The Black Mesa Xen trailer is here, right around the time of the 20th anniversary of the Half-Life series. The heart-pounding fan mod trailer lets us finally see what a re-imagined (and far less blocky) alien world looks like in the unofficial remake of the first Half-Life game.
Black Mesa was originally a fan project that operated under the title of Black Mesa Source. Several years of development and many twists and turns eventually led this: it being a commercial product made available for purchase. Though the developers started charging people for access, the game was still not yet complete and has been in the Steam Early Access program for some time.
One of the missing sections of the game was the alien world of Xen. Xen serves as a waystation for people using teleportation technology in the game. Unfortunately, things go awry and the native creatures of the planet start invading the planet. It’s a shame that they’d leave their home as it’s quite beautiful – have a gander at it yourself in the trailer:
While the Black Mesa Xen trailer is sure to build up hype, fans are probably a little more interested in knowing when they’ll actually be able to play in the alien world in the game from Crowbar Collective. The Steam News post has the answer we’re looking for – Xen is slated to arrive sometime in the second quarter of 2019.
Although we see a lot of fancy alien geography in the Black Mesa Xen trailer, things aren’t quite ready for a public release. The majority of this section of the game is locked in and functional, but it still requires a measure of optimization and improvements from the art department. This isn’t a 1:1 copy of its predecessor’s Xen, either – the developers have taken cues from the first game’s design but have otherwise created an original world. Their version of Xen should take around 6 hours to complete.
I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to seeing what the Crowbar Collective have come up with. Judging by the contents of the Black Mesa Xen trailer, I think it’ll be worth the wait.
