After more than 14 years (!), the Black Mesa release date has finally been announced by Crowbar Collective.
If you're unfamiliar with Black Mesa, that's the name of the Area 51-esque secret military base that served as the location for many of the player's adventures in the original Half-Life game. It also serves as the name for a project that began as a fan-created mod and eventually transitioned into a commercial product.
A Steam Community announcement titled "Fear Not The Long Road" details the journey that developer Adam Engels took on his road to the Black Mesa release date along with the rest of Crowbar Collective. Aside from that, the announcement is also careful to temper player expectations for Version 1.0.
"Through luck, hard work, and maybe a bit of ignorance we didn’t shy away from our goal of bringing this game to completion," the announcement from Mr. Engels stated. "We are proud of what we built. We think this upcoming 1.0 release is the best, most polished, and most fun version of the game yet. The anticipation and excitement around our project is beyond flattering."
"Black Mesa is a video game, it is our video game, and it has its strengths, and its flaws," he continued. "As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned” and while we plan to fully support this game after 1.0 with bug fixes and more, it will never be a perfect game."
When is the Black Mesa Release Date?
Now that we know the game is close to complete, when will you actually be able to play it? It's mentioned at the very end of the announcement (which is well worth a read on its own!).
If, like me, you've been waiting for a very long time to see this game brought to completion, you'll be quite happy to hear that the Black Mesa release date is Thursday, March 5, 2020.
There's still a lot that you can play right now, though! You can check out Black Mesa: Xen (which represents a good chunk of the game) by picking up the game on Steam for $19.99 or your regional equivalent, or you can simply add it to your wishlist for now.
What do you think of Black Mesai finally coming out? Do you think this game will live up to more than a decade of expectations? Let us know in the comments below!
