Define realistic.
I didn’t see anything that killed my suspension of disbelief, if that’s what you’re asking.
And, just personally, I thought the voicework was top-notch with the definite exception of the grunts. I use MrSomeguy’s FEAR soundpack (cheers for that, BTW), so even the grunts are now tolerable.
It was realistic from the point of a sci-fi videogame.
I’m seeing the little hate for the grunts voice here, I thought personally that it was suppose to be chessy as any overrated “bad-guys-with-guns” grunts anyway.
Aside from the “accidentally” removed Military VOX in WGH, if they do decide to remake the voices for the grunts, it’s fine. I wonder if the BM Devs would bother fixing that anyway…
(crosses fingers hoping a dev replies)
That’s what they said, but the backlash is for a couple reasons imo:
It was unnecessary. The excuse was that if the VA was realistic, the player would sympathize with them, so their solution was to make them so laughably evil and narm that they seem like more of a walking joke than a person. But the thing is, if that was the worry, then it wasn’t even needed in the first place. In Half-Life, the voices were very heavily distorted, loud and sharp. There wouldn’t have been an issue, the enemies would seem more ‘cold professional’, and I can’t fathom why they chose with approach instead.
Inconsistent direction. It seems a lot of effort was made in making the HECU into less of a sci-fi army and more of a realistic modern military force. They even decided that the force would be comprised of Marines and thus use Marine equipment. The Bradley was replaced with the LAV-25, the howitzers were replaced with more modern and portable TOW Missiles, the Abrams and Osprey were made more realistic. But then they got to the voices, and made them sound extremely cartoony and incompetent. It’s a stark contrast to the rest of their design choices regarding the HECU, perhaps aside from making them seem incompetent by having them focus on you and lose, as opposed to focusing on aliens when you just happen by (this could just be a side-effect of them increasing the number of soldiers whist cutting maps that contained major clashes).
Bad is bad, even if you say it was on purpose. I’m not sure what drove them to take this direction, and I’m surprised everyone was okay with it. It’s a stark contrast not only to the rest of the military’s appearance, but to their entire image in Half-Life. In Half-Life, we had professional Soldiers that simply ended up in over their heads due to the nature of the enemy (there were lots, and they could teleport). Black Mesa’s take on the military was instead a group of gross incompetents who are lucky to tie their own shoe laces. Obviously this decision led to a strong backlash, when the first video leaked with the soldier’s voices, people suddenly began seriously doubting the quality of the mod. Myself included. I can only hope the backlash caused them to reconsider their direction with the military. It’s a shame seeing one of my favorite factions so poorly remade.
They trashed the moral ambiguity in favour of black and white morality. This is more of a total direction rather than vocal direction, but it still fits. In Half-Life, the Soldiers were just doing their jobs fighting the Aliens and ‘punishing’ the labcoats that brought them here in the first place. From the HECU perspective, what we did was go kidnap aliens, bring them here, and cut them up. We were the bad guys, and they were trying to save the world after we fucked it up. Additionally, Gordon Freeman was a rogue psychopath who ran around slaughtering soldiers. In fact, VOX even mentions at one point that they are killing scientists because you are killing them. In Questionable Ethics, we were supposed to learn that the scientists weren’t the white knights in the white coats, they were doing some pretty fucked up shit long before the disaster, you could say they even had it coming. But in Black Mesa, QE opens up with none other than a fucking rape joke. Enough said.
Sorry for the essay, I started out with a couple simply points and ended up with a rant.
I do respect your stance on the voice, and perhaps to some degree acknowledge that it was inconsistent and very bad as you may say it is.
Of course, it’s a mixed bag, considering some like it and some don’t (which I observed that a lot don’t). My thoughts above is from the experience I had with the original Half-Life and what I did come to expect some of that with Black Mesa. I’m really sorry for the people who thought of the grunts differently in the game due to this VA issue, but we may never know any reason whatsoever about the misguided direction until a dev “thoroughly” explains why. Anyway, thanks for explaining the reasons why the community doesn’t like, as I do have a hard time figuring out why myself.
Man, this thread is going off to this VA issue now, perhaps we’ll let it lie for now I think?
Mr. Someguy, man did you have a rant at the last reason. Sorry that you had to write an essay about that. I wonder if Raminator or any other dev is having nightmares about the grunts’ VA backlash?
So, shall we go back on topic anytime soon?
I don’t think the devs care about the backlash. They’re confident about the choice that they made. Why wouldn’t they be? They made it, and they thought pretty carefully about it too. I’m sure they’re secure in their decision. 
Merged your two posts, RAMacindux. Try not to double post in future.
Can we try and get this thread back on topic, if it ever had one?
Oh, sorry Flatline. I was planning to edit my double post but, oh well…
Okay, back on topic:
How is Black Mesa realistic in the sense of environments in the chapters they are set in compared to what the original has set?
An off-topic but a “a-question-that-must-be-questioned”:
I’m seeing this Source SDK 2013 thing on some sites and I have heard that it separates Single Player and Multi-player. I wonder if the devs have any plans on porting to that version of the engine? I think at this point someone already asked but, go figure.
Quick reminder of a dialogue from HL1
“I killed twelve dumbass scientist and not one of them thought back. This sucks”
The HECU did look like cold professional, but they also had their (few) moments of evil dialogues. And some of these guys seemed a bit more sociable.
“Aliens, sure, but civilians ? Who ordered this operation anyway ?”
So yeah, some of them were evil douchebags having fun while others weren’t completely bad guys. That’s what made them interesting, they were highly (HIGHLY) competent professionals, but they were also humans (some of them were completely sociopathic freaks, some were simply good guys not doing the right job, and some of them were after Freeman just for the revenge.) I completely agree with Mr.Someguy, Half-Life was about grey morality, not black vs white.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
