Half-Life 2's Alyx was almost Microsoft's voice assistant

Windows Phone 8.1's personal assistant is set to arrive on devices in the UK within "weeks", but Microsoft wasn't always certain that Cortana was the name to go with.

Marcus Ash, Microsoft's Group Program Manager for Cortana, took to Twitter to reveal that one "early front runner" was Alyx.

As many of you already know, Alyx Vance is the name of Gordon Freeman's close ally in Half-Life 2 - a PC title considered to be one of the best FPS games of all time.

But with Halo being a franchise we associate more closely with Microsoft, we can see why it pulled out a character from that series instead.