The existence of Black Mesa was revealed in late 2004, followed by an official trailer in 2008, and then 4 years of... nothing. After picking up two “Vaporware of the Year” awards in 2009 and 2010, the team finally proved in 2012 they were still alive, posting 8 new screenshots on 11 June.
Now, exactly 6 years since that shocking day, we’ve finished counting every kill in Black Mesa, part of our larger quest to determine Gordon Freeman’s body count. Excluding the boss fights in Xen, which as of this morning remain unfinished (and should stay that way), we’ve found that Freeman shoots, explodes or crowbars 400 enemies over the course of Black Mesa. Combined with his other 797 kills in Half-Life 2, this brings his aggregate body count to 1,197, not including Episode One or Episode Two. Those will come later.
Of course, this will doubtlessly raise questions from diehard fans who might wonder why we didn’t play Half-Life or Half-Life: Source instead, or why we skipped certain chapters or sections. The answer to the first question is simple: If we’re spending 10 straight weeks on mastering/recording 10 chapters of the original Half-Life saga, we want to capture footage at maximum fidelity, in terms of graphics and physics. Black Mesa is prettier and blessed with more epic ragdolls than Half-Life, and we’re shallow enough to care. After all, it makes a difference when we launch grenades into squads of enemies.
Another question is why we recorded only 10 out of 14 chapters. Again, the reason is simple: If we’re not required to fight something, we don’t. In fact, one can easily beat the first 3 chapters of Black Mesa without firing a shot or swinging a crowbar. This is an evolution of our approach to Half-Life 2, which we previously played. With Half-Life 2, we also skipped combat whenever possible, but we rarely had space in each 2-minute episode to show how. Black Mesa has fewer kills per chapter, so we have space to show the amusing ways in which we dash past enemies before they can react to us. The finale of “Power Up” is one example – we replayed it dozens of times before finally achieving an almost-perfect, almost-no-damage run toward the exit.
For those wanting a breakdown of Freeman’s body count in Black Mesa, he massacres 189 humans and 211 aliens over the course of the game, making Freeman a nearly equal-opportunity mass murderer. This is in stark contrast to Half-Life 2, where Freeman kills 797 enemies but only 139 are Xen creatures, whilst the other 658 are Combine unit. For all its emphasis on puzzles and physics, Half-Life 2 is much more of a conventional shooter where you fight primarily bad guys with guns, whereas Black Mesa is more of a survival game where your biggest concern is how to survive or avoid creepy aliens.
Excluding chapters where one can avoid combat entirely, the most peaceful chapter in Black Mesa is “Apprehension”, where only 10 enemies force you to kill them – you can run past every other enemy in the chapter, even the feared Black Ops. Meanwhile, the most violent chapter is indisputably “Surface Tension”, where we were forced to murder 123 enemies over the course of longest chapter in the entire game. We were so sick of replaying it that we didn’t even bother to kill the Gargantua at the end. Normally you need to order an airstrike to kill it and proceed to the exit, but you can see in that episode we simply raced to the exit before the Gargantua could reach us and kill us. Sometimes pacifism is more efficient.
After 22 consecutive weeks of Half-Life 2 and Black Mesa, we need to take a break now and recuperate before moving onto the final instalments of Freeman’s life, i.e. Episode One and Episode Two. We realise that, despite the popularity of kill count videos for famous films, not many seem interested in knowing the body count for gaming’s greatest protagonist. That’s okay, though. We make these videos for fun, not profit. Hopefully someone someday will see these videos and enjoy them.
“I’m not saying goodbye, Dad...”
