It would take a lot of effort, but I'm sure a texture and sound project dedicated to desaturating and tweaking the hues and ambience of Xen could do enough of the trick. Someone made an entire snow theme for Black Mesa's desert textures after all.
https://youtu.be/n6RhKy5pIyQ?si=9nSReuNC_6pb4f_c
Just watched Parry's Xen, and I thought I fuckin wish that was an ad for Half Life 3... That'd be badass, like "what are we doing back here", maybe some Vince Gilligan like foreshadowing with G Man's dead body floating thru at the end.
I love BM's Xen, but I do admit it's a bit too pretty at times... but only during the Xen chapter. Gonarch and beyond, it starts getting desolate. The beautiful purple sky and lush vegetation are replaced with red skies and red rocks and fleshy structures.
I disagree primarily because in my opinion I think it's the juxtaposition that works best, the chaotic beauty. Whilst yes, this Xen looks visually pleasing, it is far from friendly, and it makes sense to me because a dimension filled with life around every corner would look colourful, remember this place clearly has the right conditions for many different species from many different universes, Half Life 1 Xen looks extremely barren for a dimension apparently teeming with life
it’s not supposed to be teeming with life like a rainforest though. none of the species in xen are supposed to be there, it’s just an alien junkyard that you accidentally end up in when your alien race invents teleportation or gets involuntarily sucked in by a resonance cascade. the combine have clearly been there, so any useful natural resources would be depleted already by the time gordon did. the way black mesa handled it only served to make a very unique and interesting take on an alien dimension more hollywood generic.
assuming by dialogue from half life 2, any type of teletransportation requires going through xen, even if its so fast you wont notice it, like a "slingshot" as I think Eli / Kleiner puts it, so the combine should of have had to arrive to Xen first in order to get to Earth
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I thought the Nihilanth's death opened the way to Xen, and by extension earth, for the combine in the first place? Like, wasn't that the entire point of killing the Nihilanth?
Nihilant was keeping the portal open, when he dies, the portals dont stop (similar to how the satellite was supposed to stop the portals but didnt succeed), this is the opportunity the combine take
You’re right that Laidlaw claims no life is native to Xen, but the combine haven’t been there yet. In fact, their inability to really grasp what Xen is in the first place is probably why they haven’t been able to invent local teleportation yet. I struggle with BM Xen because while I understand and perhaps agree with the criticism that it looks too rainforest-like for a planet to which nothing is native, if anything ended up there long enough ago, it would surely have eventually developed into a real ecosystem like the ones we see in BM. So I’m of two minds about it.
A bunch of people seem to forget about the fact that Gonarch's Lair and Interloper look nothing like this.
Gonarch's Lair is barren and harsh, with dull, jagged crystals and cliff faces, and not much life apart from a few patches of toxic swamps full of spiny fungi and tentacle-like plants. Interloper actually doesn't look very different from the original Xen, with slimy, fleshy growth everywhere, plants that look like they're made of skin and veins, rivers of sludge, and an unsettling monochrome reddish-brown colour to everything. It's a **very** long way from "pretty".
Xen is **an entire dimension** full of organisms from different universes, where nothing is native. Of course it's going to have different biomes. I personally have no problem with there being more lush areas. But I feel like there's a fair number of people who either stopped playing after the chapter Xen or just forget about Gonarch's Lair and Interloper.
It never meant to look excatly the same idk where you got that idea.
This isnt a remake or a remaster. Its a fan reimagination.
You people sometimes have no idea what you're talking about.
Also you really expected things to look EXCATLY the same ?
"Xen is supposed to be unfriendly" mf when they realize that everything in there wants to kill them, even the trees. Also Interloper looks just as fleshy as the original
Fully agreed.
But, i think the reason why they maded Xen so colorful and inviting, is just Source Engine limits, bc, at least, in my opinion Sauce sucks when it comes to some dark and very distorted geometry, like in original Xen concept. This is just a lot more easier to make someting more cartoony looking in Source.
I waited from Black Mesa's Xen something like theParryGod's reimagination, but that is so ambitious to make an entire game like this on Source.
That's literally the opposite of what Source is good at, it's a box engine, it's made to make levels out of boxes. Which is the opposite of what Black Mesa Xen is like, it's really smooth
I mean, the displacements are good in blobby geometry like it is in Black Mesa Xen, but, to make a very detailed realistic geometry, this isnt enough.
Like, xen concept from original half life has more of disgusting look, with all those spores and fleshy looking environment, and to make it look good in 2020, we should use some more enhanced technologies than Source can achieve.
Brother, in Black Mesa's Xen everything still wants you dead.
They even added more fauna to kill you. There are new places with tons of Ichthyosaurs, the water Barnacle, the alpha Houndeye and the red ones that explodes. You have to scape like 20 Gargantuas before Interloper.
If anything, thi Xen is just more deadly.
Sure and thats great, but I think OP is clearly talking about the visuals, not the gameplay. When I finished Half Life 1, yeah Xen was pretty weak game wise but the atmosphere always stuck with me.
The Gargantua chase in Black Mesa is amazing. Way more fun than the one in the original game, especially since you can abuse the Gargantua's AI in the original game.
>Gargantua
Yessss!. That moment is so awesome, as soon as the Gargantua start chasing the music begins and is non stop until you reach the other floating island. Then you see how numeros they are and the are mad.
That was so epic.
I mean, I might agree if there was a point to Xen that could be missed.
Even Gabe himself said that he wasn’t happy with how Xen turned out in the original, and everything about it was the result of crunch and being very close to the deadline, combined with how limited they were to portray an alien environment in their engine, and in a way that would run on computers of the time.
Most of the original Xen doesn’t really make much sense, like why does only one island have the weird purple zapper things? Why do all of these seemingly disconnected islands have alien teleporters, when it’s established and re-established in Xen, that the aliens can traverse Xen using the flying manta-rays? Why are bugs that are trapped in a cage needed to open that first teleporter, and the bugs aren’t seen at any of the other teleporters? Why does only that teleporter need the three bugs? And again, why were the bugs in a cage? Why does the Nihilanth teleport us into an area with a teleporter than can bring us right back to it every time, even when it says “Now you die”, why not teleport us over the infinite void?
As for your criticisms of the excess flora and fauna, I think it’s just an obvious extension of the established lore. Nothing is native to Xen, all of the aliens we see throughout someone ended up there due to anomalies on space and time. So it naturally makes sense that if aliens were brought there, that plants and such would also be there, especially since the Xen creatures would need to eat something.
And the colors is a criticism I really don’t get. Go back and look at all the skyboxes in the original Xen, they’re full of light blues and purples. Black Mesa Xen just limited the amount of disgusting browns, of which mainly comprised the ground you walked on in Half-Life’s Xen.
I think Black Mesa’s Xen is an extremely fair interpretation of the original, when you take into account how even Valve wasn’t fully happy with how it turned out, when you actually apply the stated lore of Xen to Xen itself, and when you take into account how people were never really a fan of the original Xen, with many people simply choosing to stop playing as soon as they get there.
Personally, I’m in the minority of people who don’t mind and even sort of like the original Xen, but even I can fully understand every change Black Mesa made to it.
>So it naturally makes sense that if aliens were brought there, that plants and such would also be there, especially since the Xen creatures would need to eat something.
Adding on to this: even in the original game we see that Xenotheric flora spreads easily. By the time we get to Surface Tension, there's parts of the facility infested with such flora. Considering Earth is a completely unknown environment, they spread pretty fast, and going by that logic, we can assume that Xen would be overflowing with such flora.
Heck, even Half-Life: Alyx built up on this idea with the Quarantine Zone.
It's XEN in it's natural habitat, why should it look jagged?
Our rainforests in the real world don't look threatening or jagged either, they are calm and quiet... until a bear charges at you and rips you in half.
I think the idea is that the natural habitat also sucks. Similar to how real life deserts look awful. It goes against the theme of Half Life’s Xen, that this is the hostile world that has caused you all this suffering, by making it look too nice.
That’s not my point, I mean that it’s against Half Life’s environmental storytelling. Half Life always found reasons throughout the game to make its environment look more and more hostile to you like by having lesser and lesser lights. Having Xen be too nice is like randomly having a rainbow when you’re trying to clear the outdoor areas in HL. Beautiful and makes sense, not so good for keeping players in the desired headspace.
I'm not sure, it all looks "beautiful" but it's also unfamiliar.
It's just the first parts that are colorful, those first parts are easy with not many enemies and are more about setting the mood, getting the player used to the gravity and getting ready for later parts of XEN, which do get very dark and scary. (That Gonarch chase was horrifying)
But this could all be interpreted in lot of ways and I doubt that either one of us feels like writing paragraphs going into detail about this.
But if "keeping players in the desired headspace" was your original complaint then I suppose you might be right, atleast in the introduction.
In the end, I personally loved XEN and I might finally replay Black Mesa again.
From the Marc Laidlaw Vault:
>[The Xen Controllers were part of the Nihilanth's support network, and they relied on the Nihilanth to throw them around where it wanted them to go, so if there are any left, ***they are probably stranded in what would not have been their natural native environment (nothing's native to Xen).*** However, without access to a steady food supply (whatever it is they eat), they may well have simply died out.](https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/References:Marc_Laidlaw_emails/Unverified#:~:text=As%20for%20Race,lay%20somewhere%20beyond)
>[As for Race-X being from xen, ***I'm not sure any of the aliens we've seen were actually from xen originally. Xen is a borderworld--a place you have to go through to get to other places. It was colonized by certain creatures that could adapt to it.*** The Race-X creatures didn't seem particularly well adapted to Xen. I imagine their home lay somewhere beyond.](https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/References:Marc_Laidlaw_emails/Unverified#:~:text=As%20for%20Race,lay%20somewhere%20beyond)
100% disagree. It was awesome in every detail. That's the biggest reason why I love Black Mesa. Boring, annoying part of original Half-Life was made into actually amazing level.
its not that it doesnt look good it just isnt very fitting. in hl1 it looks super ugly but it really feels like you're stranded in a foreign, eerie alternate dimension where everything wants to kill you, the place all the horrifying monsters youve been fighting all game are coming from, and it still is this in black mesa in everything but visual design. xen shouldnt look so colourful and inspiring and it did make all the aliens feel out of place
For me overall Black Mesa has too much of a mod feeling I played it a few times. I always return to Half Life 1 the combat is superior in my opinion or I'm just used to it. That being said I'm glad Black Mesa exists its a great community effort.
Agreed, even after all the updates, a lot of the guns just don’t feel 100% polished, and certain gameplay situations with the soldiers feel like you take wayyyy too much damage than you should
Was pretty disappointed by the new Marines. Even on the hardest difficulty I found that the best way to deal with them every time is just stand still and shoot. Trying to run and gun like the original just gets you killed.
I haven't played BM yet, but I finally went through Xen after avoiding it for years. I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I did need to look some stuff up which was a bit frustrating, but overall I think it's overhated. Except for those damn baby headcrabs, they're way too underhated lol.
I mean, or so I've seen. I haven't tried it myself, but I've seen it. It was oddly effective. I used to use the hivehand. Here's my advice in case you did too: DO NOT USE THE HIVEHAND.
Best to maintain a safe distance from the Snarks tho.
The hivehand is pretty bad in general but I don't think it's completely useless. Obviously for the infinite ammo, but it's actually not that bad damage wise with the rapid alt fire. You just have to hit every shot lol. Although for baby headcrabs that's not really possible.
It's definitely useless in deathmatch though 😂
why does everything "miss the point" to everyone. they keep saying that but never tell what the point actually is.
Imo I think black mesa did it waaaaay better in terms of level design, gameplay and environmental design.
While I can't speak for OP, I think I understand and agree with what they are trying to say. Black Mesa's reimagining of Xen looks so biologically rich and thriving. The way Xen is portrayed in Half-life 1, and the role it serves in the story suggests that it's a dark corner of the universe (or multiverse) where life is just barely clinging on. Random creatures are living there just to escape the wrath of the Combine. Xen isn't a borderWORLD, it's a BOARDERworld, if that makes any sense. Of course, this is all just my interpretation of it, and I can completely get why you would prefer the way it's presented in Black Mesa, I just think it's much more interesting and Half-life 1, and I am admittedly a little disappointed that they completely lost a lot of the parts of Xen that stook out about it originally.
true. They got all them messed up monsters that it probably shouldn't look thriving but I also think the bright blue lights are giving the illusion of it being thriving. the lighting is spot on with the style i think but it does make everything look better. If they didn't have that lighting it would be a wasteland looking place.
I wish crowbar collective had waited just a bit more until after Half-Life Alyx came out (not that they could’ve known it was in development of course), just so they could’ve seen Valve’s modern presentation of Xen’s fleshiness
Nah man, Xen is a borderworld containing all sorts of alien life forms from all across the universe, Marc Laidlaw confirmed nothing is native to Xen. So Having BM Xen be full of life makes sense
tbh i hope someone makes a mod that reintroduces the OG xen looks, like it doesnt change the level design or anything, just brings back the original color pallete, and fun fact: according to the xen museum (offical mod that shows the creation of xen) they originaly sticked to the original but eventually they changed thier mindsand hey who knows, maybe they will make a another official mod that makes xen look closer to the original for all the people who liked the way OG xen looked, like maybe for a anniversary of Black Mesa
I agree. However, Gonarch’s Layer and Interloper do a good job (graphically wise) of conveying the brutality and true disturbingness of the original Xen.
People complained since the release of the first HL game about Xen being too bland and ugly and they did for a right reason. Outside of the incoherent level design the textures are just off.
So seing it in 4K? Would be a really poor decision. Plus I don’t think that BM Xen is like not oppressive. It has an Amazonian vibe and I seriously doubt the Amazon is and looks like a friendly place to be in.
Just my opinion though, as I know some people see anyone’s personal opinion as something objective.
it's good it didn't fit, original Xen just wasn't great. you're going through some of the most incredible levels in any game ever then the final few chapters just kinda suck
Idk if you notice but once you’re at Gonarch’s Lair, Xen asteroids start getting more angular and jagged. They have sharper crystal formations, and the island is made up of hexagonal basalt columns that the Gonarch can use to instagib you, (its the coolest way to die, you can imagine a survey scientist or three getting demolished by a stone log flung at a hundred miles an hour)
I absolutely adored the design of Xen in BM. The issue for me was how absurdly long that entire part of the game was. I was ready for it to be over halfway through Gonarch's Lair but it just dragged on forever and is the reason I still prefer the original
Hard disagree. I think the point of the Black Mesa one is that it shows this misleading beautiful place but it's actually extremely dangerous, showing you you can't trust it. Not to mention, the further you get into it, the more barren and jaggedy it becomes, showing the influence and spread of Nihilanth's control.
Even though Xen in Half life wasn't all that great- it didn't take too long to get through, which was nice.
But Black Mesa? If Xen just doesnt suit your vibe (like it doesn't for me), it drags on and on and I never wanna sit through that again. All the on rails (or rather conveyor belts), confusing lifts, long drawn out battles and combat areas is just too long
Yeah agree, while playing bm i had this feeling that xen was missing something, the atmosphere was incredible but i couldn't like it at all because it wasn't feeling like "xen"
Your opinion is wrong /s
I actually like the overall vibe in xen, specially how it changes from a wilderness to a sterile industrial setting. They managed to accomplish a good look on it and it feels very varied and compelling.
I feel both have their own aesthetic and attractive.
Its like surface tension. In black mesa the feel everything is going progressively more in to the actual fucked up shit is great. The sky is very dark as the level progreses. The las time you see the sky( before entering the lambda complex) its filled with smoke and there are dogfights.
Yes, it differs radically from the original Xen world.
BUT...
1)It is also radically different from BlackMesa, and BlackMesa itself is radically different from the original Half-Life.
2)When this update was released.... I experienced just extraordinary feelings.
This soundtrack, this beauty, gosh...
>2)When this update was released.... I experienced just extraordinary feelings.
>
>This soundtrack, this beauty, gosh...
Yeah, the first time I got to Black Mesa's Xen and looked into the horizon, with that music in the background... I nearly teared up.
There's one thing people have forgotten.
This remake is the vision of the authors, not Valve, but Crowbar Collective.
When we go out to the grassy lacation and "Entangled" starts playing, I get goosebumps every time.
I see your point and recognize that it's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but man am I glad they went with the Xen they went. I anosilutely love those chapters of Black Mesa.
I don't give a rat's ass if it goes against the og vision or whatever.
I disagree. I think Xen is very much supposed to be a mix of different universes/planets in terms of not just it's flora and fauna, but in its geometry as well. In that sense, there should be a chaotic beauty to how all this has managed to come together yet remain stable enough to support life. I think BM's Xen does a much better job of portraying that than the original
I despise Black Mesa's Xen. Nobody agrees with me, but I will die on this hill. The level design is long af, tedious, and boring as all hell and the visuals look pretty but incredibly uninteresting. It's just the same modern idea of an alien planet that is used in so much media. The original xen was actually different and eerie and harmful and I don't care who says otherwise.
What’s up with remakes always ruining the aesthetic of the original? It cannot be that hard to stay faithful and increase the polygon count and lighting quality
Xen was easily the worst part of Black Mesa. Even Gonarch's lair drag on for too long. The vortigant level is basically a game of trying to find a cable, then plugging it in a socket in order to progress x50. When I got to Nihilanth, I was so beat up, I wanted the game to finish sooner.
I don’t like the game at all. I just don’t think it’s as fun as it should be.
I find some of the changes they made very arrogant… changing some pretty core mechanics. Like, why does the pistol fire slower? Why add recoil? They totally broke combat. It’s absolutely bizarre.
Why turn the reverb right down on vent crawling? The vent sound FX are absolutely iconic. They instantly put my in my Half Life headspace. Why change them? It’s so weird.
I’m not saying they weren’t allowed to change anything. Far from it. But changing possible the best game of all time for change’s sake, that is arrogant.
Based and correct. They wanted to flex all the skills they picked up over the years in making this mod instead of caring about good level design. It's an endlessly plodding profile reel for someone's portfolio and a harsh reveal of how much they suck at level design when they got creative freedom to not just copy paste HL1. At least HL1's Xen while not great is mercifully short.
I think the Black Mesa labs they set up in Xen are some of the most atmospheric parts of the entire game. The addition of headcrab zombies and the lack of lighting in those areas besides your flashlight gives me more of that feeling from the first few chapters
It doesnt misses the point, and over designed ?
My dude Half-Life 1 xen was like only a few maps even tho its supposed to be an entire world.
You have no idea what you are talking about and you kind of sound like a hater.
Black Mesa nailed Xen, kinda sad you cant see that.
Not really a hot take, there's been a lot of those lately. And yeah, I kind of agree, but also kind of don't. I too think that Xen in BM could use more fleshiness in its design, but we have to remember that we can't tell with a 100% certainty how Xen was supposed to look, because it wasn't finished in the original. And, you know, old graphics leave a lot to imagination.
I prefer this over the barren floating space rocks that clearly show the original devs were too rushed and needed more time. It looks beautiful but the danger and hostility isn't lost.
To me Xen was always kind of just the left-overs of other planets that had resonance cascades. Quite literally chunks of planets that were thrown into the space between spaces. And these chunks have been there long enough to develop mini-ecosystems.
So to me, Black Mesa's Xen makes more sense. It's why all of the aliens are so different from each other.
At the same time I know it is extremely different from the original, so others have different interpretations of what Xen is meant to be.
i disagree, i love how xen looks, its beautiful and dangerius in one, but oh my god that barrel factory level was way too long i spent like 3 hours getting through it and it was so repetitive the whole way through
The new Xen looked nice enough, but it didn't have anything I haven't seen anywhere else. The level design on BM Xen was far more unforgivable. Classic Xen is undercooked, but the new Xen is so overindulgent, repetitive and long that I prefer old Xen every time.
And I do still enjoy the atmosphere in the original Interloper factory level. It felt like a real hard structure made out of an insect exoskeleton. The BM factory just felt like a cave filled with mud and conveyor belts.
The Black Mesa [documentary](https://youtu.be/G_TcAxAKCAI?si=4NH9a5uysQNO-Q1A) went very deep into asking the devs to talk about why they made Xen like they did. I really enjoyed it, even if it was a really long video.
I mean they incorporated the stuff you're talking about into the factories, giving more the vibe of "Long ago, the Xen biomes lived in harmony, **but then everything changed when the Combine attacked."**
Strongly disagree. The parts of Xen that are important are faithful, Black Mesa just fleshes everything else out and really makes it feel like a dimension made up of things from different universes all in one ecosystem. The original Xen makes little sense in it's lore because nothing would have been able to have survived there and it's very unfinished.
Sounds like you only played the beginning. Once you hit Gonarch's lair, it gets significantly less pretty. Even so, I disagree because I hated quite literally every single thing about the original Xen, so Black Mesa making it into a completely new place is a good thing in my book.
I love both, but they aren’t compatible. I liked the small glimpse of a modern xen in Alyx, but, I’m fine with Black Mesa’s xen if only for artistic differences
The nice natural environment threw me off during my first play through. But fter replaying it I kind of like how it starts off as exploring a beautiful pristine alien world, then as you get closer to the Nihilanth’s headquarters it becomes more and more of the fleshy eldritch hellscape from the original game. IMO it helps drive home the feeling that the Nihilanth is every bit as much an invader in Xen as humanity.
I seriously thought I was the only one who had this opinion. I'm really glad I'm not the only one who felt this. There was a creepy, eerie quietude on the original Xen islands, and the barren nature of them really helped as well. This just has... way too much going on. It's visually amazing, and technically impressive, but it is just not Xen at all.
It's not like that they are having a hay day either. They are hiding from the Combine. You can see that in : Alyx.
They've bailed out with whatever numbers they mustered, and took refuge in Xen. A place this nice is a dead give away.
Very much disagree. It was so poorly done and rushed in the original game that’s why it looked like shit. Also the technology at the time limited what they could do. Black mesa xen is amazing and dangerous with some beauty mixed in. And further in it becomes a death factory of misery with electrical pylons and vortigons enslaved everywhere mindlessly completing tasks. Black mesa nailed it.
Northern star in Half Life : Alyx is probably the closest representation of what cannon "pretty" Xen flora is.
I still love Black Mesa's interpretation though, I didn't really care that it was so different when playing.
Double hot-take: Xen is pretty fair if you count the circumstances, because it launched years after black mesa was published. Having waited many years with an unfinished game only to be given another 30-60 minutes of gameplay with plain, desolate scenarios would raise complaints, lauching 2-3 hours of content with the grand design it has was for people who already played black mesa and wanted more content; it overwhelms a little, yeah, but is not that of a trouble if you see the circumstances of why it has so many content packed in a couple of chapters.
It's not even a hot take. Black Mesa's version of Xen is divisive. I admit like many detractors that it's breathtakingly beautiful and magical. But like many others I am on OP's side.
I do like how the devs made everything make more sense and expanded on Black Mesa's installations and expeditions over there.
[удалено]
Found it https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/x35hjm/halflife_xen_in_source_2_by_theparrygod
Looks like a planet from the movie 'Alien'
Id love to see black mesas level design recreated with the art style of theparrygod
It would take a lot of effort, but I'm sure a texture and sound project dedicated to desaturating and tweaking the hues and ambience of Xen could do enough of the trick. Someone made an entire snow theme for Black Mesa's desert textures after all.
That's exactly what I was gonna say
https://youtu.be/n6RhKy5pIyQ?si=9nSReuNC_6pb4f_c Just watched Parry's Xen, and I thought I fuckin wish that was an ad for Half Life 3... That'd be badass, like "what are we doing back here", maybe some Vince Gilligan like foreshadowing with G Man's dead body floating thru at the end.
> maybe some Vince Gilligan like foreshadowing Xen would be much more yellow.
The Vortigaunts are gonna be really pissed at how the actors speak Vortigese.
Haha, Louis Gosset Jr is all the bad Spanish speakers and Tony Todd is Tony Dalton.
I wanted to mention that same thing. Hello once again, friend.
I was about to mention that one but I didn’t know it’s name 🙏🙏🙏
I love BM's Xen, but I do admit it's a bit too pretty at times... but only during the Xen chapter. Gonarch and beyond, it starts getting desolate. The beautiful purple sky and lush vegetation are replaced with red skies and red rocks and fleshy structures.
Yes, they took creative liberties with Xen. I think it's amazing though, even if it foregoes the lovercraftian atmosphere of the original.
I disagree primarily because in my opinion I think it's the juxtaposition that works best, the chaotic beauty. Whilst yes, this Xen looks visually pleasing, it is far from friendly, and it makes sense to me because a dimension filled with life around every corner would look colourful, remember this place clearly has the right conditions for many different species from many different universes, Half Life 1 Xen looks extremely barren for a dimension apparently teeming with life
Yeah. I was incredibly stressed in Black Mesa’s Xen. It was beautiful but I had no idea what was waiting to kill me around the next corner
it’s not supposed to be teeming with life like a rainforest though. none of the species in xen are supposed to be there, it’s just an alien junkyard that you accidentally end up in when your alien race invents teleportation or gets involuntarily sucked in by a resonance cascade. the combine have clearly been there, so any useful natural resources would be depleted already by the time gordon did. the way black mesa handled it only served to make a very unique and interesting take on an alien dimension more hollywood generic.
What signs are there that the combine have been to Xen? My understanding is that the Nihilanth escaped to Xen, fleeing the combine.
assuming by dialogue from half life 2, any type of teletransportation requires going through xen, even if its so fast you wont notice it, like a "slingshot" as I think Eli / Kleiner puts it, so the combine should of have had to arrive to Xen first in order to get to Earth
I may be missing a line somewhere, but I think the Xen slingshot is only used for local teleportation, which the combine haven't been able to do yet.
This is correct.
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damn the grammar police is real
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I thought the Nihilanth's death opened the way to Xen, and by extension earth, for the combine in the first place? Like, wasn't that the entire point of killing the Nihilanth?
Nihilant was keeping the portal open, when he dies, the portals dont stop (similar to how the satellite was supposed to stop the portals but didnt succeed), this is the opportunity the combine take
You’re right that Laidlaw claims no life is native to Xen, but the combine haven’t been there yet. In fact, their inability to really grasp what Xen is in the first place is probably why they haven’t been able to invent local teleportation yet. I struggle with BM Xen because while I understand and perhaps agree with the criticism that it looks too rainforest-like for a planet to which nothing is native, if anything ended up there long enough ago, it would surely have eventually developed into a real ecosystem like the ones we see in BM. So I’m of two minds about it.
A bunch of people seem to forget about the fact that Gonarch's Lair and Interloper look nothing like this. Gonarch's Lair is barren and harsh, with dull, jagged crystals and cliff faces, and not much life apart from a few patches of toxic swamps full of spiny fungi and tentacle-like plants. Interloper actually doesn't look very different from the original Xen, with slimy, fleshy growth everywhere, plants that look like they're made of skin and veins, rivers of sludge, and an unsettling monochrome reddish-brown colour to everything. It's a **very** long way from "pretty". Xen is **an entire dimension** full of organisms from different universes, where nothing is native. Of course it's going to have different biomes. I personally have no problem with there being more lush areas. But I feel like there's a fair number of people who either stopped playing after the chapter Xen or just forget about Gonarch's Lair and Interloper.
It never meant to look excatly the same idk where you got that idea. This isnt a remake or a remaster. Its a fan reimagination. You people sometimes have no idea what you're talking about. Also you really expected things to look EXCATLY the same ?
"Xen is supposed to be unfriendly" mf when they realize that everything in there wants to kill them, even the trees. Also Interloper looks just as fleshy as the original
Fully agreed. But, i think the reason why they maded Xen so colorful and inviting, is just Source Engine limits, bc, at least, in my opinion Sauce sucks when it comes to some dark and very distorted geometry, like in original Xen concept. This is just a lot more easier to make someting more cartoony looking in Source. I waited from Black Mesa's Xen something like theParryGod's reimagination, but that is so ambitious to make an entire game like this on Source.
That's literally the opposite of what Source is good at, it's a box engine, it's made to make levels out of boxes. Which is the opposite of what Black Mesa Xen is like, it's really smooth
I mean, the displacements are good in blobby geometry like it is in Black Mesa Xen, but, to make a very detailed realistic geometry, this isnt enough. Like, xen concept from original half life has more of disgusting look, with all those spores and fleshy looking environment, and to make it look good in 2020, we should use some more enhanced technologies than Source can achieve.
I absolutely love the Xen parts of Black Mesa, felt like a real alien instead of a few floating platforms.
People seem to forget there's also floating platforms in Black Mesa and the Xen in Half-Life isn't just the platforms.
I know, I've played both multiple times.
Brother, in Black Mesa's Xen everything still wants you dead. They even added more fauna to kill you. There are new places with tons of Ichthyosaurs, the water Barnacle, the alpha Houndeye and the red ones that explodes. You have to scape like 20 Gargantuas before Interloper. If anything, thi Xen is just more deadly.
Sure and thats great, but I think OP is clearly talking about the visuals, not the gameplay. When I finished Half Life 1, yeah Xen was pretty weak game wise but the atmosphere always stuck with me.
Oh my bad, know that makes a lot more sense.
The Gargantua chase in Black Mesa is amazing. Way more fun than the one in the original game, especially since you can abuse the Gargantua's AI in the original game.
You can even kill them in the original, as far as I know you can't in Black Mesa
>Gargantua Yessss!. That moment is so awesome, as soon as the Gargantua start chasing the music begins and is non stop until you reach the other floating island. Then you see how numeros they are and the are mad. That was so epic.
Key word. Its "his opinion". Stop saying shit like "UHH Brother.." like he is wrong. He isn't. It's his opinion
Sister, okay.
Forget I said that.
I disagree, while it did stretch out for too long. It gave xen a whole new depth. They did a phenomenal job with Xen.
I mean, I might agree if there was a point to Xen that could be missed. Even Gabe himself said that he wasn’t happy with how Xen turned out in the original, and everything about it was the result of crunch and being very close to the deadline, combined with how limited they were to portray an alien environment in their engine, and in a way that would run on computers of the time. Most of the original Xen doesn’t really make much sense, like why does only one island have the weird purple zapper things? Why do all of these seemingly disconnected islands have alien teleporters, when it’s established and re-established in Xen, that the aliens can traverse Xen using the flying manta-rays? Why are bugs that are trapped in a cage needed to open that first teleporter, and the bugs aren’t seen at any of the other teleporters? Why does only that teleporter need the three bugs? And again, why were the bugs in a cage? Why does the Nihilanth teleport us into an area with a teleporter than can bring us right back to it every time, even when it says “Now you die”, why not teleport us over the infinite void? As for your criticisms of the excess flora and fauna, I think it’s just an obvious extension of the established lore. Nothing is native to Xen, all of the aliens we see throughout someone ended up there due to anomalies on space and time. So it naturally makes sense that if aliens were brought there, that plants and such would also be there, especially since the Xen creatures would need to eat something. And the colors is a criticism I really don’t get. Go back and look at all the skyboxes in the original Xen, they’re full of light blues and purples. Black Mesa Xen just limited the amount of disgusting browns, of which mainly comprised the ground you walked on in Half-Life’s Xen. I think Black Mesa’s Xen is an extremely fair interpretation of the original, when you take into account how even Valve wasn’t fully happy with how it turned out, when you actually apply the stated lore of Xen to Xen itself, and when you take into account how people were never really a fan of the original Xen, with many people simply choosing to stop playing as soon as they get there. Personally, I’m in the minority of people who don’t mind and even sort of like the original Xen, but even I can fully understand every change Black Mesa made to it.
>So it naturally makes sense that if aliens were brought there, that plants and such would also be there, especially since the Xen creatures would need to eat something. Adding on to this: even in the original game we see that Xenotheric flora spreads easily. By the time we get to Surface Tension, there's parts of the facility infested with such flora. Considering Earth is a completely unknown environment, they spread pretty fast, and going by that logic, we can assume that Xen would be overflowing with such flora. Heck, even Half-Life: Alyx built up on this idea with the Quarantine Zone.
Looks like the monster realm from moana
It's XEN in it's natural habitat, why should it look jagged? Our rainforests in the real world don't look threatening or jagged either, they are calm and quiet... until a bear charges at you and rips you in half.
It's not really their habitat tho, they're just Trapped there
I think the idea is that the natural habitat also sucks. Similar to how real life deserts look awful. It goes against the theme of Half Life’s Xen, that this is the hostile world that has caused you all this suffering, by making it look too nice.
The suffering was made by the invasion of enslaved Vortigaunts and teleported headcrabs and houndeyes, not the "world"
That’s not my point, I mean that it’s against Half Life’s environmental storytelling. Half Life always found reasons throughout the game to make its environment look more and more hostile to you like by having lesser and lesser lights. Having Xen be too nice is like randomly having a rainbow when you’re trying to clear the outdoor areas in HL. Beautiful and makes sense, not so good for keeping players in the desired headspace.
I'm not sure, it all looks "beautiful" but it's also unfamiliar. It's just the first parts that are colorful, those first parts are easy with not many enemies and are more about setting the mood, getting the player used to the gravity and getting ready for later parts of XEN, which do get very dark and scary. (That Gonarch chase was horrifying) But this could all be interpreted in lot of ways and I doubt that either one of us feels like writing paragraphs going into detail about this. But if "keeping players in the desired headspace" was your original complaint then I suppose you might be right, atleast in the introduction. In the end, I personally loved XEN and I might finally replay Black Mesa again.
From the Marc Laidlaw Vault: >[The Xen Controllers were part of the Nihilanth's support network, and they relied on the Nihilanth to throw them around where it wanted them to go, so if there are any left, ***they are probably stranded in what would not have been their natural native environment (nothing's native to Xen).*** However, without access to a steady food supply (whatever it is they eat), they may well have simply died out.](https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/References:Marc_Laidlaw_emails/Unverified#:~:text=As%20for%20Race,lay%20somewhere%20beyond) >[As for Race-X being from xen, ***I'm not sure any of the aliens we've seen were actually from xen originally. Xen is a borderworld--a place you have to go through to get to other places. It was colonized by certain creatures that could adapt to it.*** The Race-X creatures didn't seem particularly well adapted to Xen. I imagine their home lay somewhere beyond.](https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/References:Marc_Laidlaw_emails/Unverified#:~:text=As%20for%20Race,lay%20somewhere%20beyond)
100% disagree. It was awesome in every detail. That's the biggest reason why I love Black Mesa. Boring, annoying part of original Half-Life was made into actually amazing level.
its not that it doesnt look good it just isnt very fitting. in hl1 it looks super ugly but it really feels like you're stranded in a foreign, eerie alternate dimension where everything wants to kill you, the place all the horrifying monsters youve been fighting all game are coming from, and it still is this in black mesa in everything but visual design. xen shouldnt look so colourful and inspiring and it did make all the aliens feel out of place
For me overall Black Mesa has too much of a mod feeling I played it a few times. I always return to Half Life 1 the combat is superior in my opinion or I'm just used to it. That being said I'm glad Black Mesa exists its a great community effort.
Agreed, even after all the updates, a lot of the guns just don’t feel 100% polished, and certain gameplay situations with the soldiers feel like you take wayyyy too much damage than you should
Ninja sections were really terrible in Black Mesa.
Was pretty disappointed by the new Marines. Even on the hardest difficulty I found that the best way to deal with them every time is just stand still and shoot. Trying to run and gun like the original just gets you killed.
I haven't played BM yet, but I finally went through Xen after avoiding it for years. I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I did need to look some stuff up which was a bit frustrating, but overall I think it's overhated. Except for those damn baby headcrabs, they're way too underhated lol.
The best way to deal with them is throwing Snarks at them.
Oh I never even thought of that, thanks. I find it really funny that the best way to kill an annoying enemy with another annoying enemy lol.
I mean, or so I've seen. I haven't tried it myself, but I've seen it. It was oddly effective. I used to use the hivehand. Here's my advice in case you did too: DO NOT USE THE HIVEHAND. Best to maintain a safe distance from the Snarks tho.
The hivehand is pretty bad in general but I don't think it's completely useless. Obviously for the infinite ammo, but it's actually not that bad damage wise with the rapid alt fire. You just have to hit every shot lol. Although for baby headcrabs that's not really possible. It's definitely useless in deathmatch though 😂
Nah.
why does everything "miss the point" to everyone. they keep saying that but never tell what the point actually is. Imo I think black mesa did it waaaaay better in terms of level design, gameplay and environmental design.
While I can't speak for OP, I think I understand and agree with what they are trying to say. Black Mesa's reimagining of Xen looks so biologically rich and thriving. The way Xen is portrayed in Half-life 1, and the role it serves in the story suggests that it's a dark corner of the universe (or multiverse) where life is just barely clinging on. Random creatures are living there just to escape the wrath of the Combine. Xen isn't a borderWORLD, it's a BOARDERworld, if that makes any sense. Of course, this is all just my interpretation of it, and I can completely get why you would prefer the way it's presented in Black Mesa, I just think it's much more interesting and Half-life 1, and I am admittedly a little disappointed that they completely lost a lot of the parts of Xen that stook out about it originally.
true. They got all them messed up monsters that it probably shouldn't look thriving but I also think the bright blue lights are giving the illusion of it being thriving. the lighting is spot on with the style i think but it does make everything look better. If they didn't have that lighting it would be a wasteland looking place.
> messed up monsters They arent messed up monsters they are just aliens from a different enviroment than ours.
ik but they are monsters still and they are super messed up looking.
I kinda agree, there are some sections in the game where I feel im not in a alien place, but in a magical alien forest full of fauna and flora
Agree 👍
I wish crowbar collective had waited just a bit more until after Half-Life Alyx came out (not that they could’ve known it was in development of course), just so they could’ve seen Valve’s modern presentation of Xen’s fleshiness
Nah man, Xen is a borderworld containing all sorts of alien life forms from all across the universe, Marc Laidlaw confirmed nothing is native to Xen. So Having BM Xen be full of life makes sense
I'm glad it misses the point, oh xen sucked ass, like Even from the core idea
Thats cool
tbh i hope someone makes a mod that reintroduces the OG xen looks, like it doesnt change the level design or anything, just brings back the original color pallete, and fun fact: according to the xen museum (offical mod that shows the creation of xen) they originaly sticked to the original but eventually they changed thier mindsand hey who knows, maybe they will make a another official mod that makes xen look closer to the original for all the people who liked the way OG xen looked, like maybe for a anniversary of Black Mesa
I like both. Both have their something special about them.
Disagree
I know that titel is targettet me has to be right?
I agree. However, Gonarch’s Layer and Interloper do a good job (graphically wise) of conveying the brutality and true disturbingness of the original Xen.
Your Xen isn't my Xen... And maybe we should all learn to live with that?
Here’s a real hot take... just post your opinion... if every take is a hot take then we must be living in a lukewarm world lmao
People complained since the release of the first HL game about Xen being too bland and ugly and they did for a right reason. Outside of the incoherent level design the textures are just off. So seing it in 4K? Would be a really poor decision. Plus I don’t think that BM Xen is like not oppressive. It has an Amazonian vibe and I seriously doubt the Amazon is and looks like a friendly place to be in. Just my opinion though, as I know some people see anyone’s personal opinion as something objective.
it's good it didn't fit, original Xen just wasn't great. you're going through some of the most incredible levels in any game ever then the final few chapters just kinda suck
Idk if you notice but once you’re at Gonarch’s Lair, Xen asteroids start getting more angular and jagged. They have sharper crystal formations, and the island is made up of hexagonal basalt columns that the Gonarch can use to instagib you, (its the coolest way to die, you can imagine a survey scientist or three getting demolished by a stone log flung at a hundred miles an hour)
I absolutely adored the design of Xen in BM. The issue for me was how absurdly long that entire part of the game was. I was ready for it to be over halfway through Gonarch's Lair but it just dragged on forever and is the reason I still prefer the original
I would honestly love to see a more faithful recreation of Xen as a mod for Black Mesa. (Does that already exist?)
Hard disagree. I think the point of the Black Mesa one is that it shows this misleading beautiful place but it's actually extremely dangerous, showing you you can't trust it. Not to mention, the further you get into it, the more barren and jaggedy it becomes, showing the influence and spread of Nihilanth's control.
I don't know what to think... yeah certainly too much details
I think black mesa's xen fits in with the theory that xen is an almalgamation of tons of different worlds pulled into the borderworld and built upon.
Not a hot take since there's plenty of both sides, but agreed. Worst part of the game.
Even though Xen in Half life wasn't all that great- it didn't take too long to get through, which was nice. But Black Mesa? If Xen just doesnt suit your vibe (like it doesn't for me), it drags on and on and I never wanna sit through that again. All the on rails (or rather conveyor belts), confusing lifts, long drawn out battles and combat areas is just too long
Yeah agree, while playing bm i had this feeling that xen was missing something, the atmosphere was incredible but i couldn't like it at all because it wasn't feeling like "xen"
I agree
This is true.
I Felt like Xen also went On for Too Long i felt like i spent more time In Xen then Black Mesa
I love this Xen rendition. https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/s/IvuxwSqvpO
You put this perfectly. It's a *border world*, not a destination. It's basically an airport but for portals to other dimensions.
I think it looks great but you spend too much time running from the Gonarch
That’s so funny. I loved the Gonarch expansion. I always felt it was too short/easy in HL1.
Your opinion is wrong /s I actually like the overall vibe in xen, specially how it changes from a wilderness to a sterile industrial setting. They managed to accomplish a good look on it and it feels very varied and compelling. I feel both have their own aesthetic and attractive. Its like surface tension. In black mesa the feel everything is going progressively more in to the actual fucked up shit is great. The sky is very dark as the level progreses. The las time you see the sky( before entering the lambda complex) its filled with smoke and there are dogfights.
Yes, it differs radically from the original Xen world. BUT... 1)It is also radically different from BlackMesa, and BlackMesa itself is radically different from the original Half-Life. 2)When this update was released.... I experienced just extraordinary feelings. This soundtrack, this beauty, gosh...
>2)When this update was released.... I experienced just extraordinary feelings. > >This soundtrack, this beauty, gosh... Yeah, the first time I got to Black Mesa's Xen and looked into the horizon, with that music in the background... I nearly teared up.
This might get me killed, but I don't vibe with the Xen tracks. They're good, but I don't think they fit.
There's one thing people have forgotten. This remake is the vision of the authors, not Valve, but Crowbar Collective. When we go out to the grassy lacation and "Entangled" starts playing, I get goosebumps every time.
I see your point and recognize that it's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but man am I glad they went with the Xen they went. I anosilutely love those chapters of Black Mesa. I don't give a rat's ass if it goes against the og vision or whatever.
I disagree. I think Xen is very much supposed to be a mix of different universes/planets in terms of not just it's flora and fauna, but in its geometry as well. In that sense, there should be a chaotic beauty to how all this has managed to come together yet remain stable enough to support life. I think BM's Xen does a much better job of portraying that than the original
I despise Black Mesa's Xen. Nobody agrees with me, but I will die on this hill. The level design is long af, tedious, and boring as all hell and the visuals look pretty but incredibly uninteresting. It's just the same modern idea of an alien planet that is used in so much media. The original xen was actually different and eerie and harmful and I don't care who says otherwise.
What’s up with remakes always ruining the aesthetic of the original? It cannot be that hard to stay faithful and increase the polygon count and lighting quality
doing a remake? better increase the vegetation by 175%
Even if indoors
I'm fine with your opinion but anyone saying that the og half-life Xen was better has to get their eyes fixed
Eyes? Eh, not really. Just their opinions on gameplay. It's OK to prefer a look over another.
Oh if your talking about gameplay then yea it doesn't go well, one critique of the new xen is how long the levels are
Xen was easily the worst part of Black Mesa. Even Gonarch's lair drag on for too long. The vortigant level is basically a game of trying to find a cable, then plugging it in a socket in order to progress x50. When I got to Nihilanth, I was so beat up, I wanted the game to finish sooner.
shoudnt xen look like this?
Comparing to the original from 1998, no ((
so u all hating on xen levels and when someone makes them different as u didnt like the old ones its bad and dosnt look like to orginal one tf
Yes
Thats cool
This is not a hot take, this is a common take. Black Mesa in general isn't all that good.
I don’t like the game at all. I just don’t think it’s as fun as it should be. I find some of the changes they made very arrogant… changing some pretty core mechanics. Like, why does the pistol fire slower? Why add recoil? They totally broke combat. It’s absolutely bizarre. Why turn the reverb right down on vent crawling? The vent sound FX are absolutely iconic. They instantly put my in my Half Life headspace. Why change them? It’s so weird. I’m not saying they weren’t allowed to change anything. Far from it. But changing possible the best game of all time for change’s sake, that is arrogant.
The slow run acceleration and sliding mechanics feel strange. Sliding doesn't really fit HL to begin with.
Based and correct. They wanted to flex all the skills they picked up over the years in making this mod instead of caring about good level design. It's an endlessly plodding profile reel for someone's portfolio and a harsh reveal of how much they suck at level design when they got creative freedom to not just copy paste HL1. At least HL1's Xen while not great is mercifully short.
I think the Black Mesa labs they set up in Xen are some of the most atmospheric parts of the entire game. The addition of headcrab zombies and the lack of lighting in those areas besides your flashlight gives me more of that feeling from the first few chapters
It doesnt misses the point, and over designed ? My dude Half-Life 1 xen was like only a few maps even tho its supposed to be an entire world. You have no idea what you are talking about and you kind of sound like a hater. Black Mesa nailed Xen, kinda sad you cant see that.
Not really a hot take, there's been a lot of those lately. And yeah, I kind of agree, but also kind of don't. I too think that Xen in BM could use more fleshiness in its design, but we have to remember that we can't tell with a 100% certainty how Xen was supposed to look, because it wasn't finished in the original. And, you know, old graphics leave a lot to imagination.
yeah i think Xen is just doomed to never be good lol
“overdesigned” is a complaint i’ll never understand.
Sure, but OG Zen wasn't a shithole on purpose. It was a shithole because that segment of the game was rushed and made really quickly.
Oh boy heres another hl purist
So now you're crossed off as a "purist" for having an opinion?
Nope.
My hot take on xen is We could have had prettier textures Thats it Why isit so godamn ugly Alien ≠ ugly
I prefer this over the barren floating space rocks that clearly show the original devs were too rushed and needed more time. It looks beautiful but the danger and hostility isn't lost.
To me Xen was always kind of just the left-overs of other planets that had resonance cascades. Quite literally chunks of planets that were thrown into the space between spaces. And these chunks have been there long enough to develop mini-ecosystems. So to me, Black Mesa's Xen makes more sense. It's why all of the aliens are so different from each other. At the same time I know it is extremely different from the original, so others have different interpretations of what Xen is meant to be.
i disagree, i love how xen looks, its beautiful and dangerius in one, but oh my god that barrel factory level was way too long i spent like 3 hours getting through it and it was so repetitive the whole way through
I think there's too many icyhtosaurs in the fucking water so I agree.
This is a good take. I don’t necessarily agree but it’s a good point
The new Xen looked nice enough, but it didn't have anything I haven't seen anywhere else. The level design on BM Xen was far more unforgivable. Classic Xen is undercooked, but the new Xen is so overindulgent, repetitive and long that I prefer old Xen every time. And I do still enjoy the atmosphere in the original Interloper factory level. It felt like a real hard structure made out of an insect exoskeleton. The BM factory just felt like a cave filled with mud and conveyor belts.
The Black Mesa [documentary](https://youtu.be/G_TcAxAKCAI?si=4NH9a5uysQNO-Q1A) went very deep into asking the devs to talk about why they made Xen like they did. I really enjoyed it, even if it was a really long video.
I mean they incorporated the stuff you're talking about into the factories, giving more the vibe of "Long ago, the Xen biomes lived in harmony, **but then everything changed when the Combine attacked."**
Strongly disagree. The parts of Xen that are important are faithful, Black Mesa just fleshes everything else out and really makes it feel like a dimension made up of things from different universes all in one ecosystem. The original Xen makes little sense in it's lore because nothing would have been able to have survived there and it's very unfinished.
Sounds like you only played the beginning. Once you hit Gonarch's lair, it gets significantly less pretty. Even so, I disagree because I hated quite literally every single thing about the original Xen, so Black Mesa making it into a completely new place is a good thing in my book.
I love both, but they aren’t compatible. I liked the small glimpse of a modern xen in Alyx, but, I’m fine with Black Mesa’s xen if only for artistic differences
The nice natural environment threw me off during my first play through. But fter replaying it I kind of like how it starts off as exploring a beautiful pristine alien world, then as you get closer to the Nihilanth’s headquarters it becomes more and more of the fleshy eldritch hellscape from the original game. IMO it helps drive home the feeling that the Nihilanth is every bit as much an invader in Xen as humanity.
I seriously thought I was the only one who had this opinion. I'm really glad I'm not the only one who felt this. There was a creepy, eerie quietude on the original Xen islands, and the barren nature of them really helped as well. This just has... way too much going on. It's visually amazing, and technically impressive, but it is just not Xen at all.
wrong
Has more rocks instead of fleshy textures like the og, i like bm more than hl tho
It's not like that they are having a hay day either. They are hiding from the Combine. You can see that in : Alyx. They've bailed out with whatever numbers they mustered, and took refuge in Xen. A place this nice is a dead give away.
I think this is the way xen was always supposed to look like. The xen infestation in alyx looks quite similar to black mesas xen
Very much disagree. It was so poorly done and rushed in the original game that’s why it looked like shit. Also the technology at the time limited what they could do. Black mesa xen is amazing and dangerous with some beauty mixed in. And further in it becomes a death factory of misery with electrical pylons and vortigons enslaved everywhere mindlessly completing tasks. Black mesa nailed it.
Oh fucking absolutely
Xen is fleshy,there only rocks,minrals and flesh.Because it is borderwolrd.
yes
Northern star in Half Life : Alyx is probably the closest representation of what cannon "pretty" Xen flora is. I still love Black Mesa's interpretation though, I didn't really care that it was so different when playing.
Agreed
I think it’s perfect. Interloper is still infuriating to play though.
Double hot-take: Xen is pretty fair if you count the circumstances, because it launched years after black mesa was published. Having waited many years with an unfinished game only to be given another 30-60 minutes of gameplay with plain, desolate scenarios would raise complaints, lauching 2-3 hours of content with the grand design it has was for people who already played black mesa and wanted more content; it overwhelms a little, yeah, but is not that of a trouble if you see the circumstances of why it has so many content packed in a couple of chapters.
Correct. Same thing with the End in Minecraft. Everyone says both are bland and ugly, but that's the point.
least favorite part of Black Mesa is Xen. Not at all lore friendly in appearance and WAY too long and drawn out
It's not even a hot take. Black Mesa's version of Xen is divisive. I admit like many detractors that it's breathtakingly beautiful and magical. But like many others I am on OP's side. I do like how the devs made everything make more sense and expanded on Black Mesa's installations and expeditions over there.
I mean, I thought it was neat.