Let’s set the accents right away. So, Half-Life is a great game in general, which turned out to be a revolutionary event for the shooter genre in particular, and for some people it has become an icon of interactive entertainment. Let’s try to fantasize a little on the topic: “What if there was no Half-Life”… Then none of us would sit for hours in smoky clubs playing Counter-Strike. Portal, which served as a detonator for experimental gaming developments, would not have seen the light of day. In 2008, the world would have done without the multiplayer revelation in the form of Left 4 Dead… This list can be continued, but why?? After all, in November 1998 we met Gordon Freeman. And now, a group of his loyal fans is engaged in a noble cause – creating a project Black Mesa, ready to remind us where it all began.
In northwestern Oklahoma (near the New Mexico and Colorado borders) is the Black Mesa Mesa. A deserted volcanic plateau is an excellent place to create a secret underground laboratory under the patronage of the US government. But, as everyone has long known, such undertakings rarely end in positive results. An experiment with a particle accelerator, when analyzing a certain non-standard sample, did not go quite as expected, which led to very unforeseen consequences.
The research center was filled with guests from a parallel dimension who were not at all friendly towards the earth’s race. In this chaos, we were given the role of one of the scientists involved in the experiment – that same Gordon Freeman.
From the book Half-Life 2: https://ninewincasino.uk/ Raising the Bar (original translation – nashalife community.ru):
Valve immediately formed two teams working on different projects. The first, called Quiver, was supposed to be a first-person shooter, similar to the game Doom, with an emphasis on alien monsters, weapons and adrenaline. Another project, called Prospero, was planned as a dark literary game……But when Half-Life reached critical mass, it began to gradually involve each member of the team – scenes began to be borrowed from Prospero, thereby creating a greater emphasis on story and atmosphere in Half-Life. Meanwhile, it was already clear to Valve that Half-Life wouldn’t be a good enough game unless the developers were given time to rethink and remake it from the very beginning. At the end of 1997, Gabe and Mike flip the hourglass, giving the team one more year to develop Half-Life and get it in order. And that extra time changed the world.
The direction in the game, at that time, was amazing in its sophistication, and invisible triggers on the levels were able to launch not only the next monster, but also atmospheric scripted scenes. Entering one of the rooms, we witnessed an eerie picture when a monster hidden in the darkness slowly dragged the lifeless corpse of a special forces soldier into a hole in the wall. Or, for example, we watched an uncompromising hand-to-hand fight between a zombie and a scientist.
You can start throwing stones at me, but the original Half-Life is better than its sequel. Yes, that’s it, categorically. The second part of the adventures of the famous nuclear scientist was abandoned by the atmosphere that reigned in the Black Mesa laboratories. After all, then the hero was not the people’s savior and a universal celebrity, but was presented as a staff employee, first of all saving his own, excuse me, ass. And all this at a time when the brutal Quake 2 was considered the standard of the genre. Creation Valve gave new sensations from playing 3D-action. This game was a drama about human survival, not an action movie, as everyone is used to.
Developers from Black Mesa Team obviously didn’t like the remake Half-Life: Source, released in 2004 and representing a banal technical update of the original. And even then a group of enthusiasts led Carlos Montera began work on its own modification to correct historical injustice. Over these five years, their project has gone through a lot – countless hacker attacks on the site, hacking of the forum and leak of the alpha version. But despite this, Black Mesa turned out to be a tough nut to crack, stayed afloat and gradually began to reach the finish line.
Remake is probably the wrong word. More appropriate in this situation is "restoration". Only the visual and technological side of the issue is undergoing a total redesign. Familiar locations will take on a fresh and full look, the game will have “correct” physics, and the environment will become much more interactive. The construction of levels, opponents, weapons and general game moments are carefully transported without drastic changes.
The developers are faced with almost a jewel-like task, in which it is necessary to transfer the gameplay of Half-Life from the late nineties to our century, add the necessary modern features and not destroy its spirit. Almost under a microscope, defects and roughness are revealed from the general scheme, which are corrected. The original artificial intelligence, which even now looks quite decent, is also being modernized, as is the music and sound design. In addition to all this, it is planned to introduce the currently popular cooperative mode.
For those who, due to their youth, did not catch the legendary game, this is a great chance to catch up. And representatives of the older generation certainly will not be able to resist visiting the familiar corridors of the research center with a nostalgic smile on their lips. And, by the way, let’s hope that in ten to fifteen years there will again be people who are ready to redo the already Black Mesa.