Black Mesa, the remake of Half-Life, is nearly finished. Only the hostile other world of Xen is still missing, but it’s being worked on. To prove it, and to celebrate the holidays, the Black Mesa dev team shared the first-ever public screenshot of Xen on their Facebook page.
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You can view the image in its original settinghere. If your impression is that it just looks like a “generic terrestrial cave and barely alien at all”, then you are channelling, verbatim, the reaction of some folks on NeoGAF, as reported by Maxey on the Black Mesa forums. Spooky.
Not to worry, though. TextFAMGUY1, community manager for the Black Mesa devs, posted a replyin which he assures us that “that’s fine, this is one of the less alien parts of Xen. You should see what comes before this screenshot area.”
Apparently, the devs are “saving the really juicy stuff for later.”
In their message to fans on Facebook, the team is still hard at work on Xen, and are currently focusing on gameplay. “We want our version of Xen to feel like it really belongs with the rest of the game in terms of mechanics, cohesion and progression. But we also want to push the boundaries and explore this unique and varied setting.”
The team promise more media, and more detailed progress updates, in the coming months.