Half Life is Timeless_ And Black Mesa Reminds Us Why

 this video is brought to you by Squarespace stick around to the end of the video for a special offer they're making available through my channel this video contains spoilers for half-life and half-life black mesa twenty two years is enough time to make some of the best games feel outdated their lessons superseded by more contemporary efforts but half-life black mesa is a reminder of just how timeless the lessons of good game design remain the extraordinary work of the crowbar collective to breathe new life into half-life would have amounted to little if the source material wasn't so resilient played today vastly improved and expanded in some sections while painstakingly faithful to the original and others black mesa feels positively unique contemporary and pertinent they don't make games like this anymore and having played Black Mesa you can't help but feel that they really should be

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half-life's opening sequence is perhaps the most iconic opening in all of gaming a ten minute train ride where the player has no agency except in their ability to move about the carriage and choose what they look at as the world Scrolls past them from here you can spend upwards of 20 minutes walking talking and exploring the lab before the incident and in Black Mesa it's another ten after that before you receive the now legendary crowbar and another ten after that before you receive your first handgun all told it's some 45 minutes of introductory setup before the full game rhythm is established and Gordon is fully loosed on the Black Mesa research facility in retrospect the courage of this slow build cannot be overstated shooters in the late 1990s relentlessly competed for the title of best doom or quake clone racing to see how quickly they could push players into indiscriminate slaying half-life's approach was the opposite demand the players patience for an inordinate length of time and hope they consider the payoff worth it one of the things that makes Black Mesa feel so pertinent is that this decision still feels courageous twenty-two years later you'll struggle to name an action game released any time in the last two decades that takes this long to fully open up Deus Ex mankind divided takes six minutes to get a weapon into your hand from the moment the idols logo appears Bioshock grants you the electro bolt in the first 10 minutes Metro 2033 immediately thrusts you into a mission fully armed some of the most celebrated pensive action games of the modern era didn't have half the nerve that half-life did foreshadowing is a key tool in the half-life toolbox a chatter amongst the scientists seems dripping with it they're waiting for you in the test chamber the brief flash of Zen during the incident hints at our future destination the sight of enemies encased in glass shows us what will soon be fighting rumors of the military's arrival our giveaways that they probably aren't there to help people evacuate safely half-life delicately plant seeds in the players mind that always later germinate into playable experiences there's little fat to be trimmed everything you see here or interact with exists to alert you to what's coming next or to immerse you in the here-and-now immersion is one of the pillars of half-life's legacy we take for granted now the idea that first-person experiences should aim to build convincing worlds and decorate them with sights and sounds that sell the experience in 1998 this was not the established norm games art wider and wider out from reality in search of fantastical settings realism was not only undesirable it was actively avoided a game set almost entirely in a single contiguous scientific research facility where the only other characters you meet a lab coat wearing scientists and uniform wearing rent-a-cops would have been a tough pitch to a publisher prior to 1998 shut up it's not just the setting though it's the minimalism the environments of the Black Mesa research facility are exactly what you'd expect them to be and nothing more they are long stretches of corridors and ventilation systems their office spaces their warehouse and mechanic workshops and sewers they aren't innovative spins on these spaces either they're pretty faithful recreations for better or worse for better the Black Mesa research facility is an enduring landmark in gaming because of its immersive quality with little to distract from the authenticity of space there's little to shatter the sense of immersion that's constantly built upon from the moment that train starts rolling into the station each section of the facility seems to flow unassumingly into the next with little pomp or ceremony even today almost no games choose realistic settings for cinematic story-driven first-person shooters 20 years later the Black Mesa research facility feels as unique and relevant as it did back then this commitment to authenticity did come with a downside and that was some repetitiveness in objective design almost all the environments in half-life are like an unplugged power cable waiting for you to plug them back in the setup becomes familiar a scientist or security guard tells you the powers down and you need to get it back on to progress there are typically two or three areas that you need to clear to make this happen so off you go killing soldiers and aliens before returning to the starting point and flipping the switch the adornments might change from area to area the objective stays the same get the power back on Gordon if you can get the power on that train down

that won't take us to the surface while this can become repetitive it's never unclear because of half-life's linearity a quality that makes Black Mesa feel like a palate cleanser when played today modern games are loath to be linear just as they aim to get the action rolling fast or serve up spectacular spaces they similarly seek to give the player as much freedom as possible in level and objective design open-worldbecame the default designed philosophy  for video games this generation with linear franchises like Ghost Recon God of War and Metro making the jump to open-world with these new design philosophies comes overhead quests side quests quest tracking menus Maps map markers GPS navigators fast travel and more half-life doesn't have maps or markers or quests or side quests because it doesn't need them it's a single linear journey that provides for only slight detours rewarding you with additional health or ammo pickups you'll see 95% of half-life just by playing it and you're not particularly incentivized to hunt down that remaining 5-percent like that train at the beginning half-life feels like an amusement-park ride that you simply hop on and move through and then it's done there's great comfort and clarity and enjoyment in the knowledge that every moment has been designed to encourage you to move forward rather than Pat it out to encourage horizontal exploration or backtracking this philosophy carries through into half-life's progression systems which is to say that there are no progression systems there are no experience points no weapon unlocks no suit upgrades no currencies to unlock cosmetics the only character progression exists in gaining access to your HEV suit at the start unlock new weapons throughout your playthrough and later in getting access to the jetpack beyond this Gordon remains regular old Gordon right the way through where it to exist this way in a newly released again today this lack of progression would be called boldness but half-life released before RPG systems permeated every genre of gaming back then it just wasn't a thing and today half-life feels all the better for it to hear half-life describe this way with its singular world design its linear structure its repetitive objective design and its lack of progression systems it might sound as though half-life is an unsophisticated and homogeneous game the reality couldn't be further from the truth but these simple design elements in place valve used them to do what no other game before it had done reach across genres in 1998 gaming was still in its infancy the Nintendo Entertainment System had pushed gaming into the mainstream and the release of the Sony Playstation shoved it into the 3d era back then PC gaming wasn't as avant-garde as it is today consumer levels 3d accelerated GPUs only started coming on to the market in 1996 the year that quake released and changed shooters forever with graphical advanced at making the first-person perspective more realistic than ever before efforts were directed towards faster action and bigger explosions valve understood that action was at the core of the first-person shooter experience but they were the first developer to simultaneously set other objectives for the first-person perspective at the top of that list is cinematic storytelling half-life is often credited as being the first thinking man's shooter but this isn't true there were quite a few games before half-life that delivered on that most notably systems shot from Looking Glass technologies when half-life did better than any game before it was placing you in the shoes of Gordon Freeman and letting the story unfold through your eyes uninterrupted by cutscenes or text boxes Gordon's ability to chat with scientists or ignore them was novel as was his ability to eavesdrop on their conversation should he choose to the decision to make Gordon the catalyst for the incident was also breakthrough a sort of interactive seen that no one had seen before these are techniques which are old had to us now but it was half-life that first introduced us to them Mao's ambition didn't stop there where half-life could have remained in permanent high gear after the arrival of the alien invasion or the military valve instead chose to judiciously pump the brakes and deliver tents first person horror before anyone else was doing that

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the headcrab zombies were directly inspired by Ridley Scott's alien and their shambling demeanor was inspired by Resident Evil the opening levels including anomalous materials unforeseen consequences and we've got hostiles all lean on quiet suspense file or than they do all-out action the monster at the center of the blast pit mirrors the asymmetrical power of the alien aboard the sevastopol albeit a stationary version questionable ethics is the mad scientist laboratory house of horrors and the lambda core feels like one last tense inhalation before the closing act of the game begins vows accomplishment here is impressive because all parts of the experience are as good as each other half-life shines as an interactive storytelling experience just as it terrifies as a horror game just as it competes with some of the best action games at the time and since three tranches of game exists here with no compromises made to deliver on them and no awkward separations between them to shatter the immersion that half-life so carefully maintains as an action game half-life's most notable achievement was enemy AI it's little exaggeration to say that with the exception of 2005 s fear no real advancements have been made since half-life AI is this gaping hole in the rich history of video game advancements and even today half life's enemies hold up as an above-average showing they'll flank you aggressively pin you down flush you out with grenades and coordinate with each other to press their advantage they don't often make rookie errors like exposing themselves needlessly they much prefer waiting near cover for you to expose yourself a stark contrast to modern-day AI which seems to make a point of walking into your line of fire as often as possible AI aside half-life is an action game that never struggled with the fundamentals weapons are simple but satisfying to fire ammo and health are plentiful allowing you to pull the trigger and take chances rather than hoard your ammo or cower constantly behind cover there's a blockbuster quality to it all which the crowbar collective have done incredible work to restore surface tension is the famous combat mission in the game a sprawling near two-hour long epic of attack helicopters and tanks and mortar fire and mayhem seeing all of this unfold in the source engine with more detail and at a larger scale than ever before was an incredible thrill it's relentlessness stands in stark contrast to the typical urban flow of the previous chapters cementing valve as masters of pacing pacing is another of half-life's most celebrated features it's easy to contrast the different levels and how their action or suspense focus sits an undulating rhythm to the game but there are more subtle tricks that valve employees to keep things moving such as the way objectives or key information are succinctly presented half-life doesn't need frustrating text pop-ups and tutorials to teach players new mechanics or enemy behavior when they want to show you that the military mean business they just show you when they want to demonstrate how a turret works they just showcase that to half-life never gets bogged down and trying to grow the players understanding of the world they assume that players intelligence and trust in their ability to figure things out it's fair to say that we've taken very big steps back from this over the last two decades one often overlooked point is the mythology of the freeman and how carefully it's constructed during a playthrough at the start you're nothing you're just a guy doing a thing catching a train late to work you put your suit on and you're safer but no stronger in the original half-life you're given your crowbar immediately after the incident but in Black Mesa you'll spend a few moments being protected by a security guard its crowbar collective selling the idea that Freeman is helpless and needs protecting as the adventure unfolds your centrality and legend come into sharper relief people have heard of some scientist who's making his way through the facility then they know you by name and comment that your reputation precedes you you see your name written on the wall in blood presumably by the military have made you their number one target but the biggest giveaway that you're not just anyone comes from a most unlikely source an elderly gentleman dressed in a sharp blue suit who's always watching but you never even speak to him until the very end of the game the g-man is the PSD resistance on top of the half-life experience it speaks to all that remains unspoken within the game what is black mesa who owns it who runs it what its purpose was all this just an accident or was it planned did Gordon have any real volition in all of this or was it some elaborate maze designed to test him it's the g-man silent gaze that raises these questions he isn't helping us or impeding us or even interfacing with us he's just watching from afar like a talent scout on the sidelines you've probably noticed that up to this point I've been referring exclusively to the Black Mesa research facility component of half-life and there's a specific reason for that in the minds of many myself included half-life essentially ended in the lander complex precisely when you jumped into that portal when you emerge at the other side in sin that wasn't half-life that was something else totally separate from the brilliantly constructed Black Mesa facility Xen was a hardly put together mess of floating platforms ively tunnels and disappointing boss encounters it was bad it has its defenders for some reason but even gabe newell has gone on record to voice his disappointment with it it simply wasn't in the same league as the rest of the game and given that it was only about an hour's worth of gameplay anyway it's easy to pretend that it didn't exist there was one group of people who couldn't pretend that though and that group of people was the crowbar collective when they set out to remake half-life in a Source engine they faced a unique challenge with the final portion of the game where the Black Mesa research facility demanded a rigorous commitment to the original vision the Xen felt like it demanded a complete reimagining a ground-up rebuilding that made the section worthy of the half-life legacy crowbar collective were equal to the task investing a total of five years of work to build a conclusion that half-life deserved they absolutely delivered

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besides Zen stunning vistas and environment design the biggest achievement of the crowbar collective is the feeling of cohesion that this redesigned Zen brings to Half Life the original felt separate disconnected crudely bolted on here the opening act goes to great lengths to showcase the explorers that came before you you can see the structures they left behind the equipment you can see the headcrab zombies wearing HEV suits which reminds

you that you are not the first person  through that portal the objective design is also consistent the platforming which half-life is much maligned for stays albeit with a lot more handrails to prevent frustrating deaths there's a segment rigged with explosives reminiscent of a previous section of the game structurally areas will often send you to two or three different spaces to activate switches in a start quite consistent with the whole Gordon get the power back on thing it would have been possible for crowbar collected to really go to town here developing a style of gameplay radically different from the rest of the game perhaps even a better more contemporary model of objective design but doing so wouldn't have felt as a thent eclis half-life crowbar collective showed both wisdom and restraint in letting valve design workguide their own that's not to say that there aren't new ideas on offer here because there certainly are the entire gone arc Slayer level is a tour de force of innovative level design crossed with impressive boss design and it's arguably one of the best sections in the entire game now where things fall down though is in the area that valve had perfected and that's pacing the inter local level goes from being a short section of the game to being a grueling hour and a half long trudge through repetitive puzzles and endless conveyor belts had this section been half as long it probably still would have been too long with the inclusion of Zen in the complete black mesa package there's a discussion to be had about how much this new chapter changes the composition of half-life as we understand it today where before as then could be excised and ignored the way that modern audiences will experience half-life will be shaped in large part by their reaction to Zen now an integral part of the overall experience the good news is that Zen is largely fantastic and I would say that anyone who has not yet experienced it should the three to four hours that you spend there our worth the ticket price at the same time half-life will now forever be a game of two parts the genius of the Black Mesa research facility has brought to us by valve and the brilliance of Xen brought to us by the crowbar collective that a group of modders working in their spare time for some 15 years could accomplish something on Valve's level is a testament to their hard work and dedication and their talent I wasn't planning on reviewing Black Mesa but gabe newell recently did a fascinating interview with IGN about half-life Alex and the legacy of half-life in general in it he said something that really struck me he said half-life games are supposed to solve interesting problems and struck me because I kind of instinctively knew that but I never really thought of it that way I don't we steal all these people clamor for half-life 3 and I think to myself no half-life 3 doesn't need to exist yet there's not enough reason for half-life 3 to exist I actually thought that exact thought but I've never really linked it to the need for half-life to answer questions or solve problems Gabe did that for me in his response I got thinking about the kinds of problems that each half-life game has sold which proved to be the perfect catalyst for a playthrough of Black Mesa which in turn gave me an excuse to review it so thanks Gabe with regards to the legacy of half-life no one video could ever tell that story but Danny O'Dwyer of noclip did a sterling job in covering as much as is humanly possible I recommend watching it if you haven't for me I'm still fixated on that question what problems did half-life solve and I would offer my thoughts on the matter here in summary of this video I think the central thesis of half-life is what if a video game felt real the first-person perspective wasn't at all new its history can be traced back to wireframe experiences in the 70s what was new in 1998 was the ability to render 3d graphics on home PCs and through polygons achieve a level of realism that sprites were unable to deliver half-life was the first game to take this first-person perspective combine it with the technological possibilities of 3d and direct that combination to the creation of something other than gory shooting you can see this thesis echoing throughout every single part of half-life the unassuming everyman character the innocuous chatter of the scientists the interactivity of the world and its physical objects the simplicity of the crowbar the realism of the setting the intelligence of the military troops it's also grounded so immersive and so real that not even an alien invasion and a trip to another dimension can shatter the willful suspension of disbelief in answering the question what if a video game felt real valve had to break tremendous amounts of new ground its graphic engine had to handle physics better than anything that had come before it they had to figure out an entirely new approach to first-person storytelling level-design enemy AI and probably hundreds and thousands of things that you and I didn't even notice back then or even today we can look at Tetris Mario doom Mortal Kombat Ocarina of Time and dozens of other groundbreaking games and their impact immediately jumps out at us it's clear why Metal Gear Solid was the phenomenon that it was half-life is certainly one of the most influential games ever made but unpacking the subtlety of its genius is hard when viewing the source material that's what makes Black Mesa so important it takes the original faithfully recreates its best parts fixes its worst and most importantly makes us feel like we're experiencing half-life for the very first time with a game as itched into memory as this one that's a tremendous achievement and the best possible compliment I can offer to the crowbar collective you speaking of user-created content you guys should totally check out Squarespace if you have a hobby a business idea or you just want to share things 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