:3
That was really the best description I could come up with.
i haven’t played Crysis but wasn’t that part was in zero gravity? something like that would be awesome in Xen, even if only parts were in zero-g.
well it fit perfectly, lol. it was just a totally bizarre image on it’s own.
Eli and Issac are referred to by name in BM, which I like
and Issac meets Lamarr!
but that has nothing to do with Xen
On topic
Xen is a borderworld, it’s not a real planet
it’s a staging area for the Nihilanth to launch attacks on earth by using the crstals there to teleport in Vorts, Manta Ships, Alien grunts and other Xenian creatures
You also get a sneek peek of Xen in Questionable Ethics chapter
you also get to gas headcrabs with that sneak peek.
The new xen reminds me of the caverns in episode 2
For me, the biggest problem with Xen wasn’t actually the dull factory or the island hopping (though those bits where you hop onto the manta rays are just obtuse). It’s that you just teleport from place to place with no sense of continuity (or agency, you’re just jumping into portals because it’s the only thing you can do). One of Half-Life’s greatest strengths was that it showed you every step along the way: you experience every corridor and every vent from the morning Tram until you step into the teleporter. Later games do it too, and better: this whole thing about showing you the Citadel in the very first chapter of Half-Life 2, so you know what you’ll be blowing up at the end*. With Xen you have none of that. You teleport into all these spaces with different coloured skies and have no sense of what links them together. Because nothing does, really - they’re just an assortment of different gameplay ideas.
Even if the environments were essentially unchanged, I’d like to see the BM team make a version of Xen that cuts out a lot of the inter-Xen teleportation, and hints more completely at what awaits you as you traverse the borderworld. Like, from ‘Xen’, you can see the larger floating island on which ‘Gonarch’s Lair’ takes place. Or instead of teleporting from island to (bigger) island to factory, to the Nihlianth’s spiky porch, the whole of “Interloper” is one seamless sequence in which you jump and traverse you way to the big bad with intent, rather than just blundering into his lair.
- Marc Laidlaw actually talks about this in Raising the Bar "We wanted the end of the game to feed directly into the beginning. From the first seconds of the game, we wanted the player to see where his journey would take him, so that when he finally got to the Citadel, he would have the strongest possible relationship with it. We had failed to do that with HL1, and we were determined not to repeat our mistake"
im alittle confused here, is the xen not included in the mod, i just finished the game up till you jump in the portal and that was it the credits started to roll. i just found out about this mod on friday, so im not sure about all the details ( and i guess i fail at googling cause i found nothing )
I know this is probably in the wrong area and will never happen, but I think that the end of half life was to abrupt taht there should be levels after the nihilanth boss fight. so here is my idea
level name: rebellion
info: the nihilanth is dead but you are still stuck on xen, the vortigaunts are starting to rebel against the Agrunts and controllers, you must help them to escape xen.
reason for: prolog chapter of sort
set up: you are teleported out of the nihilanths chamber and the first thing you see is a vort taking of the bands around its wrists while one that doesn’t have them helps you up. you start in a small cave that has some xen equipment in it including some hive hands and sharks. (wich will be the main weapons for this part the portal brought you but not the weapons)
the point of this level is to work your way out of a alien tower of some sort, fighting to get to a portal room and to free the vorts.
level end: you enter a portal chamber of sorts and the vorts push a button, this leads to the g-man thing at the end.
It’s an interesting idea. But if the DEVs even decide to include something short after the battle, it should be an escape from the crumbling cavern you’re still in, just to emerge and see some sort of massive skybox event, signafying the Nihilianth’s defeat had released Xen, allowing it to finally pass between the realms.
This is all observed as the player treks down a lonely Xenian (floating) isthmus to a portal back to Earth. Upon entering, the Gman sequence begins.
ho about this
location some where in xen, the player comes across a small group of vorts that are not in slaved they are being attacked by a grunts and a controller, the player, has to help them to get pas the area, once done so you will rarely run into freed vorts… never mind doesn’t really make sense.
gordon wasnt wearing a helmet with his hev suit, so xen’s air is perfectly breathable by humans
barney in blue shift could also travel xen without problems (same with adrian shepard)
and in half life 1, ther IS a scientist somewhere in xen, you can find him by noclipping the nihilanth map
edit will nihalanth also give telepathic messages to freeman while he is in xen? it would be cool to see references of the combine
and will nihilanth sport signs of surgical injurys? from what i recall, the combine tried to “SYNTHesize” the nihilanth and it’s species
you don’t have to noclip to get to that scientist, some good usage of jump pad and tau cannon launches does it just fine.
it would be interesting to see some f15 jets teleport into xen and get shot down by manta rays (in the ending, gman teleports you near a battlefield littered with human tanks and jets right before stating how “Xen is now under our control”
^ They would be harriers, since that’s the fighter model used in BM.
xen just need play after you take out nihilanth, sort of felt flat, BOOM epic boss fight, then over, no winding down, no showing what it caused, no explaining how the vorts rebelled just end. needs more after.
Speaking of Xen and the ending, they should make the “impossible battle” that G-man gives you if you refuse actually “playable”, but just give Gordon a shotgun with 8 shells vs and enough alien grunts that you can’t even fire them all before you die.
lance that give me an idea… know my ideas are worth crap but still.
maybe taking that path would lead to the story of how the vorts rebel, once you chose that it should put you in that battle unarmed, but as soon as it starts the vorts in the area should start firing at the grunts… this would start the story line where you lead the vorts to be free. then you get forced to work for g-man in the end.
As long is Half-Life total conversion remake Black Mesa is divided on two parts - the first one released takes place on Black Mesa facility and second one is going to take place at so called Borderworld, inhabited by alien Xen race - I want to offer you guys, Black Mesa developers, not to just add those tiny small 4 Xen chapters and re-release fully-complete remake of Half-Life, but to expand Xen part as much as it can be expanded and release as self-cantained continue of Half-Life: Black Mesa. It can even have an indipendent own title Half-Life: Borderworld for example.
And I’ve wasted some time to understand how exactly Xen World can be expanded. It’s better to see once than to hear for thousand times, so I’ve edited a video walkthrough of the maximally manually expanded Xen Part, so everybody can just simply watch how it might be. I’ve managed to expand Xen Part at a whole third, if originally it took 30 minutes to walkthrough, now it takes fully 45 minutes. And I think it’s quite a good bonus and worth it.
Here is a link to that video walkthrough…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1ceja_XwM0&feature=share&list=PLYaI8eeBkZvfCwGkmxp37A_YsUQNlY9kx
…there’s a playlist with 3 videos.
And here is an explanation, what exactly I’ve done.
First of all. I hope most of you do know that Nihilanth Lair chapter contains 3 isolated hidden locations, where player can be teleported by Nihilanth. But that happens only if player isn’t fast enough to maneuver and dodge Nihilanth “teleport-fireshots”. As a result lots of players never saw those parts of Nihilanth Lair. So I decided to extract those hidden parts of Nihilanth Lair and put them before Nihilanth chamber the way player can’t miss them and simply have to walk all 3 before coming to Nihilanth chamber. I think this maneuver to expand chapter is true to original game and even forces player not to miss good level design, what is always a rewarding for developers.
Second, I have divided the biggest Xen chapter Interloper on 2 independent smaller chapters.
First part takes place outside of the alien facility and at first it did become too short and somehow uncomplete. So I bravely decided to expand it with Opposing Force “Bullsquid Healing Pool” little tiny scene. I hope most of you know what place I mean. In original Half-Life we can even see it for a moment, during Cascade Resonance and those chaotic teleportations. Anyway, I’ve added that Bullsquid Healing Pool right in the middle of the first part of divided Interloper chapter. As for me personally it fits the gameplay real nice and allows you to see where bullsquids live in their natural environment. Well, you can see it by yourself and decide if it’s OK to be there ot included at all.
The second part of divided Interloper takes place solely inside that huge and maze-alike Grunts Cloning Facility. It’s still big enough and works absolutely fine as an independent self-contained chapter.
But that’s not all. When I watched edited draft walkthrough I realized Xen Part World is still too short and still perceived as a some sort of an appendage.
So I’ve made a quite dangerous decision and added a Xen chapter from Half-Life: Blue Shift addon entitled Focal Point. It’s a very big chapter, similar to whole umdivided Interloper chapter. And what is more important it presents very unique Xen environment. Flooded cave system with a lots of impressive waterfalls, which nowhere else are presented. So I tried to put it right after Gonarchs Lair chapter and… and it turned out just as if it was always there, it felt like it’s exactly what was lacking. I hope you will waste your time and watch the video walkthrough and see by yourself how Blue Shift: Focal Point chspter fits the Xen Part.
So here we have 6 very different, artistically self-contained unique chapters. And I think it’s a really good chance to remake original Half-Life Xen World appendage into a fully interesting, diverse and satisfying part.
Of course, it’s just an offer to Black Mesa developers from a usual player. So it’s completely on your own, what to do and what not to. But I really hope you guys at least will waste less than an hour and see by yourselves how it could be. Maybe you’ll find at least some of ideas interesting.
This. To me it just subtracted that whole atmosphere the game had developed right until Lambda Core.
Nihilant? Cool, but I wasn’t okay at the time with the world per se.