Xen was a huge disappointment in the original 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Half-Life. The action-packed, thrilling three-pronged war unfolding in Black Mesa was suddenly replaced by tedious platforming across a barren void, grinding momentum to a halt. The game never really picked up Steam (wahey) again after we washed up on the interdimensional shores of this strange borderworld, so it’s hardly surprising that it left such a sour taste — even Gabe N💙ewell looks back on it with regret.

But Half-Life 3 offers a unique opportunity for Valve to right this wrong after nearly 30 years. In various HLX leaks, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:there have been references to Xen, hinting at its return, which fitไs perfectly when you consider what Half-Life ﷽2: Episode Two set up with its cliffhanger ending.

Some even think the ‘X’ in ‘HLX’ stands for Xen.

After discovering a message left by Judith Mossman, Gordon Freeman sets out for the Arctic on the trail of the Borealis, a ship designed by Aperture Science capable of interdimensional travel. Xen is the borderworld dimension, used by the rebels and Black Mesa as a slingshot to teleport locally. So, if we’re hopping dimensions, it would only makeღ sense that Xen be the focal point. Only now, Valve isn’t pressed to a deadline, so hopefully it feels ꧋a little less rushed.

With The Nihilanth Dead, The Controllers Gone, And Aliens Flooding Earth, What’s Left Of Xen?

What a modern Xen would look like is a complete mystery, though. As we saw with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Black Mesa, Valve could completely overhaul the bor🌊derworld with a more lively ecosystem, introducing entirely new biomes an💝d even Avatar-esque jungles, or it could iterate further on the desolate, rocky wastes that so many of us loathed to jump across all those years ago.

I’m excited to find out what direction Valve takes if and when Half-Life 3 finally gets released. Right now, it's hard to say based on a few strings of code. But there is one aspect that we can speculate on, and it’s the inhabitants of Xen.

The alien invasion in Half-Life was led by the Nihilanth and their army of controllers𒆙, who enslaved the vortigaunts and forced them into servitude as factory workers and footsoldiers. But nothing is native to Xen, and even the Nihilanth is a desperate refugee fleeing the oppression of the Combine, with the borderworld being their “final retreat”.

So, following the Resonance Cascade — and after Gordon Freeman bludgeoned the Nihil🍸anth to death with a crowbar — what’s left?

Lead writer Marc Laidlaw speculated about this exact question a few years ago. , he said, “If there are any left, they are probably stranded in what would not have been their natural native envi🦋ronment. However, without access to a steady food supply (whatever it is they eat), they may we♊ll have simply died out.”

The Nihilanth is no more, and the controllers and alien grunts appear to have died along with it. But then we have the headcrabs, bullsquid, houn🥂deye, vortigaunts, and barnacles, who are found in abundance on Earth by the time of Half-Life 2 (though some were relegated to cut content). It’d be safe to assume that most of them migrated during the Black Mesa Incident and subsequent portal storms, lea🥂ving the borderworld mostly empty — but I’m not so sure.

A concept artist working at Valve 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:appears to ha🍌ve confirmed the HLX leaks.

Thanks to leaks, we know that there are Xen ‘‘jౠellyfish’ in𝐆 Half-Life 3, but these aren’t a new species. There was a cut creature from Alyx called the “Jelly Blobber”, an aquatic-looking alien that would’ve harmlessly floated about the Quarantine Zone, which was infested with Xen life. The Jelly Blobber likewise appears to be an iteration of the cut Half-Life enemy, , a “living balloon” that also bobbed around harmlessly. So, Xen jellyfish have always been there, lurking in the cut content background.

If we assume that these leaked Xen creatures are found on Xen and not ꦰsomewhere on Earth, that would mean not every critter made it through the portal storm, so perhaps we’ll still find headcrabs, bullsquid, houndeyes, barnacles, 💧and perhaps even vortigaunts, but in fewer numbers.

The Xen 'gorilla' is the bigger mystery — I’ve no idea what to make of it. Could it be a codename fo▨r an existing creature, like the alien grunts? Or is Valve making💧 good on a throwaway line in Alyx, where the titular hero asks during a visit to Central Zoo, “Russ? Do you think a headcrab could turn a gorilla into a zombie?”

We’ll have to wait and see, but I’m fascin꧒ated by what a modern Xen might look like, and what impact decades of migration might have had. Maybe it's even more barren than we left it, or maybe another species moved into the vacuum left behind by the Nihilanth.