#HALF LIFE BLACK GUARD SERIES#

Xen forms the setting for the closing parts of Half-Life, where Gordon Freeman travels to Xen to kill the Nihilanth and seal the spatial fracture to Black Mesa. Gravity in Xen is significantly lower than on Earth. The asteroids are linked with their own teleporter system, and a number of asteroids are shown to include underground factory-like areas, where Vortigaunts work to create or mature Xen's military forces, including the large, blue ape-like alien called the Gargantua. The player encounters multiple types of fauna such as Headcrabs in Xen, in addition to its sentient inhabitants. It is often referred to as the 'border world', as it is somehow involved in the teleportation process used by the Black Mesa Research Facility. A collection of asteroids hanging over a nebula, Xen is briefly featured in Half-Life and its first two expansions, Opposing Force and Blue Shift. Xen is an alternative dimension and is the adopted home of the Vortigaunts. Black Mesa is also referenced in the Portal-themed levels of Lego Dimensions, wherein Chell and Wheatley discover a hidden storage room in Aperture containing various crates and boxes stolen from Black Mesa. In these games it is a competitor of Aperture Science, the company that owns the area where the games take place. However, the fracture in the spacetime continuum remains, allowing the Combine to invade and occupy Earth.Д«lack Mesa is also mentioned several times in another Valve game, Portal, and its sequel. Marines (referred to as HECU, or Hazardous Environment Combat Unit) are ordered to cover up the incident by killing the entire population of Black Mesa as well as the alien attackers, but are overwhelmed and forced to withdraw, allowing for black operations units to detonate a nuclear warhead in the facility, ultimately destroying it. The military situation is shown through the eyes of Adrian Shephard in Opposing Force, where U.S. In Decay, another group of scientists attempt to close the tear through their own equipment, after calling in the U.S. Blue Shift shows the events from the viewpoint of a security guard, Barney Calhoun, who joins a group of scientists who use the teleportation technology to evacuate survivors from the base.

Eventually, the player fights through the facility and teleports to Xen to try to seal the tear from the other end, where a Xen creature is keeping it open. This serves to foreshadow many of the challenges the player will face, as well as the labyrinth-like structure of the game. In Half-Life, protagonist Gordon Freeman is introduced to the facility in a notable sequence involving very little interactivity. The resulting crisis is seen from several points of view in Half-Life and its expansions.

There are many notable creatures that come from Xen, such as the Vortigaunts and Headcrabs. As a result, Xen creatures are teleported into the facility and prey on its human inhabitants. At the beginning of Half-Life, one such crystal, revealed in Half-Life 2: Episode Two to have been provided by the G-Man, is put through an anti-mass spectrometer and causes a resonance cascade, tearing the spacetime continuum.

Creatures and crystals from Xen are subsequently brought back to the facility for testing. Prior to the beginning of Half-Life, scientists experimenting on teleportation discover Xen, a border dimension somehow intrinsically involved in the teleportation process. Over the course of the series, Black Mesa is revealed to be conducting top-secret research into various fields, such as teleportation and experimental weapons research.

#HALF LIFE BLACK GUARD SERIES#

This facility is depicted as a vast series of underground research laboratories as well as surface constructions such as offices, chemical waste disposal plants, and personnel dormitories (even cafeterias, where Gordon Freeman can destroy Doctor Magnusson's microwave casserole), all powered by a hydroelectric dam and connected by an advanced tram system. The base is a decommissioned ICBM launch complex at an undisclosed New Mexico desert location, which has been converted into a scientific research facility and bears a number of similarities to Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and Area 51. The Black Mesa Research Facility (shortened to B.M.R.F) is the primary setting for Half-Life and its three expansions: Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay.

Half life black guard