On 19 November 1998, videogaming changed forever when game developer Valve released Half-Life. 50+ ‘Game of the Year’ awards and inclusion in various ‘most influential games’ rankings attest to the fundamental shift Half-Life represents within the first-person-shooter (FPS) genre of videogames, taking it to a new level from the standard previously set by 1993’s Doom. In terms of immersion, storytelling and worldbuilding, there is a before and after Half-Life.

Valve followed its success with Half-Life 2 in 2004, the six year development time a first indicator of what would infamously become known as ‘Valve time’. Like its predecessor, Half-Life 2 represented another levelling up in the standards of FPS videogames through the introduction of realistic physics effects, advances in rendering of NPCs and the more extensive setting compared to its predecessor. Included with Half-Life 2 was an updated version of Half-Life, rendered on Valve’s new game engine. Without any real upgrades to graphics or gameplay, however, this was such a disappointment that some fans set out to completely rebuild Half-Life themselves. The product of this work is Black Mesa, a full remaster of the original game, completed after its very own 16 year long development journey. When the definitive version was finally published in 2020, the world of videogames had again moved on, and Half-Life 2 was hardly cutting edge anymore. Nonetheless, Black Mesa’s positive reception and the ability of a fan-based team to deliver a critically acclaimed remasters are a testament to the enduring legacy of Half-Life and the potential for a games industry not wholly captured by risk-averse triple-A studios.

Half-Life was my formative FPS. I have replayed it so many times that I can recall entire sections of it better than real places where I have lived, and I cannot help run its opening sequence in my head whenever I’m on any form of light rail. When Half-Life 2 came out in 2004 the payoff felt worth the long wait, and Valve displayed their expected panache for storytelling and game design, introducing physics in ways that had never been seen before, laying the groundwork for their next hit, 2007’s Portal. Next, however, was an abortive foray into ‘episodic’ games with Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, each with development times that rivalled those of full, standalone games. The long awaited Episode 3 never materialised, nor did Half-Life 3, and from here Valve’s creative output effectively ceased. My suspicion that Valve were holding out for another step-change in gaming technology was confirmed when Half-Life: Alyx was released in 2020 as a virtual reality (VR) exclusive. Alyx did not advance the Half-Life story however, and nothing has emerged from Valve since, leaving the Half-Life universe the gaming equivalent of Game of Thrones.

The most memorable commute in videogames. Video is from the original Half Life.

It was therefore exciting to see the development of the Half-Life remaster running in parallel with Valve’s metamorphosis from a vanguard game developer to toll collector on Steam, the largest PC game distribution platform. As the community effort consolidated into the Crowbar Collective and was eventually endorsed by Valve, I played several of the incomplete and demo releases, until the definitive version of Black Mesa finally landed in 2020. Now a recent replay presented an opportunity to assess how well a six year old remaster of a 28 year old game stands up against the games of today.

Welcome to the Black Mesa Research Facility. Have a safe and productive day

The strongest quality of Black Mesa remains the organic storytelling and worldbuilding it inherits from Half-Life. From the moment we enter the Black Mesa Research Facility using the iconic monorail train from Level 3 Dormitories to Sector C Test Labs, we know that there is a whole intricate world out there beyond the player's direct experience, and this approach is sustained throughout the game. It is one of the areas where Black Mesa outdoes its source material, because Crowbar Collective was able to significantly expand and enhance the last four chapters set in the alien ‘Xen’ world, using materials Valve omitted from Half-Life to meet its release schedule, as well as retconned references to Half-Life 2, strengthening the connection between the two games. Black Mesa tells this story without cut scenes, dialogue, quick-time events or an extensive encyclopedia of lore. Instead, we build our understanding of this world from environmental clues, snippets of overheard conversation and brief interactions with NPCs.

This lack of interruptions means that Black Mesa maintains excellent pacing. There are slower and more frantic sections, but the core gameplay is hardly ever interrupted by cut scenes or other non-playable events. Chapters build logically on one another, with a gradual and sensible escalation in terms of weaponry and enemies. Despite eventually carrying the armaments of a small platoon and wearing high-impact reactive armour, Black Mesa mercilessly punishes any attempts to Rambo through combat, forcing the player to think and strategize while on the move. As ‘cover’ was not a mechanic supported by the Source engine there is no sequence of conveniently placed chest-height walls to hunker behind, and instead the most taxing combat sequences require mobility and careful use of the environment to overcome.

The logical, linear structure makes Black Mesa delightfully simple (if not necessarily easy), but can feel contrived and railroading when contrasted with contemporary games. Funnelling the player down a single path means that the Black Mesa Research Facility has an unusual number of locked doors and explosive-proof windows, which can occasionally break suspension of disbelief or cause frustration, in particular when the ‘correct’ path is not immediately clear and the game refuses to offer multiple routes to the same objective in a way that we have come to expect from more modern games.

That annoyance of being railroaded is felt more strongly when confronted with various platform or physics puzzles that now feel anachronistic and interfere with flow. While Black Mesa vastly improved on the jumping challenges in the ‘Xen’ chapter, we still have an entire chapter of platforming through a waste processing plant that was clearly designed before Health & Safety was invented and which is both tedious and unconvincing, especially when contrasted with the rest of the in-game environment.

Graphics are where Black Mesa is weakest, which is no surprise for a game using a game engine, textures and assets from over two decades ago, some updates by Valve in the intervening years notwithstanding. Half-Life 2’s NPCs were a massive step up in 2004, but two decades on appear mildly wooden and repetitive, with the the player facing the same four soldiers over and over again. As someone not too invested in the latest graphics I would say the environments hold up okay as a whole, as long as you don’t look too closely at any of the textures.

Somewhat outdated graphics notwithstanding, the Xen chapters are an enormous improvement over the original, infusing the last third of the game with a sense of wonder that it did not previously possess.

The right man in the wrong place

Despite its age, there remains something refreshing about Black Mesa, in particular when compared to more expansive modern games. It is proof of the adage that less can indeed be more. This is a game that still features the mute protagonist, without conversation trees, side quests, morality points, or weapon upgrades. Repeatedly I found myself comparing Black Mesa to the last shooter I played: the Mass Effect remaster, and doing so favourably.

Despite being set in a single facility, Black Mesa feels grander than the world of Mass Effect, even though the the latter is spread over much of the galaxy. It achieves this not through the multiplicity of locations or the size of the game, as 1998 technology seriously limited both. It convinces you because throughout the game, the Black Mesa Research Facility implies that at any time, you are only seeing part of a greater whole. Every area is littered with signs pointing to other locations, processes or activities that you never experience. All around you NPCs are taking their own actions: marines fighting aliens, security personnel trying to survive, scientists desperately seeking a solution while being massacred by aliens and the military alike. Mass Effect, by contrast, always feels small. Even in the third game, its locations feel oddly circumscribed, and plastering some flying cars on the skybox does not fix that. This is not true for all parts of the game, but for a surprising amount of it, its locations are so obviously designed around gameplay that they don’t really convince as ‘real’ locations, let alone as parts of a greater universe.

This sense that you are not the centre of the universe extends to the player as well. Playing as Gordon Freeman in Black Mesa, you start as a recent PhD graduate down at the academic pecking order, paying off your student loans by shoving mysterious samples into the ‘anti-mass spectrometer’. When this accidentally makes you instrumental to creating the dimensional rift that starts the alien invasion of the research facility, the key reason it is you and not anyone else who has to go to the surface for help is because you happen to wear that convenient armour. For the first half of the game you are directed by other scientists and events, and it is only as the game progresses and the military starts hunting you specifically that the game acknowledges that you are somehow special. Contrast this to Mass Effect, where from the opening sequence it is established that Commander Shepard is a very special boy/girl. Mass Effect opens with your superiors at the highest levels of government discussing why you, and only you, are uniquely qualified for consideration for the galaxy’s most prestigious special forces outfit. Black Mesa opens with you running late on your commute to work. It is unavoidable for an FPS to make the hero(ine) the central character of the story, but Black Mesa tells you right up to the end that there were others like you who tried and failed, and that your ultimate victory was in no way predestined. In Mass Effect, everyone agrees (and tells you, ad nauseam) that you are the saviour of the galaxy. In Black Mesa, on winning the game you effectively get told you were just the statistically expected victor from among a larger pool of contenders.

Community action

At sixteen years of development, Crowbar Collective’s successful release of Black Mesa feels almost as unlikely as Gordon Freeman’s victory over Half-Life’s endboss. Gaming is now a mature enough industry to have its fair share of reboots and remasters, but in the main these are pushed by studios themselves, or whoever ended up with the relevant intellectual property. That is, when studios care enough to continue looking after their legacy. Recent years have seen controversial decisions by studios to discontinue games altogether, leaving players with unsupported and at times unplayable software. It has brought into focus the insidious nature of an industry that sells players ‘licenses’ to play, rather than ownership of games. While not the worst offender, Valve itself has come in for scrutiny over its lacklustre updates to its portfolio of legacy games, in particular given the dearth of new releases in recent years, as well as its facilitation of large studios extracting every last drop of value from games through Steam. Though unlike some of its competitors, Valve has at least shown itself willing to support an ecosystem of modifications and spin-offs, with Black Mesa probably the most elaborate example of this.

Black Mesa is a testament to both the enduring impact of Half-Life and the perseverance of its community of fans. With its somewhat outdated graphics and gameplay it may not hold much appeal to a new generation of gamers who did not experience the original and can choose from a plethora of games inconceivable in 1998. That would be a shame however, because Black Mesa's storytelling remains outstanding, and the game still offers a balanced, well-paced challenge to players. As an entry point for one of gaming's most iconic series it is well superior to the original. The Black Mesa Research Facility, while cutting edge in 1998, may now look a bit dated, but it is still well worth visiting.

Notes & Suggestions

• In response to studio decisions to discontinue games that still had a vibrant (albeit often small) gaming community, gamers have banded together in the Stop Killing Games initiative. One of the asks of the campaign is for studios to adopt legacy arrangements for games, rather than simply shutting them down. Good Old Games, a competitor platform to Steam, also runs an extensive library of older games as well as a ‘games preservation programme’.
• The honour of most extensive fan-built project probably goes to Tamriel Rebuilt, an effort to build the entire fictional world of Tamriel from the The Elder Scrolls series as a modification of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Bethesda games generally attract lots of player-made modifications, especially for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which has resulted in fully-fledged standalone games such as The Forgotten City. While Bethesda’s openness to player involvement has always been welcomed, this has not prevented the studio from occasionally trying to monetise players’ free labour, with connivance of our friends at Valve. The efforts of the Tamriel Rebuilt community were also covered in Tribune and Ars Technica.
• Yahtzee Croshaw has one of his usual entertaining videos on Black Mesa, covering some of the same points.

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