Right here at Ars, we’re all the time looking out for hints and actions that counsel the lengthy, lengthy wait for Half-Life 3 could finally come to an finish. So when customers throughout the Web began making observe of the mysterious and intriguingly named BlackMesa.com lately, our ears perked up for indicators of a brand new promotional alternate actuality sport (ARG).
Alas, this looks as if one more false alarm. BlackMesa.com is just the web site for Black Mesa, which confirmed in a public assertion that it’s “truly an actual firm within the Boston space… working arduous to guarantee and safe vaccine and different organic manufacturing manufacturing.”
HALF LIFE 3 MIGHT BE GETTING ANNOUNCED ON SEPTEMBER 30THhttps://t.co/hSytiq2GoR Simply went stay and it has a countdown on the backside of the web page, that ends on September thirtieth. When it finishes it should show a white textual content saying “That is it.” pic.twitter.com/MK3QveRc6R
— PеQu (@ImPeQu) August 9, 2024
The BlackMesa.com area identify dates again to at the least 2006, when the tackle was crammed with search engine marketing adverts by an outfit referred to as MDNH, Inc. However in 2022, a web page promoting the area’s availability for buy was all of a sudden changed by a mysterious brand that bears a putting resemblance to the fictional Black Mesa brand within the video games. After which there’s the hard-to-read cipher on the backside, the form of factor that an ARG would possibly use to cover vital data in plain sight.
The positioning stayed like that, to little wider discover or suspicion, till August 8, when Valve followers on social media started to “[wake] as much as a Black Mesa web site” that had all of a sudden been up to date with a brand new header declaring, “Science requires course of. Our perception defends it.” Others on social media have been fast to notice the outdated cipher textual content as a properly as a brand new, obfuscated JavaScript countdown operate with the interior identify “Lambda Incident”. That countdown gave the impression to be pointing towards one thing occurring on September 30, which looks as if pretty much as good a time as any to announce Half-Life 3, proper?
Reality is much less fascinating than fiction
The Valve devoted hoping this was a brand new model of the outdated Portal 2 Potato ARG had their hopes rapidly dashed, although. Web sleuths quickly discovered a digital paper path for Charles Fracchia, a analysis scientist who’s listed on LinkedIn and elsewhere because the founding father of “Black Mesa, a stealth firm creating applied sciences that create provable assurance for superior manufacturing workflows” since again in 2022. And by final Friday, the Black Mesa group put up a weblog submit quashing any game-related rumors that is likely to be circulating.
“As a lot as we’d be honored to be a part of any Valve sport—we don’t work on this sector in any respect,” the weblog submit reads. “We aren’t secretly engaged on Half-Life 3, Undertaking White Sands (no matter that’s/could also be) or another Valve title—we’re simply nerds working to safe the worldwide bioeconomy.”
The group went on to thank the Half-Life neighborhood that had despatched in “a ton of messages of help and curiosity” in regards to the firm, in addition to “hundreds of faux inquiries” that “made us chuckle.” As for that outdated ciphertext? Seems fixing it merely unlocked a recruitment message in search of “engineers, cybersecurity professionals, and biologists” for the corporate. “KingPotatoVII please attain out, we have been attempting to ship you some swag for cracking the cipher some time again,” the Black Mesa group wrote with a smiley face emoji.
Any excuse to repost this video is an efficient one.
Regardless of the revelation of the actual Black Mesa company, some hangers-on have not fairly given up hope that that is all nonetheless simply a particularly delicate little bit of stealth advertising. “What if [actual scientist Charles Fraschia] is such an enormous fan of Half-Life, like us, and determined to make use of his picture/likeness to do that ARG for the sport?” one Reddit consumer wrote final week. “Possibly he reached out and completely went full madlad with Valve to make this a magnum opus of an ARG. … Might be merely somebody is heavy trolling us, and to be sincere I’m not even mad as a result of that is enjoyable af!”
Preserve hope alive, Valve devoted! Half-Life 3 is clearly simply across the nook, it doesn’t matter what anybody says! The reality is on the market for these with eyes to see it!
