Half-Life 1’s climactic ending, Xen, is finally coming to the extensive total conversion mod Black Mesa. Team Black Mesa discussed the development in a community post on Steam. They are targeting a Summer 2017 release.
The main reason for the delay is up to how long it took them to get Black Mesa on Steam. They had to take the mod and port it to the retail version of Source, Valve’s in-house engine. Since the release of Black Mesa, Xen has become the main focus. They even planned their updates to have features that would help improve the earthbound levels and Xen
“We want to do Xen the justice it deserves, and have it be the definitive climax to the Half-Life 1 story. To do this we have completely redesigned and expanded the Xen levels to what we think Valve would have done without the limitations of the time.” The team then goes on to say that “not only are our maps substantially bigger than the originals, there are more of them as well.”
The post also addressed some issues that were fixed in a new patch released recently, including the hitching on Linux multiplayer servers and on Linux single player, UI fonts being broken for people that do not have Steam set to English, Workshop publish tool not launching, ZECU torso crashing hammer and the game, and Russian closed captions being added.
Black Mesa regularly sells for $19.99, but you can get it for $7.99 as part of Steam’s Halloween sale. Xen will come to the game as part of a free update.
