Black Mesa: The 16 Year Project to Remake Half-Life | Noclip Documentary

Behind the scenes from this documentary on our NEW CHANNEL. Sub here: youtube.com/noclipcrewvideo (and consider supporting our team at www.patreon.com/noclip )

Big thanks to Valve for not being like 99.9% of other big gaming companies and allowing such a passion project to be sold on Steam.

When Noclip made their last half-life documentary, a few months later Half-Life Alyx was announced. Let's make this 2 for 2.

The Half-Life Alyx team referencing Black Mesa gameplay as inspiration would be to me the highest honor of game design. The chain of inspiration goes full circle, and it's a really beautiful thing to think about

Everyone loves a long documentary. That fact that you're still making Half-Life ones makes me so happy.

Genuinely one of the greatest accomplishments in fan game history, to a point where it’s beyond just a fan remake it’s a standalone masterpiece. God tier work guys on both the game and documentary.

"We need more games like this" really hits home for me, Black Mesa borrows the design philosophies used for a game made in the 90's and in the 2020's somehow feels fresh and rewarding, it isn't a billion dollar budget AAA systems driven cinematic experience, and it isn't a retro inspired shooter with a simple level progression, it's in-between and uses the strengths of both. I want to see more games made with the goal of provoking the player into having a fun and rewarding experience purely through solid design, that's the best way i can describe "Valve design", if every level is consistently engaging because lots of thought and testing went into it, that makes a fun and rewarding game.

The forever meme ‘when is Xen done’ redeemed itself so hard, it’s hard to remember it ever existed. The Xen part of the game is simply jaw dropping. I couldn’t tell you any other way. It has such a cool narrative and the story is told in such a subtle way. Not to mention it plays phenomenally (which should be any game goal if you ask me). Thanks to the Crowbar Collective for all their love and blood sweat and tears. I genuinely love my new visits to the Black Mesa facility and Xen of course!

I'm not sure if you named him but that dude from the dev team "Ben Truman" used to be my Game design teacher in high school. I could not and still cannot believe one of my favorite teachers had such a cool secret and I'm glad to see he is doing well!!

Gordon needs to hear this. Despite him being a highly trained professional.

This was spectacular. I want to give an extra shout for including matching footage for nearly every comment from every developer. It helps tell the story so much better than either just a talking head or just running unrelated stock gameplay. Thank you to the whole team for all the work that clearly went into this!

The final build of this remake is amazing work, it even arguably surpasses the original which is pretty rare.

12:00 They definitely did a good job with writing the smaller characters, the guards actually feel like security guards, like they are capable of doing their job and have a desire to live. Before now, it was kind of a joke to see how long they would last until something made them explode into giblets.

If there's any team that Valve needs to hire, it's this one. A full-scale remake of the first Half Life driven by nothing but passion sounds like a recipe for disaster, and yet, it came together SO beautifully. The attention to detail that Black Mesa has is absolutely ludicrous, all the way down to unnecessary (but appreciated) details like how G-man's voice actor is the same voice actor as the security guards. Massive, massive props to the team that made Black Mesa, I'm so excited to see what they work on next.

The fact that the whole remake feels so much like a Half-Life game, even the totally new areas with all the arenas, combat sections and puzzles is a testament to how much work and love went into this. Black Mesa truly is the "Half-Life: Source" we needed.

I had never played Half Life before Black Mesa but I was so hooked. It didn't hold your hand and give you a bunch of waypoints and list of objectives but at the same time both worlds felt so full and beautiful. Everyone who worked on this should be so proud of what they accomplished, because they made something better than most major developers make these days.

Dang, that was a good documentary. I remember playing this before the Xen update and couldn't believe the game was free haha. I bought it anyways when the new levels came out and don't regret it one bit. I was blown away by the work done on Xen and all the extra stuff they put in like the labs. Amazing work by the people at Crowbar Collective, thank you for making me feel 12 again playing HL1 for the first time.

What I liked most about seeing the Vortogaunt society in Xen, is that when I played Black Mesa again, I tried avoiding killing them on Earth as well because they were just slaves.

When Black Mesa was originally announced I had the Black Mesa theme song hooked up to play on my MYSPACE page, I was 15 at the time and now I'm turning 32 this year. That to me perfectly demonstrates how long this project has been in the works, it literally took almost HALF my lifetime for it to materialize as a real complete package. It was a long road for everyone involved but the team behind it can be very proud at the work they have done. Thank you NoClip for doing such a fantastic documentary about this legendary undertaking.

This documentary really explains a lot of why it took me a long time to really enjoy and appreciate Half-Life 1. The adding to scenes with different characters to make an otherwise silently confirmed situation feel more real and alive. The puzzles that you solve without even realizing making for confusing and frustrating progression (Especially when you're a noob and everything kills you). The big open spaces amplifying the previous issue and also resulting in my getting lost constantly. Literally the entirety of Xen. My god it's so beautiful and alive and alien and wonderful now. The reworking overall of unpopular chapters to make the game more enjoyable overall The added/more fleshed out narrative of Xen's existence and Black Mesa's exploration into Xen prior to the events of the game There's so much more too that I'm missing cause I've been adding as I go but god Black Mesa is a blessing.