Black Mesa: HECU
Developer Mission Statement:
The aim of Black Mesa: HECU is to provide a completely new experience that fills in the narrative spaces left by the military during Black Mesa incident... very much how Opposing Force did in its heyday.
Growing up, I always loved Opposing Force as a concept. But as I got older, I found there to be too strong a divergence between the HECU that we experience in Half Life (and Blue Shift) and the HECU that we engage with in Opposing Force; the lack of involvement in the clean-up operation, the mostly absent battling alongside teammates against the Xen military forces, and the abundance of solitude create a feel that doesn't quite mirror the experience I think many of us were expecting.
On top of that, the seemingly non-canon addition of a new race of alien that squeezed their way into the narrative felt like an unnecessary tie-in when more Xen aliens could have simply been included. What's more, replacing the HECU military enemies with newly introduced Black Ops soldiers instead of better-armed security guards felt like an attempt to needlessly rewrite the lore in order to make the HECU seem more heroic.
In a way, Black Mesa: HECU is our team's way of reshaping the narrative to more accurately portray the events left unseen during Half Life. Players will be able to see the Black Mesa incident unfold from a much larger perspective with all the trimmings you'd expect from a large-scale coverup, including the liquidation of human assets.
We all have a strong love for Opposing Force, and we will not render it non-canon in any way. On the contrary, thanks to the narrative direction we are taking with the mod, constant radio contact with HQ and other squads will provide players with a greater sense of scale. This includes several mentions of Adrian Shepard and other squads as they battle through the chaos to their objectives.
We also look forward to players getting their first chance to see a stronger connection between Black Mesa and Half Life 2, such as references and cameos that have otherwise only been referenced in hindsight later in the series. We look forward to giving fans of Black Mesa and Opposing Force the perfect package that satisfies those with the desire to go back to Black Mesa from the military perspective.
-Project Leader, Wildshot
-Point Mass Studios Team: Wildshot, GordonFreakman117(Dany), MEVAR448, MVE
That sounds wonderful I too loved Opposing Force immensely. The narrative to get a huge arsenal of fellow soldiers along with you sounds wonderful although it will be hard to balance out without turning this into an overkill game play wise. Otherwise the player may just watch how his grunts handle things. Also hard to craft some good settings out against Black Mesa employees where we usually mostly encounter only unarmed scientists.
I'm curious to see how you will craft out situations like we've seen in Black Mesa's Surface Tension scenario. These scenarios probably work best for your scenario.
Best of luck to you guys. That project sounds ambitious and fantastic.