I’m guessing Xen is going to be way more than just a complete remake?
yes
Xen in the original HL always felt to me like they wanted something alien but weren’t quite sure what. They went with organic floopy textures but it was never very clear quite what they were meant to be representing.
Part of me thinks that the Plains of Oblivion in Oblivion had a very Xen-ish feeling to them both in style and function. They seemed to be heavily Giger-inspired, and I wonder if maybe moving in that direction and giving Xen a Giger-esque appearance (though maybe not palette) would be a good idea. Just a thought.
Personally though I would think that Xen should look more like coral viewed under high magnification. 
I am the only one who liked Xen’s style?
I enjoyed xen until the factory like part.
I totally trust the devs anyway.
Never completed it due to the new game physics/mechanics- almost felt like a different game. I just got frustrated and quit. Won’t this time though.
if someone took a giant whale made of coral and then exploded it in slow motion in zero gravity…
That’s what Xen should look like…
I think the Xen section of Blue Shift was a much more enjoyable experience. Everything felt so much more natural. It had the floating islands sure, but the need to jump around was greatly reduced and there were other features and landmarks such as rivers and waterfalls.
Would be nice to see more evidence of an ecosystem and food chain too, such as bullsquids fending off scavengers from a fresh carcass or barnacles consuming headcrabs / leeches etc.
The xen factory could be awesome without those terrible conveyer belt and jumping sections.
There were living human NPCs on Xen in the original. One in the Nihilanth chapter and in the ending when the G-man is talking to you, you see military style equipment which means that the HECU is there in places that you don’t get to explore.
I, too, enjoyed the utter change in…well…everything that Xen provided. Many people found it jarring, but that’s kind of the point. To throw the player out of their comfort zone and be forced to adapt to something entirely alien to what they are used to.
Seconded.
it would be nice to see more signs of human-xenian interactions
and maybe show human jets and tanks teleporting into xen to take on the creatures (remeber when GMAN mentions xen being “under our control, thanks to you”)
maybe it would be nice to see more human precence (dead or alive)
May I suggest the Adam Foster developed map mod “Someplace Else” as a good inspiration for how to change Xen for the better.
I asked if it would take weeks or months before it would be released, and I’m pretty sure that was the answer.
It was already confirmed above.
Almost all of these suggestions sound awesome! The walls always did look very giger-esque, just without the black aesthetic. The pictures posted here by soulslicer are also pretty interesting, only one of which looks like BM concept art, but still (sorry can’t copy the images’ addresses, I’m on my iPad now).
Edit: I noticed with forum change, the “creature” classification was switched. I was already on Zombie though so it didn’t effect me 
! I guess I’ll never have the chance to be a Houndeye though 
(I think I was a Bullsquid before the initial change, maybe Headcrab). W/E Black Mesa tommorow is gonna be sweet :jizz:!
xen has low grave, hl2 you can pick things up I want to toss a head crab into space… (that’s a joke)
I would prefer they remade Xen as-is. Perhaps move some of the platforms closer together or whatever to make it easier for the people that complain about that stuff. Otherwise, leave it intact, is my thought. I never had a problem with Xen. Aesthetically or gameplay-wise. Perhaps the AI on some of the creatures could be made so that you could sneak past them. That would be interesting. Maybe they already did that for Black Mesa, who knows. But in general, Xen is what it should be: a totally weird alien border world.
Platforming at the section right before the factory pissed me off but I enjoyed it also.
Nope. I liked Xen as well.
I think I said this a long time ago in an unrelated Xen topic… But if you were to see NPC marines/HECU who randomly found themselves on Xen, it would seem fairly logical that they would not attack you. In that situation IRL they would probably no longer view you as their mission objective or a hostile, since they aren’t on earth anymore and would see you (a scientist!) as their only way back. In fact, they would probably become friendly and help you in a similar way that the BM guards do.
EDIT: So in other words, it might be cool to have them there.
Seems kinda reasonable to me.
All I hope for is that they keep it looking alien as hell, with clearly organic-looking geology, or at least the weird rock stuff. I personally didn’t have any problems at all with the platforming, except for that really weird section in Interloper that to this day confuses the shit out of me, even after a decade.