On Half-Life: Alyx being sold for VR:
Valve themselves stated that they utilize the entries in Half-Life to assist the industry in pushing the limitations of current and upcoming technology; and this can be clearly seen in all their main entries. Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Half-Life: Alyx each have their 'gimmicks' that they rely heavily on. Arguing that the game would not be much without VR is not much of an argument at all; as you are correct - the way HL:A is designed and paced is suited best for a VR experience. The entire game is meant to be slowly gone through while you interact with anything and everything you can get your grubby virtual mitts on. Taking away the VR-aspect leaves just a slow-paced game that does not have the most engaging combat - because when you're in VR, that combat does feel real and exciting, but outside of it you're wanting to backwards hop across the map at warp speeds, ramming the nearest physics object into whatever enemy you come across as if you are Gordon Freeman. VR isn't there (yet).
If you cannot afford VR, which I myself cannot, there are other options. I took a lot of joy in just watching a no-commentary run of the game. If you want to play it instead of watching it, the Half-Life modding community is always on point, and with HL:A it is not any different. There is at least one if not several non-VR versions of HL:A currently in the works.
On the Overhaul of the OTA:
So the Soldiers can chat among themselves, what about it? They're not robots, and will never be unless their brains were entirely swapped out for literal computers. Just because they can emote the most basic emotions there are does not mean they are not as ruthless as ever - clearly they are not, as there is plenty of first-hand evidence that can be played through. They are aggressive, well-armed, and inspire fear when you look at them at the beginning of the game.
Let us also remember that these soldiers are visually far different from those we are so familiar with. Are they really the exact same? Are these individuals as-far in the transhumanization process as the other ones? We know there are different variants of the traditional OTA soldier, so why can we not stretch that further? Why should we limit ourselves to the strictest definition possible?
On The Return of Eli Vance:
I do not see it as some sort of insult to Robert Guillaume that Valve brought back Eli Vance at the very end of HL:A. Why would it be, as are we not able to differentiate between Eli and Robert? They are very much two distinct ideas that can be separated due to the fact that the former is a character in a fictional video game series and the latter was a real man who lived his own life very much apart from Eli's career as a scientist at Black Mesa and later a senior figure in the resistance against an inter-dimensional empire. It's not as if they are exhuming his body and puppeting it around - they took a character from their story, made James Moses Black the new voice actor for him, and wrote a very decent explanation as to how he is back. It's worth pointing out that James objectively did well in his role, and Eli - for the few moments we see and hear of him - is held true to how he was written in HL:2 and its subsequent episodes.
If you see it as more of a problem that Eli was brought back to life, that is not what happened. The G-Man plucked !pastAlyx, placed her into the moment where Eli would have been killed by the Advisor, and allowed her to interfere with The Russells. You can think of it like a divergence from the timeline we knew, making a new branch where Eli never died; as opposed to them taking Eli's cadaver and performing some ritual with the Vortessence or with whatever else G-Man has under his sleeves. Also, it isn't without its drawbacks. Alyx, very much a crucial piece of the both the resistance's leadership and its operations, has been stored away by the G-Man for who knows what.