from now on. You won’t be able to manually turn your flashlight on or off, but it will come on automatically when you’re moving through dark areas, for example, this one.

Turn around and embrace for a battle with about four toxic headcrabs. They’re fast and take a ton of damage before dying - and they blend in terrifyingly well with the dark - so this is a great time to whip out your shotgun and use those last-resort rounds you may have been collecting.

Move on through the dark tunnel and up the first flight of stairs to your right. Once you get up that flight, keep moving through a room that has several fans in it. You’ll move past a fenced area with a Resin on a shelf. Walk back out of the fenced area and look up and to your left to find another Resin placed on top of one of the large computer consoles in the room.

Continue on to the end of the room and shoot the lock on the door. Use your Multi-Tool to switch off the shield in front of you, then backtrack through where you came in, also returning the other shields to their original states.

You’ll run into a handful of about six new headcrabs this time, and they might overwhelm if you aren’t expecting them to leap out at you. Back up slowly, put obstacles in their path, and pick them off as they leap down the corridor to you. Now take a right immediately at the point where Russell previously told you it was “too dark” to continue.

Continue in this direction with your new flashlight and you’ll find a room full of explosives. Turn left and pick up the ammo on the table. Then turn right and get the Resin from behind the fence. You’ll need to whip it toward you and let it roll beneath the fence, then pick it up.

Shoot the barnacles, keep moving, and you’ll find more ammo on a walkway above you as well as inside of an ammo crate to your right. It’s incredibly difficult to see without the use of your flashlight in this part, so we don’t blame you for missing these items. There’s also a Resin beneath a red crate nearby.

Continue to the end of the corridor, then turn around (turn left) where the fence meets the health station on the far wall, near the doorway. At the end of the enclosure, you’ll find the grub laying comfortably on the floor next to an empty drum.

Leap over the fence in the next room and pick up the pistol clip on the table next to the two oil canisters. Those canisters will come in handy as explosive weapons in a few moments, as multiple zombies and headcrabs are about to key in on your position. Move through the passage slightly and take a left (or right) into a fenced enclosure with several rounds, a Resin, and another oil canister.

Make your way up the stairway on the far side of the passage, and you’ll find a terrace with more ammo, oil canisters, and jump-scarey zombies. Be careful not to blow yourself up with the oil canisters in this area, since this is a tight space with a lot happening at once. A good strategy is to back up and let enemies come to you in a single-file line down the stairway, so you can pick them off one-by-one.

Continue through the passage until you come to a boarded up doorway with a drum in front of it. Push the drum aside and peel the boards away, and continue onward.

After a loading screen, you’ll find yourself in another boarded room with a dead Combine laying just behind it. There’s nothing special here, so you can move on and mantle over the nearby fence.

You’ll find yourself in a packed corridor with a couple of rows of lockers, corpses, and your first run-in with a manhack, a flying drone with chainsaws attached. Shoot it down and go perusing through the lockers to your right for a Resin.

In the next area, you’ll see a health station, a locked door, and a stairwell that leads down and to the right. Ignore the stairs at the moment and unlock the door with your Multi-Tool. Doing so requires you to solve a puzzle in which you have to match up the colors of different nodes around a sphere. It’s randomized each time, but you’re shown which nodes are which color before you begin linking them together. Just memorize the colors before you begin, or use the process of elimination to do your best guesswork.

If you fail the puzzle, it simply resets and you can try as many times as you’d like. Once you’re inside the room, open the lockers and find a Resin. There’s also a grub laying around, and some ammo. Finally, head out of the room and take a direct left into the storage closet. Another pistol clip is waiting for you inside.

Now you can mantle over the railing and continue onward. You’ll find a hanged Combine, Alyx will make a shocked comment, and you’ll find some Resin on the ground nearby. And, of course, a whole bunch of barnacles to take out. Pick up the oil canister nearby and throw it at the barnacles closest to the center of the cluster to take out multiple barnacles at once.

Otherwise, shoot them and take anything they drop. There is also at least one pistol clip laying around on the floor as you make your way through this corridor. You’ll reach a turning point pretty soon. Take a right into a detour where you’ll find several corpses (one is slung over a barrel), ammo clips and a Resin on a table closest to the far wall at the top of some stairs.

Continue moving down the critical path and you’ll run afoul of a few more manhacks that jump out from behind the fence. Shoot them down and make a u-turn around the fence to a find a Resin in one of the pipes.

Continue through the alleyway until you find a Resin sitting to the left of a staircase. Collect it, travel up the staircase, and you’ll find yourself face-to-face with some headcrab zombies. Take a detour to the left and find a Resin next to a dumpster, then head back on track. You’ll find ammo on a ledge to your left, and inside of the building as well. You can use the nearby oil canister to make quick work of the zombies and headcrabs that pop up out of nowhere as you near the patio of the building to your right.

You’ll find a boarded up door that leads into a small shed. Go inside and grab the Resin, then return back to the yard. You’ll find a platform nearby that you need to mantle up, and a door just ahead of it. You can find a Resin laying on the platform.

Return to the patio with the stairs leading up it. Walk up the stairs to the door, and you’ll find more manhacks trapped behind a fenced gate. Shoot them, and remove the pipe that’s blocking the door. Pull the wheel off of the railing and place it onto the socket that controls the door. Open the door with the wheel, and teleport inside.

Move through the factory until you find yourself at a staircase that leads into a dark tunnel. Take exceptional care to not shoot any explosives in this area, because you will die instantly if anything blows up. But do shoot the barnacles, because they’re a nuisance. Just be careful.

Carefully move through the long corridor, making sure not to set off any explosives or get trapped in a barnacle's maw. You will eventually come to a closed garage door with another wheel slot. Take a left down the stair steps and shoot the lock on the door. The tricky part of this will be angling your shot as to avoid hitting the explosives at the other side of the door. Once the lock is off, push the door forward and knock the explosive cans over. You can ignore these.

You'll see a wheel hanging on a barnacle tendril through a fence, and a long detour around the fence to get to it. The bad news is that there are quite a few zombies, barnacles, and inconveniently placed gas tanks barring your way around to the other side. The good news is that you can find ammo pickups aplenty. There are at least a handful of Resins in this section as well.

There are at least six Resins in this area. Because it's so dark in the room, describing all their relative locations is nearly impossible, but the first two Resins are immediately below and above the piping as you take your first right turn into the abyss. Check the following screenshots for Resin locations:

As you make your way deeper into the labyrinth of old generators and piping, you'll eventually turn the corner to find a lone barnacle, an oil canister, and a zombie hurdling toward you. You need to immediately kill the barnacle, or it will cause the oil canister to explode and turn the room into a crater. Once the barnacle is dead, quickly dispatch the zombie before it can get its hands around the oil canister.

Kill the barnacle ahead of you, grab the wheel, and make use of the nearby medical station if you need to. Take a detour in the next room into a small storage closet which contains the grub for the medical station. Just across from the storage closet is a door with a lock that you need to shoot to get to the next area. Make sure that you still have the wheel with you!

Carry the wheel up the stairs to the left and stick it into the wheel slot next to the garage door. Teleport to the other side, move up the stairs and out into open sunlight once more. Free at last? Not quite. Keep moving, and you'll find a zombie corpse with a Resin.

Cross the bridge and enter the next tunnel. You'll come upon a room with some ammo, a Combine fabricator (upgrade station), and another Resin near a vent shaft. Here's the correct placement for the upgrade station puzzle:

When you're ready, jump down past the vents onto the floor below and initiate combat with your first Combine soldier. Make short work of them and be sure to grab the pistol rounds on the shelf to your right. There's a pre-loaded medical station just ahead of you. To the right of the medical station is another pistol clip.

Walk out into the trainyard to find some Combine soldiers having a standoff with a few headcrab zombies behind a passing train. There's nothing you can do until the train passes, so grab the two fresh pistol clips on a nearby barrel. You'll immediately find yourself in a firefight with multiple Combine soldiers after the train passes, so take cover and pick them off one-by-one.

Loot the corpses for ammo, then pry the train car doors and continue onward to progress forward. Note that more Combine soldiers will attempt to rush and possibly flank you once you're in the train car, so you'll need to be extra careful in this section and keep track of both entrances. The safest thing to do if you are flanked is immediately turn around and kill the Combine soldier that flanks behind you, so that you can use the entrance as cover. There are multiple pistol clips inside of the train car.

Continue down the train tracks and head up onto the platform where you'll find a pre-loaded medical station. Turn around and take the shotgun shells from the ammo crate, then detour into the enclosure for a pistol clip and a resin. Activate the sensor to rewire the power conduit. For this puzzle, you'll want to make sure that the power line is connecting to both modules on the shield door. It's as simple as wiring the conduit like this:

Next, head on down to the end of the train tracks where you'll find a lever, a junction, and a train checkpoint office. Head into the office, then head into the back room to find a resin on a shelf. Turn to your right and lift up the metal door on the far side of the wall to reveal a battery.

Head back to the main room of the office and take a right through the next door. Fight through the zombies in the dark room, and open the containment unit furthest to your left to find a wheel-shaped grub container. As you make your way back through the door, when you're in the supply closet, take an immediate left and find a Resin beside a cardboard box.

Head back into the main room of the office with the battery and grub container in hand. Touch your Multi-Tool to the sensor on the bottom left side of the large terminal against the window. It'll activate a puzzle like the ones you're used to solving for Combine fabricators. Here's the solution to it:

Once you've done that, pull the red handle on the machine to open up a slot where you'll insert the battery. Once that's done, you'll see four more red levers. Pull the second one to the left and insert the grub container wheel into the empty slot.

Now individually pull (from left to right) each of the four levers and arrange each wheel so that the laser is shooting from the left side of the terminal to the right side, completing the circuit. Another red lever will appear on the right side of the terminal. Pull it, and watch the scene play out.

Oops! Looks like that didn't work. When Russell tells you that you need to find another way to stop the train, go back to the lever you saw earlier outside, on the train tracks, and pull it to stop the oncoming train. There's also a pistol clip on top of a nearby power closet.

Once the train crashes, approach the sensor next to the carriage door and apply your Multi-Tool to it, opening the compartment. Teleport inside, then follow the passage through the collapsed wreckage until you find Eli, hanging by a thread.

He'll reach his hand out to you, but do not jump over the ledge, otherwise you'll fall and die, setting you back to the closest save point. Eli will fall, and your Vortigaunt pal from earlier will lift him back to safety, then create a platform for you to teleport onto.

Move to the next door and you'll find an open container with a Resin and some ammo. Complete the door puzzle and travel down the passage, jumping over the railings at the end. Congratulations! You're onto Chapter 4: Superweapon.