Field Marshal Bennett: On the Subject of Black Mesa

Sammie Pennington

The Black Mesa HL2 mod developers have released a trailer which has caused a great deal of ooooh-ing and ahhh-ing around the internet. The mod is essentially supposed to be a faithful remake of the classic HL1, with all of the pretty bells and whistles that the Source engine now has to offer. This differs from Valve's own HL: Source in that Valve's attempt simply used the original art assets and level data but rendered with Source. As such there wasn't a great deal of difference compared with the original, except for certain effects like water which got an automatic upgrade.

That's all fine, and I concur that Black Mesa looks great. It's what HL: Source should have been, but wasn't because Valve weren't dumb enough to waste their time and energy remaking the first game when they could be working on the sequel. And that's my main issue with BM. The amount of time, effort, and undoubtedly talent that has gone into the production over the last several years is impressive, but ultimately I can't help but think to myself "what a monumental fucking waste of time". All that just to remake someone else's game. A game which most people have already played to death. It would be bad enough slaving away to produce someone else's game design the first time round, let alone doing it again for no reason. I find it slightly odd, and slightly disappointing, that they wouldn't put their considerable resources into creating something original. It's not like Valve are untouchable masters of story-writing, or story-telling for that matter. They are mostly masters of polishing games to a mirror finish.

That said, I'm sure there are practical considerations in play, such as the fact that it's probably easier to build a (volunteer) team around a tried-and-tested design than around some random yahoo's original concept. In the latter case there would be too much temptation for people to want to implement their own stupid ideas all the time, and too much opportunity for mutiny and the ultimate implosion of the mod team, something that's not rare in the mod community.

I was considering bringing up this point of view in a forum discussion, but knew instinctively what sort of retarded, defensive, closed-minded response it would provoke so I thought it was better kept to myself. I fully agree that Black Mesa looks very impressive, and given that it should be free (although I can imagine Valve buying it up, team and all, and putting it out at some nominal charge) I'm sure I'd give it a spin. One advantage of remaking a good game (certainly a better game than any of its sequels) is that there's a good chance the remake will inherit at least some of the goodness of the original.

Which is another point, incidentally. To my mind HL1, like Max Payne, is a game that despite showing its age is still very rewarding to play. In fact HL1 benefits from a clean, simple design which gave it a particular signature "look". Black Mesa will end up more like "Half-Life 2: Episode -1" and might lose some of it's charm in the process. But that's something we won't know either way until we get our grubby mitts on it. On the other hand, a "faithful remake" would be in danger of inheriting some of HL1's flaws. Such as the whole Xen section. If they really wanted to do something impressive they could ditch that whole section, and especially the shitty G-Man ending, and come up with something a lot less wanky and idiotic (whereas Valve went on to construct even more wanky and idiotic so-called story lines in HL2 and the subsequent episodes).

Anyway, keep up the good work, Black Mesa team. I read that some of them have already been poached by Valve along the way, which wouldn't surprise me. I'm sure that's what most of them are hoping for in the long run. I expect it's been a great learning experience for them, even if it hasn't resulted in anything especially new or original.