After a couple of years in development, Black Mesa, Crowbar Collective’s third-party remake of Half-Life, is seemingly ready to release fully. Removing the Early Access tag means that the game is getting ready for the manufacturing phase, and it may arrive earlier than first acknowledged.
In a recent statement, the developer said the release candidate of 1.0 is almost here. Black Mesa 1.0 will assign the Beta kick-off, followed by plenty of fixes to enhance the version and get out of Early Access.
As soon as it is ready, we will push the build to public beta like we have in the past. After lots of internal and external testing, we will patch the build as needed, and finally, FINALLY (FINALLY!!!) release Black Mesa out of Early Access!
This is a huge deal for us. The team has put in a ton of effort to improve the game in ways big and small.
The only reason that is quite notable is the rework of the HECU AI. They will act according to their survival instinct and react differently to suppressing fire, communicate better, and use MP5 Grenade Launchers appropriately.
The evaluation of this has come from the flawy AI in the previous versions. One of the reasons why the developer had to work on their enhancement. No matter the consequences, Black Mesa will open its doors with a Public Beta at first, so the developers could gather additional data and react to their existing product.
According to the roadmap, Black Mesa 1.5 might be far away, but it is entitled as the definitive edition at which Crowbar Collective is aiming. For this to come, it may take even longer, but being close to the 1.0 version suits the fans just well.
