So… about developer commentaries in Black Mesa. After seeing the commentaries of Hezus’ Uplink remake, what are your thoughts on this? Should it be included or not (if they have at all?).
Yes, please! I’d rather have commentaries than Xen even. I know that dichotomy doesn’t make sense, but it shows how important it is to me. Since Black Mesa is a modern re-imagining of a classic, the process of its creation is just as interesting (if not more so, in some ways) as the experience of the finished product itself.
So, yes, I’m happy they’re working on Xen, but I’d be ecstatic If I knew that we would be hearing the dev’s voices on the myriad of decisions they had to make. Think about it. It’s not only the technical sides of level design, but how they tried to give those levels a better sense of “place” by making them more authentic, and how they expanded the script without falling on fanboyism (“ooooh, here’s Breen saying hello”.)
To sum up: I really, really hope that at least some of the devs take some time to give us at least some developer commentaries.
Developer commentary was one of the things I was most looking forward to whilst Black Mesa was still unreleased. I knew the game would be great no matter what, but was excited to hear their reasoning behind what they changed and the processes they went through over such a long development. Was kinda sad when I first loaded up and saw there wasn’t any commentary, they must have some great “war stories” they could tell…
On that note, what happened to those posts Raminator said they’d do showing the progression of different levels over the years?
I hope that they’ll do it.
Raminator stated something about it while ago.
In the end, it’s source engine:
why do not use one of the most interesting feature of this engine?
They’ll add it in the next update. I’m sure of it.
that would be great!
guys with a team of 40 man ittakes ages to get them all todo proper sounds recording and placing it in the game, i am sure they got other things to spend thier time on,
and hell no id rather have xen instead of commentary
Sure Xen and Deathmatch are more important, but I think commentaries are the best way to understand the changes and decisions upon the different areas of the game.
Agreed 100%. I would love to see a commentary feature.
i Want to see Commentary before EVERYTHING
Developer Commentary is the best thing in existence. Better then Xen
I want to see the commentary before the commentary and I want to see xen before xen.
They should release the Xen Commentary before Xen.
That’ll be fun.
Walking around a bunch of black levels having every change explained away before you even see it.
Sign me up.
They’re not going to do commentary. I’m pretty sure that they’ve said it. Making people happy is not a priority for the Black Mesa dev team.
Are you implying it should be? Because it shouldn’t. They have absolutely no obligations to anyone at all.
Also, I seem to remember a dev saying they were discussing it and that some devs wanted to do it, but I’m not sure.
Last I heard, it was a consideration, but not likely. This was a very long time ago though, and I can’t imagine our chances would be going up as time went on.
Didn’t James say “A few of us, including myself, are working on commentaries”?
Yeah, a year and a half ago. We don’t know if they’re going to do it though, it’s been a long time and I doubt the chances have gotten any better.
Oh, my bad. :\ It’d be nice if we could get a dev’s opinion or word on the subject, but they’re all probably busy jizzing all over Xen.