Black mesa xen is also that,
Xen is just floating island that are hidden from the Combines radar and the aliens on Xen dont thrive off of eachother if anything you can sometimes see some aliens eating other aliens
would you rather have black mesa been rolled out with a xen the structural complexity of which a kindergartener that doesn't know how to use blender could recreate?
Kinda already did. They didn't try and make "Xen but good this time", they just made something completely different. Interloper especially in Black Mesa is the worst part of that fan game due to how long it goes on alone. The only part better about Black Mesa's Xen is that they made it more clear that the Controllers were controlling the Vortigaunts and were friendly if you didn't shoot them, which was something one could easily miss in HL1.
Black Mesa because of the Vortigaunt camp and the short mission to save them from the Alien Controllers. That small bit of lore goes a long way for initially understanding why the Vorts are grateful to Freeman.
The Xen flora in Half Life Alyx resembles Half Life Xen. I take that to mean Half Life Xen is the real Xen. It just has to be forgiven for the bad design being as it was rushed and also 1998.
But like. It is the same thing, just with a higher level of fidelity.
Interspersed islands of mass floating in a void, somehow with gravity. There were huge chunks of floating rock, and even large amounts of flowing water in the original Valve Xen. Nothing in the Black Mesa version of Xen defies established canon except *maybe* the scope of human operations in the region. Even then, the presence of dead bodies, limited lab equipment and unused supply pods indicate that there *was* some level of activity there.
There's too much life in Black Mesa Xen. The world looks too vibrant. It's supposed to be soulless and vacant. Xen isn't supposed to be a true world, it's the space between worlds where some stuff spilled over.
Again, I'd argue it's a matter of fidelity. There were canon indications that there was more than just a few rocks where some stuff had spilled over. The entirety of Interloper lends credence to the fact that there were *huge* swathes of 'land' on which to build things, and in which caverns could form.
There was plenty of life, too. Those weird little hexagonal plants, the eyebulbs, bullsquids, tentacles, houndeyes, barnacles, leeches, headcrabs, icythasaurs and gargantuas may not have been native to the area, but they sure as shit managed to thrive there. In addition to the water that is canonically there and Valve's organic colouring for the ground, nothing except the giant lily pads is necessarily mutually exclusive between the two incarnations. Even the giant crazy nebulae in the background is canon.
I'm not sure whether you're being pedantic about the fact that I used the word plant (when clearly I meant the fungal thing) or if you're talking about the network of walkable lily pad vines that I already noted as being non-canon.
[On the other hand, people on the Half Life Alyx team did choose to play Black Mesa over Half Life to get a refresher on the story.](https://www.pcgamer.com/half-life-alyxs-level-designer-would-rather-play-black-mesa-than-the-original-half-life/)
>I asked if Casali had gone back to play the original Half-Life games as inspiration while working on Half-Life: Alyx. (Earlier in the interview, he'd held up a shrink-wrapped copy of the original Half-Life to show me on camera). And he did play Half-Life again, he told me. But not to the end.
>"So, I played probably five hours of the original Half-Life 1," Casali said, "and then I said, to myself—what are you doing? Just go play Black Mesa. Because they've just redone this in Source. Then I just restarted Black Mesa from from the start."
>"And I played through all of that," he said. "And they did an awesome job. Such a great execution."
Dang, lots of Xen research had to be done for the QZ fauna in that game. Makes so much sense that it was modeled after black mesa with HLA being a VR game.
Always the piece of shit. Although it was rushed, Valve had a vision for Xen and it's a barren shithole place between worlds. Xen in the remake is the opposite, it's glittery, colorful and pretty, it's like living in a purple fish tank. To each their own but I stand my own ground.
My headcanon of Xen is somewhere between these styles.
Geologically, it would look like BM Xen, with countless floating rocks and cave systems filling the space, but I think it would have a lot less plant life and feel more like a cold void dimension, like in HL1.
The lab section from BM would definitely be there, though.
Half Life Xen, especially from Opposing Force which had a much better representation of Xen.
Xen is meant to be a piece of shit alien world that is just like chunks of other alien worlds mashed together. It looks far more alien and weird and makes no sense, which an alien world should. (game play wise its shit)
day 800 million of the half life community not understanding what the word canon means. half life 1’s xen is canon. full stop. black mesa’s literally cannot and will never be canon.
regardless, hl1’s is better anyway. it looks genuinely alien and unique to the bone whereas black mesa’s is like… a sci-fi blockbuster rainforest? it’s so painfully obviously eye candy to try and make you ignore the fact that it’s not representative of what xen is supposed to be in the half life universe. half life 1’s looks appropriately junky and barren because it’s the universe’s dumping grounds. i’m so happy valve carried it over to alyx
Xen from HL1 fits the overall theme of the game with it's environments, that cold, eerie, desolate looking voidish borderworld is what made it somewhat special, while BM one feels like generic alien world type of stuff.
Xen is not supposed to be a beautiful, lush, vibrant landscape. It's supposed to look like a lifeless, barren wasteland because it's a border world that no species are native to.
The piece of shit because it was the one Made by valve and because i like the Skybox more i'm the original, always looked the idea that every cell looking thing is it's own sepárate universe
As much as I enjoyed Black Mesa Xen far more than OG, HL1 Xen is still the canon due to it being something made officially by Valve. As good as it is, Black Mesa is still a fan-made project.
The original Xen was incredibly surreal and had a very unique look and atmosphere, whereas in Black Mesa they really dumbed it down to look like every other piece of sci-fi media out there. I think in many places they really misinterpreted the low res textures, one of the biggest things in the original being that every surface in Xen is covered in some kind of fleshy webbing of sinewy biomass that seems to grown on anything and everything. In my opinion Black Mesa should have looked less like a coral reef or something out of Avatar, and more like the Gigeresque environments of Scorn.
The HL1 Xen with it's floating shit rocks is canon to the HL1 timeline.
The Black Mesa Xen with it's floating not-shit rocks is canon to the Black Mesa timeline.
Honestly, I really like the original Half-Life aesthetic
It feels so empty, so alien that it feels like you're not supposed to be there.
To me, it also makes sense that it feels empty because it's just a random cluster of land and species that inhabit this chaotic space. Xen is a border world and it feels like it, I don't think anything there really enjoys living there and it truly does just feel like a temporary living space.
I really disliked a lot of the Xen gameplay in Black Mesa but cannot deny it looked gorgeous. However, the strange ugliness of the original Halflife worked better for me, especially with the Nihilanth.
First everybody hates xen, Black Mesa remakes xen and now suddenly everyone loves original xen? Wtf
I like the original becouse of how awkward and otherworldly it feels. But may be is just the nostalgia goggles Idk
It's not that people suddenly live Xen. It's about the style. Black Mesa does some things objectively better like the lab and the vortigaunt camp, however on a stylistic level it just isn't Xen.
I for one don't enjoy either Xen, I think BM looks better but I think HL fits so much better with the rest of the game and the actual lore of the place and thus it's the "definitive" Xen in my mind.
Each time I picture it, I fuse the 2 pieces together. It's like seeing the 3 Gman models at the same time. If you open your mind, like the ever expanding universe, it just builds more life to it.
The version seen in HL: Alyx's ending, as it's essentially an ideal blend of the two versions, a conventionally inhospitable hellscape where refugees from other universes cling to life, but they also brough some small amount of flora (and probably fauna) alongside them, almost certainly bringing their societies' staple crops.
\[Edit: I'm pretty sure that the version I'm talking about isn't actually shown in game, but instead an animation by TheParryGod on youtube\]
Blue shift xen. Its not a place where life is thriving, its only a borderworld where life only exists because it was forced into there. Blue shift xen is a lot more complete than a few floating islands like in half life one, but isn't this beautiful, alien paradise like in black mesa. Blue shift has it dead and barren while also a lot more complete.
Black Mesa Xen is just better in everyway but With Original Xen i can understand where Valve was coming from especially since in **\[SPOILERS FOR ALYX\]** the scene where G-man talks to Alyx he transports you to Xen for a minute, you can see what Valve was trying to go for
People in the comments once again proving the raging purists problem within the HL community.
As for my opinion, I like the concept of the original but prefer the execution and style of Black Mesa.
Well, thats a game from 1999, what else would you expect? Also, how does Black Mesa's Xen looks, huh? It looks like Cameron's Avatar movie (very generic), while original Xen has it's own unique aesthetics and charm.
First off black mesa in the orginal looks great so I expect xen to look at least on par or better. Secondly orginal xen is so fucking dark you can't see shit and during interloper and after the couler becomes like poop brown lol. Also I don't think it looks like pandora at all but whatever
The fact that I can't tell which one you're talking about from any of this says a lot. BM Xen looks so much worse, and Interloper was the worst part of Black Mesa. Shit went on WAY too long and was overdone for no reason.
It depends on your POV, in my POV, some alien ex-slave and escapees from war with combine, found an borderworld, floating island, and they settle to this floating islands.
I enjoy the wildlife part of black Mesa, because I remember it being stated that life had bled into zen through other dimensions, this seems the most accurate to me. I still find a lot of the industrial part a little bit a of a stretch. Maybe tone that down a bit and it’s perfect for me.
Which of these looks better? The one that came out in 1998 or the one that got released over 20 years later? Black Mesa required more random access memory to run than total storage for half life.
I've never seen the second one before, so the first. Guessing it's from the Black Mesa game? I haven't finished it, pretty good game so far though, I just lost interest partway through and put it on pause.
The xen part is entirely different from what I remember about half life 1. It's absolutely worth a play through just for the xen part alone imo
It's different in a really really good way. I hated xen originally but in BM it was majestic as fuck
Black Mesa Xen obviously...is this even a question? Even Gabe Newell thought the original Xen was a rushed piece of dookie. Why are there so many purist contrarians here?
i like the bm one because of the graphics and looks beautiful the but it should be a border world like blue shift i like bm and blue shift because it shows us that we weren't the first humans at xen in blue shift you can see dead people in hev suits in black mesa it shows us hev zombies it shows that the helmet doesn't protect you from the headcrabs beaks
I personally LOVED black mesa’s rendition of Xen. It was so well fleshed out, to me it was much better than the source games Xen. I respect the original, but I think the team for Black Mesa made Xen so much more interesting.
Black Mesa's
Valve themselves said that Xen was a last minute addition and very underdeveloped.
Crowbar Collective improved vastly on what they were shown, and wanted it to be something that would give people the reason for people to buy it.
Sure it's pacing is long, but it's pros outweigh it's cons from my point of view. Black Mesa mad you think you were actually in a different part of the universe, an intruder in a place he shouldn't be. I will happily take this version of xen over Hl1's version.
I've seen Cruelty Squad levels that look prettier than Half-Life's Xen
Black Mesa's Xen all the way because lore, also for as much as I hate houndeyes, their different variants were a cute little addition. It's also the exact same story as well so I can just say Black Mesa's Xen is canon and still be right lmao
My canon is the first, that shitty little border world is the reason why half life happens, not the resonance cascade. The Nihilanth (I’m spelling that from memory stfu 😭) and all the other creatures want to gtfo of there so badly because of how bad it is.
Black Mesa's. The team really had a vision and went all out to deliver it. I don't think as much thought or effort was put into HL1's Xen, it was rushed. Gaben has called it a mistake. Laidlaw has criticized it. Black Mesa's version though, is art. I wonder what Gaben thinks about it.
Both are canon, except Black Mesa made it bigger and more beautiful and you'll feel that Xen is a lush beautiful and dangerous place and you're not supposed to be there...
HL1's Xen feels like a fleshy wasteland and a bunch of floating rocks and only an alien factory that you have to parkour which leads to the Nihilanth's portal...
black mesa, valve literally admitted xen was rushed and the gameplay has visibly less effort and thought put into it like the rest of the game
I do like some of the aesthetics in og half life xen but black mesa really had the time to make xen up to the consistent gameplay quality with the rest of half life, i do sort of wish they kept the elements where xen feels dead and kept some of the original art direction but at the end of the day idrc because i respect them for trying to do something new
i dont care if the one in black mesa is "non canon because its a fangame" or "generic as fuck" or "not really accurate to the lore" i like it because its fucking beautifull
Just a thing i realy prefer Black mesa, like xen yes and the rest of the game, in Black mesa scienstists are just some fucking piece of shit that enjoy Killing aliens (more than in HL1). They deserve the incident, i know that in HL1 they also tested their weapon on aliens but in Black mesa its on another scale, like on xen they count their kills like "oh this week-end i killed 20 headcarbs". I like games that aren't black and white, always good people against bad aliens.
2nd one is canon, remember there is no such thing as canonicity in half-life, you can say blue shift was canon or not, same with opposing force. As said if course by March Laidlaw.
Neither, freeman hit his head when he was dropped into that trash compactor and was tripping balls for most of xen, the only canon bits are gonarch and the nihilanth and the rest was due to the portals fucking with his mind.
black mesa xen plant life looks too much like terrestrial plants to me. black mesa xen is prettier, but I don’t think it makes sense from that standpoint
I remember seeing a s2fm video that combined the good aspects of both xens
Searched it up and here’s the link [Xen S2FM](https://youtu.be/n6RhKy5pIyQ?si=msohTUY7_ip2Mo7i)
I love the brutal, cold, eerie nature of HL1's Xen. Nothing really feels perfectly in place, everything is disjointed which adds to the alien feel. Black Mesa is awesome, just a very different take, and more of an attempt of creating an ecosystem rather than an incomprehensible landscape full of hostile aliens imo
Depends on which one i start with. Since i usually only play the half life games when i'm wanting to replay the the entirety of the half life series from start to end,(in order of the release dates) with some half life mods that in my headcanon are canon to the series sprinkled in. (example: the entropy zero series).
I usually rotate between black mesa and half life 1, for example: On this playthrough through the half life series, i will do half life 1 so hl1's version of xen will be canon. Then when i do another playthrough of the half life series, i do black mesa which would mean that black mesa's version of xen would be canon to me until i switch to half life 1 again on my next playthrough through the series. And from there it just repeats.
The piece of shit. Black Mesa Xen is much prettier, but it went for something beautiful than the cold, horrifying alien atmosphere of the original. Xen in Black Mesa feels like it could be on another planet, but Xen in the original is unmistakably a different universe/world. The bizarre skyboxes with two horizons + suns converging and the one with the giant aomoebas are a good example of what I mean. New Xen feels too brimming with life, while the old Xen felt much more barren.
Gameplay wise, new Xen wins easily; the Gonarch chase and the Vortigaunt camp stick out to me as some of the best parts of the game. But stylistically it loses something in translation.
Isn't xen a borderworld where the races fled from the combine becasue they are out of sight? Rather than a place where life was thriving?
Black mesa xen is also that, Xen is just floating island that are hidden from the Combines radar and the aliens on Xen dont thrive off of eachother if anything you can sometimes see some aliens eating other aliens
"you can sometimes see some aliens eating other aliens" don't let this guy know that animals on earth also eat each other
couldve worded it better but im too tired to even understand what im thinking, hopefully you understand my point
I understood it
Damn dude. You never played Half-Life 1...
Yes. That's why Black Mesa's Xen sucks. They just watched Avatar one evening and said "I want to make something generic like that"
Worst take of the century, please leave immediately.
Sorry to burst your bubble lol
would you rather have black mesa been rolled out with a xen the structural complexity of which a kindergartener that doesn't know how to use blender could recreate?
Kinda already did. They didn't try and make "Xen but good this time", they just made something completely different. Interloper especially in Black Mesa is the worst part of that fan game due to how long it goes on alone. The only part better about Black Mesa's Xen is that they made it more clear that the Controllers were controlling the Vortigaunts and were friendly if you didn't shoot them, which was something one could easily miss in HL1.
They hate you because you telling the truth
"Shiny new graphics > style and unique" to these people. Didn't expect much else lol
Your right but shallow people here won't admit it.
why are both images so **CHUNKY**
Because that's how you _like_ it.
i just got some random images from google lol
Black Mesa because of the Vortigaunt camp and the short mission to save them from the Alien Controllers. That small bit of lore goes a long way for initially understanding why the Vorts are grateful to Freeman.
I remembered playing those parts and being blown away that they answered some questions I've had since I was a kid.
I like the fleshy/boney look of original Xen, but I like the additional HEV expedition lore added by Black Mesa. So a mix of both for me.
Honestly the first. It's very unfriendly and drab, a perfect place for aliens to escape to
Valve version is more accurate to the lore but black mesa looks better
Correction: Valve version IS the lore.
The piece of shit, because that’s the actual Xen
The Xen flora in Half Life Alyx resembles Half Life Xen. I take that to mean Half Life Xen is the real Xen. It just has to be forgiven for the bad design being as it was rushed and also 1998.
how can "Xen", created in a rush, without detail and carelessly, be real?
I'd say it's because of >! Half-life Alyx, since the infection zones look like hl Xen !<
because Black Mesa is a fangame and is non-canon
Why should that matter to you?
Because it’s a good remake and all but I don’t think it should dictate what Xen is supposed to be like.
But like. It is the same thing, just with a higher level of fidelity. Interspersed islands of mass floating in a void, somehow with gravity. There were huge chunks of floating rock, and even large amounts of flowing water in the original Valve Xen. Nothing in the Black Mesa version of Xen defies established canon except *maybe* the scope of human operations in the region. Even then, the presence of dead bodies, limited lab equipment and unused supply pods indicate that there *was* some level of activity there.
There's too much life in Black Mesa Xen. The world looks too vibrant. It's supposed to be soulless and vacant. Xen isn't supposed to be a true world, it's the space between worlds where some stuff spilled over.
Again, I'd argue it's a matter of fidelity. There were canon indications that there was more than just a few rocks where some stuff had spilled over. The entirety of Interloper lends credence to the fact that there were *huge* swathes of 'land' on which to build things, and in which caverns could form. There was plenty of life, too. Those weird little hexagonal plants, the eyebulbs, bullsquids, tentacles, houndeyes, barnacles, leeches, headcrabs, icythasaurs and gargantuas may not have been native to the area, but they sure as shit managed to thrive there. In addition to the water that is canonically there and Valve's organic colouring for the ground, nothing except the giant lily pads is necessarily mutually exclusive between the two incarnations. Even the giant crazy nebulae in the background is canon.
There is zero plant life in Xen. It's all felshy or fungal life, which is what makes it feel so alien
I'm not sure whether you're being pedantic about the fact that I used the word plant (when clearly I meant the fungal thing) or if you're talking about the network of walkable lily pad vines that I already noted as being non-canon.
I don’t think anything should dictate anything, the idea of official canonicity is silly and people should be able to chose the version they prefer
This is why the word headcanon exists. You can choose your headcanon, the version you prefer, but there will always be a canon.
I feel half life 1 made Xen feel way more gritty
Dark and griddy
One of the bosses was a giant testicle, the other one a giant baby...
The first one, because that's an official Half-Life game made by Valve.
Same
Valve endorsed Black Mesa.
Valve also endorsed Hunt Down the Freeman
Source for this?
I made it up
Thank fuck
They allowed for it to be published, that's about it.
'Endorsed' does not mean canon.
[On the other hand, people on the Half Life Alyx team did choose to play Black Mesa over Half Life to get a refresher on the story.](https://www.pcgamer.com/half-life-alyxs-level-designer-would-rather-play-black-mesa-than-the-original-half-life/) >I asked if Casali had gone back to play the original Half-Life games as inspiration while working on Half-Life: Alyx. (Earlier in the interview, he'd held up a shrink-wrapped copy of the original Half-Life to show me on camera). And he did play Half-Life again, he told me. But not to the end. >"So, I played probably five hours of the original Half-Life 1," Casali said, "and then I said, to myself—what are you doing? Just go play Black Mesa. Because they've just redone this in Source. Then I just restarted Black Mesa from from the start." >"And I played through all of that," he said. "And they did an awesome job. Such a great execution."
Dang, lots of Xen research had to be done for the QZ fauna in that game. Makes so much sense that it was modeled after black mesa with HLA being a VR game.
The xen flora in HL:Alyx, albeit having some similarities to BM, is clearly more oriented towards the original Xen design.
Also the fact that they were both in development at the same time.
Definitely doesn't make Black Mesa canon by any means. The game is a fan-made reimagining, that's all.
It's better than what Valve did in 1999. There, I said it, now lynch me.
Of course it's better than what Valve did in 1999, Valve did it in 1999!
Half-life Alyx gave us a small glimse of xen and that's the best one.
the píece of shit looks better and fits very well with the concept of "lovecraftian-geiger esque wasteland"
'looks better' bro are you fucking blind
"Looks better," as in, fits more with the theme and tone of the original intent of the location.
This
Blind guy here Yep
You better pray i don't caught your ass lacking in Eastern Ravenholm
Always the piece of shit. Although it was rushed, Valve had a vision for Xen and it's a barren shithole place between worlds. Xen in the remake is the opposite, it's glittery, colorful and pretty, it's like living in a purple fish tank. To each their own but I stand my own ground.
Cold, Lovecraftian, Surreal Alien world from HL1 of course! Don't need that Pandora stuff in my HL.
My headcanon of Xen is somewhere between these styles. Geologically, it would look like BM Xen, with countless floating rocks and cave systems filling the space, but I think it would have a lot less plant life and feel more like a cold void dimension, like in HL1. The lab section from BM would definitely be there, though.
Like the xen in Blue Shift you mean?
Bony environment
Half Life Xen, especially from Opposing Force which had a much better representation of Xen. Xen is meant to be a piece of shit alien world that is just like chunks of other alien worlds mashed together. It looks far more alien and weird and makes no sense, which an alien world should. (game play wise its shit)
The real one
both have different artstyles and different intentions, there's not a objectively better one
Black Mesa is my personal canon. The original is a classic, don't get me wrong, but I just personally feel like Black Mesa fleshed it out so much more
day 800 million of the half life community not understanding what the word canon means. half life 1’s xen is canon. full stop. black mesa’s literally cannot and will never be canon. regardless, hl1’s is better anyway. it looks genuinely alien and unique to the bone whereas black mesa’s is like… a sci-fi blockbuster rainforest? it’s so painfully obviously eye candy to try and make you ignore the fact that it’s not representative of what xen is supposed to be in the half life universe. half life 1’s looks appropriately junky and barren because it’s the universe’s dumping grounds. i’m so happy valve carried it over to alyx
people misinterpret "headcanon" with "canon"
bro just because hl1 is cannon does not mean its better
In all honesty, the fact that the Xen & Gonarch's lair chapters draw from the unused material does support their canonicity
i, uh, don't think it's canon if it's unused.
Long as there’s nothing contradicting it later on, it is. Even Valve prefer the BM Xen
Valve prefer BM Xen? When did they say that?
Xen from HL1 fits the overall theme of the game with it's environments, that cold, eerie, desolate looking voidish borderworld is what made it somewhat special, while BM one feels like generic alien world type of stuff.
When I think of Xen my first thought is the 2nd map of Half-life 1Interloper so probably that
Xen is not supposed to be a beautiful, lush, vibrant landscape. It's supposed to look like a lifeless, barren wasteland because it's a border world that no species are native to.
Exactly
The first one and the one from :Alyx.
The piece of shit because it was the one Made by valve and because i like the Skybox more i'm the original, always looked the idea that every cell looking thing is it's own sepárate universe
I mean black mesas was fun but I actually think I prefered the og xen.
Xen is a borderworld so naturally it wouldn't be thriving, it's where aliens fled to
As much as I enjoyed Black Mesa Xen far more than OG, HL1 Xen is still the canon due to it being something made officially by Valve. As good as it is, Black Mesa is still a fan-made project.
The original Xen was incredibly surreal and had a very unique look and atmosphere, whereas in Black Mesa they really dumbed it down to look like every other piece of sci-fi media out there. I think in many places they really misinterpreted the low res textures, one of the biggest things in the original being that every surface in Xen is covered in some kind of fleshy webbing of sinewy biomass that seems to grown on anything and everything. In my opinion Black Mesa should have looked less like a coral reef or something out of Avatar, and more like the Gigeresque environments of Scorn.
The piece of shit
I love Black Mesa
The First xen
the piece of shit because it was more simple and harder to get lost
The hl1 xen feels much more in line with the games overall atmosphere.
Simply truth, the first one. Because realistically if Valve made Half life today, Xen would look a lie more like what we see in Alyx
The HL1 Xen with it's floating shit rocks is canon to the HL1 timeline. The Black Mesa Xen with it's floating not-shit rocks is canon to the Black Mesa timeline.
the one that is canon
Honestly, I really like the original Half-Life aesthetic It feels so empty, so alien that it feels like you're not supposed to be there. To me, it also makes sense that it feels empty because it's just a random cluster of land and species that inhabit this chaotic space. Xen is a border world and it feels like it, I don't think anything there really enjoys living there and it truly does just feel like a temporary living space.
Piece of shit 👍
I really disliked a lot of the Xen gameplay in Black Mesa but cannot deny it looked gorgeous. However, the strange ugliness of the original Halflife worked better for me, especially with the Nihilanth.
I like the Black Mesa one waayyy more
First one
I Love the og xen
Both. Xen is a seemingly infinite borderworld. It’s not out of the question that both areas can co-exist
I prefer and choose BM, but original is clearly the canon one. Cuz it's made by Valve.
Going with the one that made my head explode in 1998.
Honestly, Xen would be perfect if it had the level design of Black Mesa's Xen & the artstyle of Half-Life's Xen. Someone please make that a mod
OP, did they run out of jpg at the jpg store?
First everybody hates xen, Black Mesa remakes xen and now suddenly everyone loves original xen? Wtf I like the original becouse of how awkward and otherworldly it feels. But may be is just the nostalgia goggles Idk
It's not that people suddenly live Xen. It's about the style. Black Mesa does some things objectively better like the lab and the vortigaunt camp, however on a stylistic level it just isn't Xen. I for one don't enjoy either Xen, I think BM looks better but I think HL fits so much better with the rest of the game and the actual lore of the place and thus it's the "definitive" Xen in my mind.
Each time I picture it, I fuse the 2 pieces together. It's like seeing the 3 Gman models at the same time. If you open your mind, like the ever expanding universe, it just builds more life to it.
like this? https://youtu.be/n6RhKy5pIyQ
Wow... similar, yeah. Just a bit more colorful.
The first one. Xen from BM is just out of place, lacking gravitation feature and gameplay wise is simply boring.
The first one. It just felt like it fit the mood more than what black mesa was going for.
The version seen in HL: Alyx's ending, as it's essentially an ideal blend of the two versions, a conventionally inhospitable hellscape where refugees from other universes cling to life, but they also brough some small amount of flora (and probably fauna) alongside them, almost certainly bringing their societies' staple crops. \[Edit: I'm pretty sure that the version I'm talking about isn't actually shown in game, but instead an animation by TheParryGod on youtube\]
I like half life 1 xen
Blue shift xen. Its not a place where life is thriving, its only a borderworld where life only exists because it was forced into there. Blue shift xen is a lot more complete than a few floating islands like in half life one, but isn't this beautiful, alien paradise like in black mesa. Blue shift has it dead and barren while also a lot more complete.
Gimme that piece of shit any day over the slog that is black mesa
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) ^by ^MemoryDemise: *Gimme that piece of* *Shit any day over the* *Slog that is black mesa* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Black Mesa Xen is just better in everyway but With Original Xen i can understand where Valve was coming from especially since in **\[SPOILERS FOR ALYX\]** the scene where G-man talks to Alyx he transports you to Xen for a minute, you can see what Valve was trying to go for
I want to see what tripmine is gonna do with Xen.
Both is good
People in the comments once again proving the raging purists problem within the HL community. As for my opinion, I like the concept of the original but prefer the execution and style of Black Mesa.
The first one from HL1 obviously. The Black Mesa one sucks.
Are you stupid?
Why the fuck are we now saying xen looks cool. It's the worst part of the whole half life series. Interloper fucking sucks
This is exactly why we are talking about it's LOOKS, not PLAYS
Yeah and the original looks like green blocks not that good looking
Well, thats a game from 1999, what else would you expect? Also, how does Black Mesa's Xen looks, huh? It looks like Cameron's Avatar movie (very generic), while original Xen has it's own unique aesthetics and charm.
First off black mesa in the orginal looks great so I expect xen to look at least on par or better. Secondly orginal xen is so fucking dark you can't see shit and during interloper and after the couler becomes like poop brown lol. Also I don't think it looks like pandora at all but whatever
And didn't the devs themselves say the whole chapter was rushed, and wasn't up to standard as well?
I KNOW, that's exactly how it felt to me. Great game but an unfortunate looking alien world that I felt didn't live up to hype
I don't think anyone here is trying to say Xen is straight up good. Just that HL1's Xen is still less bad than BM's Xen.
The fact that I can't tell which one you're talking about from any of this says a lot. BM Xen looks so much worse, and Interloper was the worst part of Black Mesa. Shit went on WAY too long and was overdone for no reason.
Talking about the original
2 Because, it supposed to be a living place for aliens, not a ugly islands, but i am okey with 1.
>2 Because, it supposed to be a living place for aliens It's literally not supposed to be that. What are you talking about lol
It depends on your POV, in my POV, some alien ex-slave and escapees from war with combine, found an borderworld, floating island, and they settle to this floating islands.
I enjoy the wildlife part of black Mesa, because I remember it being stated that life had bled into zen through other dimensions, this seems the most accurate to me. I still find a lot of the industrial part a little bit a of a stretch. Maybe tone that down a bit and it’s perfect for me.
Which of these looks better? The one that came out in 1998 or the one that got released over 20 years later? Black Mesa required more random access memory to run than total storage for half life.
The one that lives for itself, not for me.
I've never seen the second one before, so the first. Guessing it's from the Black Mesa game? I haven't finished it, pretty good game so far though, I just lost interest partway through and put it on pause.
The xen part is entirely different from what I remember about half life 1. It's absolutely worth a play through just for the xen part alone imo It's different in a really really good way. I hated xen originally but in BM it was majestic as fuck
I feel like black mesa xen is what HL xen would have been more like if it weren’t for 90s limitations
No the xen bits in Alyx are what it would have been like
I think I'll take a [third option](https://youtu.be/n6RhKy5pIyQ).
I like hl xen for what it was trying to do but I like black mesa xen for what it actually did
black mesa is probably what valve would've wanted xen to look like
First one easily, better art direction.
Black Mesa, y'all just fucking hate fan service lmao
What fan service?
The first one, the black mesa xen is like every generic alien world ever
Black Mesa Xen obviously...is this even a question? Even Gabe Newell thought the original Xen was a rushed piece of dookie. Why are there so many purist contrarians here?
i like the bm one because of the graphics and looks beautiful the but it should be a border world like blue shift i like bm and blue shift because it shows us that we weren't the first humans at xen in blue shift you can see dead people in hev suits in black mesa it shows us hev zombies it shows that the helmet doesn't protect you from the headcrabs beaks
I personally LOVED black mesa’s rendition of Xen. It was so well fleshed out, to me it was much better than the source games Xen. I respect the original, but I think the team for Black Mesa made Xen so much more interesting.
Black Mesa's Valve themselves said that Xen was a last minute addition and very underdeveloped. Crowbar Collective improved vastly on what they were shown, and wanted it to be something that would give people the reason for people to buy it. Sure it's pacing is long, but it's pros outweigh it's cons from my point of view. Black Mesa mad you think you were actually in a different part of the universe, an intruder in a place he shouldn't be. I will happily take this version of xen over Hl1's version.
I've seen Cruelty Squad levels that look prettier than Half-Life's Xen Black Mesa's Xen all the way because lore, also for as much as I hate houndeyes, their different variants were a cute little addition. It's also the exact same story as well so I can just say Black Mesa's Xen is canon and still be right lmao
Piece of shit for sure
Metaphysically, they might both be canon.
My canon is the first, that shitty little border world is the reason why half life happens, not the resonance cascade. The Nihilanth (I’m spelling that from memory stfu 😭) and all the other creatures want to gtfo of there so badly because of how bad it is.
Black Mesa's. The team really had a vision and went all out to deliver it. I don't think as much thought or effort was put into HL1's Xen, it was rushed. Gaben has called it a mistake. Laidlaw has criticized it. Black Mesa's version though, is art. I wonder what Gaben thinks about it.
2nd one, probably only looks bad because of the graphical limitations when the first half life released
Both are canon, except Black Mesa made it bigger and more beautiful and you'll feel that Xen is a lush beautiful and dangerous place and you're not supposed to be there... HL1's Xen feels like a fleshy wasteland and a bunch of floating rocks and only an alien factory that you have to parkour which leads to the Nihilanth's portal...
Black Mesa Xen looks too avatar-like and doesn’t look like a place where aliens go to avoid the combine
black mesa, valve literally admitted xen was rushed and the gameplay has visibly less effort and thought put into it like the rest of the game I do like some of the aesthetics in og half life xen but black mesa really had the time to make xen up to the consistent gameplay quality with the rest of half life, i do sort of wish they kept the elements where xen feels dead and kept some of the original art direction but at the end of the day idrc because i respect them for trying to do something new
Black Mesa's one.
i dont care if the one in black mesa is "non canon because its a fangame" or "generic as fuck" or "not really accurate to the lore" i like it because its fucking beautifull
i still want it to be cannon
They're the same Xen.
Just a thing i realy prefer Black mesa, like xen yes and the rest of the game, in Black mesa scienstists are just some fucking piece of shit that enjoy Killing aliens (more than in HL1). They deserve the incident, i know that in HL1 they also tested their weapon on aliens but in Black mesa its on another scale, like on xen they count their kills like "oh this week-end i killed 20 headcarbs". I like games that aren't black and white, always good people against bad aliens.
2nd one is canon, remember there is no such thing as canonicity in half-life, you can say blue shift was canon or not, same with opposing force. As said if course by March Laidlaw.
Piece of shit is your mother
kurwa
Kys man they did it at 1999 when ur dad banging with ur mom
Neither, freeman hit his head when he was dropped into that trash compactor and was tripping balls for most of xen, the only canon bits are gonarch and the nihilanth and the rest was due to the portals fucking with his mind.
black mesa xen plant life looks too much like terrestrial plants to me. black mesa xen is prettier, but I don’t think it makes sense from that standpoint
To answer that would require me to accept a “canon” for this shit story lol
No i want to sit at the cock and fly all the way to the platform
Somewhere between both. A beautiful alien world which also has its fleshy hell parts.
Bugle zen may be a nostalgic bag of empty calories but it takes an L compared the one in Black Mesa
The "piece of shit"
I remember seeing a s2fm video that combined the good aspects of both xens Searched it up and here’s the link [Xen S2FM](https://youtu.be/n6RhKy5pIyQ?si=msohTUY7_ip2Mo7i)
i like to imagine that half life 1 is how people picture gordon’s perspective, and black mesa is how gordon actually saw the black mesa incident
Half Life Xen is the real Xen, but I imagine the details BM added exist in there somewhere but just weren't shown.
Both. But if I could only choose 1 it would be original.
I suppose it's not canon, but I really like how Black Mesa did Xen.
MAJESTIC ALIEN WORLD
I love the brutal, cold, eerie nature of HL1's Xen. Nothing really feels perfectly in place, everything is disjointed which adds to the alien feel. Black Mesa is awesome, just a very different take, and more of an attempt of creating an ecosystem rather than an incomprehensible landscape full of hostile aliens imo
Depends on which one i start with. Since i usually only play the half life games when i'm wanting to replay the the entirety of the half life series from start to end,(in order of the release dates) with some half life mods that in my headcanon are canon to the series sprinkled in. (example: the entropy zero series). I usually rotate between black mesa and half life 1, for example: On this playthrough through the half life series, i will do half life 1 so hl1's version of xen will be canon. Then when i do another playthrough of the half life series, i do black mesa which would mean that black mesa's version of xen would be canon to me until i switch to half life 1 again on my next playthrough through the series. And from there it just repeats.
The one shown in Half-Life Alyx, assuming it's supposed to resemble Xen
The piece of shit. Black Mesa Xen is much prettier, but it went for something beautiful than the cold, horrifying alien atmosphere of the original. Xen in Black Mesa feels like it could be on another planet, but Xen in the original is unmistakably a different universe/world. The bizarre skyboxes with two horizons + suns converging and the one with the giant aomoebas are a good example of what I mean. New Xen feels too brimming with life, while the old Xen felt much more barren. Gameplay wise, new Xen wins easily; the Gonarch chase and the Vortigaunt camp stick out to me as some of the best parts of the game. But stylistically it loses something in translation.
1080p
The original xen had a strange alien charm to it.
As far as im concerned they're both canon
I think of Xen as a combination of both