@@vapordreams983 But Black Ops is a military game and also references real life military stuff, I'm talking about fictional stuff like Half-Life or Transformers
that news special thing from dawn of the dead is pretty cool, the whole thing is on youtube like when they initially report the zombie outbreak as race riots lol
That late-90s/turn of the millennium journalist voice, rhythm, and inflection is seriously uncanny, what an impressive reconstruction. This really felt like it came from a VHS recording
I saw another recreation like this where China was accusing the US of covering up a nuclear accident, the US went from denial to "you wish it was just nuclear accident".
me too, nobody had no idea it happen back then, i wonder Americans are alright after those years of nuclear apocalypses that turn united states into ash tray , as texan, least i am ok now
By then, they'll have their own version of the Butlerian Jihad and an Anti AI caste. "This was made by a being without a soul" will be the common saying of those that have to decipher ancient content.
I remember this so clearly because my uncle worked at Black Mesa. He never told us much of what he did other than he was a scientist and he hated the ridiculous ties he was forced to wear. I never saw him again after the incident...
The Younger Generations just don’t understand what life used to be like they have no sense of how things changed and the freedoms we lost. Due to the horribly invasive policies shredding our constitution in the name of national security. Some idiots honestly think it was a hoax, I can’t believe our modern education system. More obsessed with not offending people than something that makes Chernobyl look like a cake walk.
This is awesome, loving all of the real world style stuff coming out for Half-Life recently. The Half-Life universe has so much potential for more content.
@@3333218So far at least I think Neinfeld has been the only one making HL to IRL content not like this but more of a how would the world's governments react to the Incident and how it would play out in the world as a map. But I'm sure this guy is cooking up another video.
One thing I really liked about the emergency announcements you hear throughout Black Mesa (as in the game Black Mesa) was how you can tell the government is basically slowly being forced into admitting they're dealing with an extraterrestrial invasion force.
Similarly, I liked the detail where if you didn't rush the enemy soldiers right away (like standing behind a wall where they can't see you) you can hear them talking amongst themselves, questioning why they had to kill everyone. Really showed their human side
Not to mention that they become progressively worse, telling people to bring less and less with them during the evacuation. They're tacitly admitting that they have barely any idea what tf they're dealing with, they don't know what to do, and they're basically fucked at this point.
@@bayareasportsfan04 yea, one hecu marine even wished/says (correct me if im wrong) wanted for a scientist to attack him so he would have a reason to shoot him, Not wanting to just comply with orders and kill the staff of the facility in cold blood.
This is honestly scary, seeing an AI almost perfectly replicate the voices of so many Government officials, let alone making the events of Black Mesa sound REAL. Edit: Okay I take it back; It is not perfect but it is so convincing still at these stages that it is very much unfathomable to even think of how good it may be if given another decade.
@@the_expidition427 This was real life footage with AI voices dubbed over it for a sort of close interpretation as to what this would look like, so yeah it looks off af but unless you're an incredibly good animator, this is as close as you're gonna get.
I mean... - Thousands of civilian personnel dead - An alien invasion bringing a totally unknown foreign biosphere to Earth - An unknown rocket launch for unknown reasons from an area that was a war zone - Highly suspicious experiments involving teleporting and interdimensional travel - Multiple thousands of Marines sent into an undisclosed mission - American airforce fighter jets seen heading into the area for reasons unknown - Deliberate govt clean-up of innocent civilian personnel as witnesses to be silenced - A following clean-up of military personnel as witnesses of the incident and the following silencing as further witnesses to be silenced - Yet ANOTHER alien invasion parallel to the first - A nuclear detonation in American Soil Yep, a total nightmare
I'm already having a hard time imagining a nuclear strike on American soil being authorized by any president outside of a full blown civil war. Incendiary strikes at most, but not a nuke, cuz that would be viewed as an atrocity by enough Americans to incite an uprising, and that would be major overkill for containing a virus passed on by physical contact. Unless I missed something, a quarantine backed by heavy firepower would take care of most of the problem.
@@theguybehindyou4762 It's not completely unreasonable to be honest. Small nukes do exist, and Raccoon City is actually a small-mid sized town (many American towns IRL have "city" in the name even if they are small). Almost all the civilians would already have evacuated or died by the point at which the nuke was dropped. Judging by people's response to COVID, I think most Americans would be in favor of containment and extermination by the quickest means possible. Another thing is that, if they carpet bomb with conventional munitions, there will be some duds that are unexploded at ground zero, which makes resettling more dangerous.
One thing is that technically on December 7, 2000, IRL people still weren’t sure whether Cheney or Lieberman was Vice President-elect. The Supreme Court would not decide the Bush v. Gore case until December 12. Which makes it interesting to imagine how that controversy would have impacted the United States’s response to the Black Mesa incident and the Seven Hour War.
Thanks for this. I was actually trying to determine whether or not it would have been appropriate for Cheney to be referred to as the vice-president-elect at this point. It's roughly December 10th according to Neinfeild's dating work - so perhaps in the Half-life universe, the SC passes their verdict a couple of days earlier?
@@macdrown3892 Yeah for this one at least. Maybe in another universe the United States is paralyzed during the Black Mesa incident due to the constitutional crisis (maybe even the alien invasion gets written off as a false-flag attack to prevent a transfer of power by Bush-Cheney, an explanation that gains credence due to the fact of how impossible an alien invasion sounds), also giving a reason why the US Armed Forces is defeated so quickly.
The best part of this video is 1:19 mentioning the satellite rocket. You just made it immersive to the outside world like in their POV, they're investigating that rocket and amazing NASA is the one who's doing that. It made me nearly forgot that Freeman launched that.
@@Daniel__Nobre Cyberpunk 2077 does this to an extent. There are video news reports on the loading screen that detail what's happened in the story so far
Gordon just desperately trying to close the rift while being awake for better part of 2 days, and done nothing but constantly killed aliens and soldiers.
I’m pretty sure some people would see the rocket launch coming from around the New Mexico exclusion zone and would 100% link it to Black Mesa pretty quickly. That would start to raise questions about what is actually going on there. Why are thousands of soldiers deployed in the facility responding to some unspecified threat? Why were they unable to stop an unauthorized rocket launch? Who launched that rocket and why?
And then imagine how the media would react when an evacuation of the entire state of New Mexico is issued, citing an “unknown hostile force” like how ominous is that? Evacuating an entire state because of unspecified enemy forces. Now that would make UFO conspiracists start speculating immediately that there’s aliens there
A counterpoint would be that information spread much more slowly in those early internet days. I suspect if any witnesses credible or otherwise connected the rocket to Black Mesa, the coverage would be relegated to kooky radio stations and websites covering conspiracy theories and UFO sightings
The writing of Tony Blair mentioning “dozens of British men and women employed at the facility” is nearly identical to his post 9/11 address in parliament. It’s fantastic, imo when it comes to alt-history the little details are what truly sells the story and brings you in.
@@macdrown3892 You should do another video about "the bolistic missile bombardment of Racoon City and the rumors of a Zombies outbreak happening within the city"
honestly i was confused why there was other government officials on the other side of the world commenting on the situation, untill i read this and realized it happen during another tragedy so ig it would make sense
i feel like if there was some media about half life itd be a short series or ""found footage"" style movie, cutting between security footage or recordings from scientists and guards during the events and then political statements and government breaking news reports
@@throwawaytrash33 Bush was in office by the 7 Hour War so while the Black Mesa incident and subsequent Resonance Cascade was mostly a Clinton problem, the President who approved Breen’s surrender to the Combine was Bush. There was about a month of Portal Storms and global Xenian infestation between the Cascade, and Combine Invasion.
could be interesting if it goes from proffessional messages from the government or a news channel chosen by the government to broadcast on all screens every so often, before devolving into just a single continous news crew trying to survive but still rolling to show people how serious it is and to stay calm
This just proves how Half Life has untapped potential when it comes to world-building. This was immersive in a way you just cannot see anywhere else. I love the creativity of HL fans
I dunno man. I used to really want an official sequel (not a trash vr cash grab that would take maybe 90 minutes to complete if it were a legit FPS) but looking how companies treat these IPs it doesn’t look good. Do you _really_ want “world-building” ala _doom eternal_ with all mystery and fun removed? Go back to Gordon’s “home base” after a mission and go through his collection of funko pops and check out his electric guitar? While I’m sure the real reason Valve doesn’t do a proper sequel is because it is much busier selling cosmetics and other games on Steam, a small part of me hopes a contingent within the company said “look, if we do a new title from scratch, it can only end up in disappointment; let’s leave well enough alone” thanks hope this helps have a Great weekend 👌
1:19 send shivers down my spine knowing a single badass scientist with a crowbar launched that satellite As well as thought that this tells us how far in and half Life 1 we are story-wise and simultaneously no one knows what is happening in there
@@wfjhDUIhe's a goddamn hero and you know it! The chaos in Black Mesa was definitely a CIA orchestrated operation! I'm just glad the government wasn't able to silence all victims of the incident. It's a miracle some of them still survived. I wonder what happened to the Crowbar Scientist..? Do you think he's out there?
Under bush, congress votes to approve military intervention in black Mesa to get a hold of their portal technology under the pretext of rooting out terrorism
To think, I could've lived (or died) through this... So, the tributes to HL1/Black Mesa keep coming, and this was pretty awesome as they go. Great Work!
Would love to see more like this. You could honestly do an entire 24-hour news cycle about the events of the black Mesa incident leading up to the world essentially ending during at the end of the 7-hour war
woah dude. this is VERY well done. and the shot of the Supreme Court at the end is absolutely perfect. i love how it ominously foreshadows the events that followed in the story. do you have plans to make more of these?
@@macdrown3892you've got a subscriber and fan here my friend. keep up the great work! i've compiled a playlist of your newsreels btw. i've tried to keep the description as in-universe as i can. ruclips.net/p/PLC8eJ_0HJAlMqAeyEYA-3DFE5ANGvJuOP&si=UirPWGiYbAFn28Sn
@@TheJovian16Ironically I think after the initial invasion, younger kids would have the best shot at survival, as they would both require less food and also grow up acclimatised to a combine-occupied world.
Join the Half-Life Historians Discord: discord.gg/99jnpHFUNv Hear my cool indie-folk music: ruclips.net/video/5kFGRHqiNMo/видео.html Please also have a look at Team Hyperborea. It's a modding crew that I've recently joined as a lead writer, script supervisor, and composer. We're currently working on a mod version of Epistle 3, the Marc Laidlaw-penned version of what Half-Life 3 was going to be. Find us here! www.youtube.com/@Team_Hyperborea
Hey I know that mod. Very cool! How did you got the lead writer role? i'm asking because I'd like to be one for a mod someday, so i'm interested in your personal experience tbh
I still have memories of watching this on TV. It made Chernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall and other events look tame by comparison. The world changed after this somehow. And I can’t help but think that the changes happening in the world right now, as well as some weird stuff like the secretive construction of what will be a huge blue tower with no windows in that city in Poland are all related to these events somehow. I mean, have you seen the footage of those flocks of weird looking drones always circulating around it?
Sequel please! Would love to hear about how the government has confirmed the presence of an unknown hostile force present at Black Mesa and the President orders mass airstrikes against the facility. Plus the 7 hours war as well.
This is so cool! I wonder if Gordon Freeman would hit the headlines considering he fought through, as the video states, ~2,000 armed military personnel.
He doesn’t kill 2000 people. Most of them either evacuate, get killed by Xen forces, or die when Black Mesa gets nuked. Also, if the White House doesn’t want to admit that there was a rocket launch, they sure as hell aren’t publicising that a random scientist in an experimental suit of armour managed to kill off hundreds of military personnel.
I highly doubt that the American government would want to make a figure like Freeman public. Especially after humiliating the HECU troopers like he did. Word might leak out about what he did, but honestly? I doubt people would believe it. Gordon's antics only really make sense in the context of a video game.
@@macdrown3892 I find it funny that they dismiss the lambda rocket launch as "not related to black mesa" even though they sure as hell know it was launched from there, just don't want to admit it as to not taint their image any further for the other countries
@@keinzue It would certainly not look good if it came out that they failed to prevent the launch of a multi-stage orbital rocket from a facility they were ACTIVELY OCCUPYING.
my cousin mark works as a repairsman at black mesa, last week he talked about how they were preparing for some decathlon and some new shit, pretty worried about him, prayers for all the workers at black mesa
I remember this, crazy times man. Glad i wasn't working there at the time, used to work as a security guard, job was cool. Luckily i started working elsewhere about a year before this. Thanks for uploading this!
@macdrown3892 Yeah, i remember this one guy, i think he was a forklift operator(?) He fell into this area FLOODED with toxic waste. Poor guy didn't make it. The power loader robot didn't help when it thought he was cargo. the only thing left of him was his hardhat. Yeah, crazy stuff happened all the time at BM
@@Postaldude2003I used to work as a security guard in Anomalous Materials lab before the incident happened, I am so happy I was lazy asf back then that I skipped a day when the accident happened. Too bad the military couldn't save a single soul in there, the hell was in there anyways? Why did they even nuke the place? :(
@@claudespeed626 skipped a day? Did you come back to the dormitories, or did you just leave the Black Mesa without anyone noticing? And how are you still alive? I think you are lying; you can't just leave Black Mesa for a day without a valid reason. It's an enormous, top-secret facility.
Showed this to my coworker who is only freshly 21 and has never heard of half life. Had this guy flipping out that he'd never heard anything about what happened until he Googled it himself a few minutes later
I'm working on more stuff like this. The question with the seven hour was is how realistically they would have been able to construct news broadcasts while the world is actively being rear-ended.
@@macdrown3892 The Combine could have targeted military communications infrastructure but deliberately spare civilian comms so that civilians could see their militaries being destroyed live, to demoralize them
@@macdrown3892 There's this video that details the entire 20 year history of the combine and suggests that the seven hour war happened a month after the black mesa incident, so if you wanted to follow that idea then there's certainly enough room to make more broadcasts about the developments of the incident.
The Black Mesa Incident is so well documented that despite it being fictional I can see someone in the future checking it out and believing it really happened.
Oh man, this is awesome. Like a year ago I found a long very detailed 'news rundown' by Black Mesa of the events of Half life 1 - the 7 hour war' which it ended at. This is even better
I still remember the day this broadcast happened. I was 16 at the time, just a dumb teenager not having a care in the world about anything. I lived 42 miles away from Black Mesa, Heck i even had friends whose moms and dads worked there. We were fucking terrified, especially when their parents didn't answer calls or texts. Only a few hours later there were Military jets flying overhead towards Black Mesa. A few Ospreys landed in our town, there were military men rounding everyone up threatening to shoot anyone that didnt comply with them. We got relocated to a shelter in Armarillo, Texas. The journey took hours just to get to the border, we werent allowed to speak or even have anything to eat or drink. It still hurts just to think about that day.
Tony sounded deep faked, but Bill sounded like an impersonator. Have to accept you just can't tell any more. Props for the details, probably didn't even notice them all, it blends so well, like the very authentic sounding high-frequency-syllable-only distortion on Tony's bit. Someone set the audio gain a bit too high on the VTR!
There are some FOSS tools you can use to also sync lips to new audio too, I think independent of language (I did it for the one video on my channel, this is not a plug just relevant). I really like the editing done in this, the beginning is really really convincing The potential is really scary, but it's cool to see tech come this far in such a short time
This is really neat and well done! If I can add some constructive criticism, the gray military uniform at 1:52 wasn't implemented until around 2004, about 4 years after this event. I know a lot of folks likely won't mind, but it's something that stood out to me. Other than that little detail, again, this is really good!
My band has released some Half-Life/SCP inspired murder folk rock. Check it out: ruclips.net/video/W7iLgHoERvg/видео.htmlsi=njChwFevKp4CDIsZ
this sucks
@@NitroDubzzz Yeah!
drill instructor sharp unironically met bill clinton in the half life lore not a joke@@macdrown3892
This is fucking awesome, holy shit.
@@ProteinFromTheSea thanks! stay tuned for more!
I've always loved the idea of realism and political consequences in fictional media.
@@vapordreams983 But Black Ops is a military game and also references real life military stuff, I'm talking about fictional stuff like Half-Life or Transformers
@@PieroMinayaRojasthis is why district 9 is one of my favorite movies.
that news special thing from dawn of the dead is pretty cool, the whole thing is on youtube
like when they initially report the zombie outbreak as race riots lol
Deus Ex
hola piero xd
That late-90s/turn of the millennium journalist voice, rhythm, and inflection is seriously uncanny, what an impressive reconstruction. This really felt like it came from a VHS recording
I trained the AI on a bunch of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 footage so the tone of the era was preserved.
@@macdrown3892 good grief, I knew the politicians were AI generated. Great job on Tony Blair. But I thought the reporter was real!
@@nicksteele9436 it’s all AI!
@@youngzuwop8600
Don’t have to act like you got him on some “gotcha”, everyone knows what elevenlabs is. Keep it respectful
2003 moment
"the most significant threat to national security of the last decade". They really had no idea
It's generic bluster from the opposition, but was a woeful understatement of what was to come.
They had no idea just how worse things were gonna get
I saw another recreation like this where China was accusing the US of covering up a nuclear accident, the US went from denial to "you wish it was just nuclear accident".
me too, nobody had no idea it happen back then, i wonder Americans are alright after those years of nuclear apocalypses that turn united states into ash tray , as texan, least i am ok now
They had no idea how bad for the economy it would be.
This is going to really shake up the 2002 midterms.
idk, I think Administrator Breen has it in the bag.
Even more so that the Black Mesa incident happens in 2003 and Clinton isn’t president. And if it’s 1998 then Cheney isn’t VP Elect.
@Dr.Quarex"Vice president elect Dick Cheney" implies this is happening in 2000, just before Bush took office.
@Dr.Quarexunsure if its canon but its suggested that Half Life takes place in 2003
@@benedictDover It would have to be between December 12, 2000 and January 20, 2001. Less than 40 days.
“Sir, a second vortigon has hit black mesa”
Vortigaunt
@@AmoGus-s7zhe can’t even fix it because he’s pinned 💀
Osama G laden
better declare a 7-hour war on terrorism
@@AmoGus-s7z they werent even called vortigaunts in the original game
I feel so bad for historians in 200 ish years
I love ai deepfake politicians. They tell me what I love to hear.
By then, they'll have their own version of the Butlerian Jihad and an Anti AI caste.
"This was made by a being without a soul" will be the common saying of those that have to decipher ancient content.
Ouch. Considering how messed up Earth is post-Combine, the loss of knowledge would overshadow the Bronze Age Collapse.
@@concept5631 Hes talking about how there is thousands of alternate history footages that get them mislead
I remember this so clearly because my uncle worked at Black Mesa. He never told us much of what he did other than he was a scientist and he hated the ridiculous ties he was forced to wear. I never saw him again after the incident...
This comment didn’t age well by HL2 came about. That uncle won’t be the only one
I remember I was on a road trip with my dad and we could see the portal storms from the Arizona border.
We never did make it to Disneyland.
But have you seen his coffee cup?
Did he also scream about some guy named gordon mess with the microwave in the cafeteria
The Younger Generations just don’t understand what life used to be like they have no sense of how things changed and the freedoms we lost. Due to the horribly invasive policies shredding our constitution in the name of national security. Some idiots honestly think it was a hoax, I can’t believe our modern education system. More obsessed with not offending people than something that makes Chernobyl look like a cake walk.
This is awesome, loving all of the real world style stuff coming out for Half-Life recently. The Half-Life universe has so much potential for more content.
Can you point me towards more real world style HL content?
@@3333218So far at least I think Neinfeld has been the only one making HL to IRL content not like this but more of a how would the world's governments react to the Incident and how it would play out in the world as a map.
But I'm sure this guy is cooking up another video.
@@Slavtistic Right!
@@3333218 Neinfeld and Wibble both have good stuff.
@@macdrown3892 Oh yes! I'm already a subscriber of their's.
One thing I really liked about the emergency announcements you hear throughout Black Mesa (as in the game Black Mesa) was how you can tell the government is basically slowly being forced into admitting they're dealing with an extraterrestrial invasion force.
Similarly, I liked the detail where if you didn't rush the enemy soldiers right away (like standing behind a wall where they can't see you) you can hear them talking amongst themselves, questioning why they had to kill everyone. Really showed their human side
Not to mention that they become progressively worse, telling people to bring less and less with them during the evacuation. They're tacitly admitting that they have barely any idea what tf they're dealing with, they don't know what to do, and they're basically fucked at this point.
@@bayareasportsfan04 yea, one hecu marine even wished/says (correct me if im wrong) wanted for a scientist to attack him so he would have a reason to shoot him, Not wanting to just comply with orders and kill the staff of the facility in cold blood.
@@trexoil7774 "I killed twelve dumb ass scientists and not one of 'em fought back. This sucks."
This is honestly scary, seeing an AI almost perfectly replicate the voices of so many Government officials, let alone making the events of Black Mesa sound REAL.
Edit: Okay I take it back; It is not perfect but it is so convincing still at these stages that it is very much unfathomable to even think of how good it may be if given another decade.
Lip syncing is off
@@the_expidition427There was no lip sync
@@the_expidition427still damn impressive
@@the_expidition427 This was real life footage with AI voices dubbed over it for a sort of close interpretation as to what this would look like, so yeah it looks off af but unless you're an incredibly good animator, this is as close as you're gonna get.
Not really perfect replication yet but it definitely is getting there
So, from a civil and government perspective, the black mesa event is a fucking diplomatic and PR nightmare
It’s eerily similar to 9/11 but literally a hundred million times more devastating.
I mean...
- Thousands of civilian personnel dead
- An alien invasion bringing a totally unknown foreign biosphere to Earth
- An unknown rocket launch for unknown reasons from an area that was a war zone
- Highly suspicious experiments involving teleporting and interdimensional travel
- Multiple thousands of Marines sent into an undisclosed mission
- American airforce fighter jets seen heading into the area for reasons unknown
- Deliberate govt clean-up of innocent civilian personnel as witnesses to be silenced
- A following clean-up of military personnel as witnesses of the incident and the following silencing as further witnesses to be silenced
- Yet ANOTHER alien invasion parallel to the first
- A nuclear detonation in American Soil
Yep, a total nightmare
so here's a question... would the 9/11 attacks still have happened in the Half Life universe, or not? and if so, how would that affect geopolitics?
@@Draco_Alpha nah since the combine invaded and took over earth before 9/11 happened i doubt it
@@Archman155it’s still debated which exact year the black mesa incident happened. Officially it’s ambiguous between 2000-2009
Now if only someone could do a similar video like this, but for the Raccoon City disaster of 1998.
Damn, two cataclysmic events in two years?? Clinton can't catch a break!
Yes!!!
Need a long one including the controversy around the decision to deploy a nuclear weapon
I'm already having a hard time imagining a nuclear strike on American soil being authorized by any president outside of a full blown civil war. Incendiary strikes at most, but not a nuke, cuz that would be viewed as an atrocity by enough Americans to incite an uprising, and that would be major overkill for containing a virus passed on by physical contact. Unless I missed something, a quarantine backed by heavy firepower would take care of most of the problem.
@@theguybehindyou4762 It's not completely unreasonable to be honest. Small nukes do exist, and Raccoon City is actually a small-mid sized town (many American towns IRL have "city" in the name even if they are small). Almost all the civilians would already have evacuated or died by the point at which the nuke was dropped. Judging by people's response to COVID, I think most Americans would be in favor of containment and extermination by the quickest means possible. Another thing is that, if they carpet bomb with conventional munitions, there will be some duds that are unexploded at ground zero, which makes resettling more dangerous.
Imagine being from the far future, watching this and not being able to tell if this really happened or not
God at first I thought this was real
You mean it isn't real? My family just finished packing essentials, we're about to leave New Mexico. I'm so glad I found this comment.
You're welcome
@@Eliasdbr my hero 💕
It was such a significant historical moment they even made a videogame out of it.
One thing is that technically on December 7, 2000, IRL people still weren’t sure whether Cheney or Lieberman was Vice President-elect. The Supreme Court would not decide the Bush v. Gore case until December 12. Which makes it interesting to imagine how that controversy would have impacted the United States’s response to the Black Mesa incident and the Seven Hour War.
Thanks for this. I was actually trying to determine whether or not it would have been appropriate for Cheney to be referred to as the vice-president-elect at this point. It's roughly December 10th according to Neinfeild's dating work - so perhaps in the Half-life universe, the SC passes their verdict a couple of days earlier?
@@macdrown3892 Yeah for this one at least. Maybe in another universe the United States is paralyzed during the Black Mesa incident due to the constitutional crisis (maybe even the alien invasion gets written off as a false-flag attack to prevent a transfer of power by Bush-Cheney, an explanation that gains credence due to the fact of how impossible an alien invasion sounds), also giving a reason why the US Armed Forces is defeated so quickly.
wasn’t it cannon that it was may 16th, 200-?
@@gavinh6943 nah that was when Gordon was hired to the black mesa research facility
Nope@@gavinh6943
The best part of this video is 1:19 mentioning the satellite rocket. You just made it immersive to the outside world like in their POV, they're investigating that rocket and amazing NASA is the one who's doing that. It made me nearly forgot that Freeman launched that.
I love that detail as well. Wish games actually made stuff like this to build up the immersion.
Hello kurber king
@@Daniel__Nobre Cyberpunk 2077 does this to an extent. There are video news reports on the loading screen that detail what's happened in the story so far
@@TheLegendaryHacker can’t remember it, but that is cool.
1:19 best part. It is incredible the way he connected the outside world to the player's actions in game.
Honestly I think it should be mentioned that it came from black mesa
But I guess it's part of a cover up
Drums and riffs playing in my head watching that
Gordon just desperately trying to close the rift while being awake for better part of 2 days, and done nothing but constantly killed aliens and soldiers.
I’m pretty sure some people would see the rocket launch coming from around the New Mexico exclusion zone and would 100% link it to Black Mesa pretty quickly. That would start to raise questions about what is actually going on there. Why are thousands of soldiers deployed in the facility responding to some unspecified threat? Why were they unable to stop an unauthorized rocket launch? Who launched that rocket and why?
And then imagine how the media would react when an evacuation of the entire state of New Mexico is issued, citing an “unknown hostile force” like how ominous is that? Evacuating an entire state because of unspecified enemy forces. Now that would make UFO conspiracists start speculating immediately that there’s aliens there
misinformation and gaslighting are child's play for the government, they'd find a way to spin it their way sooner rather than later.
I agree. There’s a reason the media is reporting what it’s reporting.
A counterpoint would be that information spread much more slowly in those early internet days. I suspect if any witnesses credible or otherwise connected the rocket to Black Mesa, the coverage would be relegated to kooky radio stations and websites covering conspiracy theories and UFO sightings
Lambda team are nut
The writing of Tony Blair mentioning “dozens of British men and women employed at the facility” is nearly identical to his post 9/11 address in parliament. It’s fantastic, imo when it comes to alt-history the little details are what truly sells the story and brings you in.
Yep, I cloned it off that address.
@@macdrown3892 You should do another video about "the bolistic missile bombardment of Racoon City and the rumors of a Zombies outbreak happening within the city"
Thing is I doubt black mesa would employ any foreign without first getting rid of their double citizenship. Too much secret stuff going on there.
honestly i was confused why there was other government officials on the other side of the world commenting on the situation, untill i read this and realized it happen during another tragedy so ig it would make sense
I remember watching the Black Mesa incident unfold on television, though I was pretty young back then
Cool, also how does Dr breen's water reserve taste like?
@@paperhat_boi tastes like expired coke. i don't recommend. dang what do the combine do for this shit.?
Never thought about the fact that people on the outside would notice the Black Mesa rocket.
I can imagine a Half-Life movie or series opening with something like this.
I would love a limited Half Life tv show that just covers events taking place across the world.
Definitely
i feel like if there was some media about half life itd be a short series or ""found footage"" style movie, cutting between security footage or recordings from scientists and guards during the events and then political statements and government breaking news reports
I can't decide whether Clinton or Keemstar is the funnier option to imagine in the house during the incident
Bush is the only one I could believe.
@@throwawaytrash33 Bush was in office by the 7 Hour War so while the Black Mesa incident and subsequent Resonance Cascade was mostly a Clinton problem, the President who approved Breen’s surrender to the Combine was Bush. There was about a month of Portal Storms and global Xenian infestation between the Cascade, and Combine Invasion.
Is this a Hunt Down the Freeman reference?
I did not have sexual relations with that vortigaunt!
@@MrTigrachoyes
“I did not touch the resinance cascade”
I love this so much. Please, make sequels about this following the portal storms aroudn the globe
could be interesting if it goes from proffessional messages from the government or a news channel chosen by the government to broadcast on all screens every so often, before devolving into just a single continous news crew trying to survive but still rolling to show people how serious it is and to stay calm
This just proves how Half Life has untapped potential when it comes to world-building. This was immersive in a way you just cannot see anywhere else. I love the creativity of HL fans
I dunno man. I used to really want an official sequel (not a trash vr cash grab that would take maybe 90 minutes to complete if it were a legit FPS) but looking how companies treat these IPs it doesn’t look good. Do you _really_ want “world-building” ala _doom eternal_ with all mystery and fun removed? Go back to Gordon’s “home base” after a mission and go through his collection of funko pops and check out his electric guitar?
While I’m sure the real reason Valve doesn’t do a proper sequel is because it is much busier selling cosmetics and other games on Steam, a small part of me hopes a contingent within the company said “look, if we do a new title from scratch, it can only end up in disappointment; let’s leave well enough alone” thanks hope this helps have a Great weekend 👌
@@hikeskoolJesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
@@hikeskool "trash vr cash grab" lol
@@hikeskool Thanks, man! I was just about to buy Doom Eternal, and now I've saved a bunch of money and I'm sitting here replaying good old Doom 2 :D
This is absolutely phenomenal, it really captures the vibe of 90s new broadcasts.
1:19 send shivers down my spine knowing a single badass scientist with a crowbar launched that satellite
As well as thought that this tells us how far in and half Life 1 we are story-wise and simultaneously no one knows what is happening in there
That man you call a "badass scientist" is a terrorist. He murdered my uncle in the Marines.
@@wfjhDUIYOUR UNCLE'S LAST WORDS WERE "MY! ASS! IS! HEAVY!" LMAAAAAAOOOO
@@wfjhDUIhe's a goddamn hero and you know it! The chaos in Black Mesa was definitely a CIA orchestrated operation! I'm just glad the government wasn't able to silence all victims of the incident. It's a miracle some of them still survived. I wonder what happened to the Crowbar Scientist..? Do you think he's out there?
The fact we don't have a VHS horror halflife series is criminal
If anybody could run the spec-ops purge & burn op, my moneys on it being Dick Cheney & Bill 100%
The black Mesa dividians
doubt it , bill can't even raid his secretary's panties without being caught.
Under bush, congress votes to approve military intervention in black Mesa to get a hold of their portal technology under the pretext of rooting out terrorism
@@macdrown3892is this before or after the combine invasion?
To think, I could've lived (or died) through this... So, the tributes to HL1/Black Mesa keep coming, and this was pretty awesome as they go. Great Work!
Would love to see more like this. You could honestly do an entire 24-hour news cycle about the events of the black Mesa incident leading up to the world essentially ending during at the end of the 7-hour war
tbh it already ended during the xen invasion, which is why the 7 hour war was so easy, the combine were also incredibly powerful but still
I started playing this in a Discord call and everyone was confused and extremely concerned until they heard black mesa. Good laugh.
I love stuff like this. Stock-footage adaptations, fictional EMT alerts, etc. Nicely done.
woah dude. this is VERY well done. and the shot of the Supreme Court at the end is absolutely perfect. i love how it ominously foreshadows the events that followed in the story. do you have plans to make more of these?
Check out the rest of my channel for more.
@@macdrown3892you've got a subscriber and fan here my friend. keep up the great work!
i've compiled a playlist of your newsreels btw. i've tried to keep the description as in-universe as i can.
ruclips.net/p/PLC8eJ_0HJAlMqAeyEYA-3DFE5ANGvJuOP&si=UirPWGiYbAFn28Sn
Glad I'm not born in the wrong universe. I'm not even 6 months old at that time.
I was 5 at the time and I'd probably starve to death even if I survived the portal storms and the Combine Invasion.
Hell, I'm in my mother's womb that time during BMS incident in 2003...
@@TheJovian16Ironically I think after the initial invasion, younger kids would have the best shot at survival, as they would both require less food and also grow up acclimatised to a combine-occupied world.
black mesa happened in 2000 not 2003 @@captlegendary
14 my childhood is about to end.
Just a note: Japan's Prime Minister in 12/5/2000 was Yoshirō Mori, not Junichiro Koizumi, who was depicted as the PM from 0:45 to 0:54.
Yeah, that’s 100% an error from me not doing my research properly
Alternate universe moment
already A tier, but with some polishing I can easily see this climbing to S tier of alternate history youtube. Good job!! Well done.
Thanks for archiving and documenting this historic event!
I'm subscribing. I love that you're basing this on Neinfeld's videos. There is so much potential here.
Join the Half-Life Historians Discord: discord.gg/99jnpHFUNv
Hear my cool indie-folk music: ruclips.net/video/5kFGRHqiNMo/видео.html
Please also have a look at Team Hyperborea. It's a modding crew that I've recently joined as a lead writer, script supervisor, and composer. We're currently working on a mod version of Epistle 3, the Marc Laidlaw-penned version of what Half-Life 3 was going to be. Find us here! www.youtube.com/@Team_Hyperborea
Hey I know that mod. Very cool!
How did you got the lead writer role? i'm asking because I'd like to be one for a mod someday, so i'm interested in your personal experience tbh
And then shortly afterward, the 7 hour war happens
A month afterward
I still remember the day, the whole family watching the news with complete silence. Little did we know, our wholes lives would change soon after.
I still have memories of watching this on TV. It made Chernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall and other events look tame by comparison. The world changed after this somehow. And I can’t help but think that the changes happening in the world right now, as well as some weird stuff like the secretive construction of what will be a huge blue tower with no windows in that city in Poland are all related to these events somehow. I mean, have you seen the footage of those flocks of weird looking drones always circulating around it?
compared to the Seven Hour War, everything else looks piddly in comparison, really
Compared to when the reproduction negation fields being shut down this is nothing
compared to the ascension of Administrator Breen, this is nothing.
compared to the founding of the Interim Coalition of Governance in their brutal war against the Xeelee, this is something
Compared to the talk of the "One Free Man," this is nothing.
Sequel please! Would love to hear about how the government has confirmed the presence of an unknown hostile force present at Black Mesa and the President orders mass airstrikes against the facility.
Plus the 7 hours war as well.
This is so cool! I wonder if Gordon Freeman would hit the headlines considering he fought through, as the video states, ~2,000 armed military personnel.
He doesn’t kill 2000 people. Most of them either evacuate, get killed by Xen forces, or die when Black Mesa gets nuked. Also, if the White House doesn’t want to admit that there was a rocket launch, they sure as hell aren’t publicising that a random scientist in an experimental suit of armour managed to kill off hundreds of military personnel.
I highly doubt that the American government would want to make a figure like Freeman public. Especially after humiliating the HECU troopers like he did. Word might leak out about what he did, but honestly? I doubt people would believe it. Gordon's antics only really make sense in the context of a video game.
@@macdrown3892 Yeah, good point lol
@@macdrown3892 I find it funny that they dismiss the lambda rocket launch as "not related to black mesa" even though they sure as hell know it was launched from there, just don't want to admit it as to not taint their image any further for the other countries
@@keinzue It would certainly not look good if it came out that they failed to prevent the launch of a multi-stage orbital rocket from a facility they were ACTIVELY OCCUPYING.
I legit thought for a minute "wait, black mesa existed? There was an incident?"
shrekt
Black Mesa exists btw.
I've been showing this to my parents, aunts & uncles asking them if they remember watching it. My Step Mom said she did, do I stop or keep going? 🤣
There's more coming. Keep showing them.
Keep going bro. 😂😂❤❤❤
The older you get the more you see how ignorant they are when it comes to memory loss and or ability. Scary really.
my cousin mark works as a repairsman at black mesa, last week he talked about how they were preparing for some decathlon and some new shit, pretty worried about him, prayers for all the workers at black mesa
The most disturbing bit is people in the exclusion zone being told to seek out "government officials" (i.e. soldiers) who will kill them on sight.
I don't think that they would've pulled that off without being caught
So I doubt they would've killed them
Nah, they aren’t executing random civvies who don’t know anything about the actual root cause.
I was so confused at the sattelite bit until at 1:28 i realized it's THE ROCKET you fire.
This is amazing. It feels so real.
This is the greatest use of AI I have ever seen. Very well done.
MAKE MORE OF THESE ITS SO GOOD SUBSCRIBED
I remember this, crazy times man. Glad i wasn't working there at the time, used to work as a security guard, job was cool. Luckily i started working elsewhere about a year before this. Thanks for uploading this!
You got out at the right time, so much of the Black Mesa infrastructure was super old and they were being constantly investigated by OSHA.
@macdrown3892 Yeah, i remember this one guy, i think he was a forklift operator(?) He fell into this area FLOODED with toxic waste. Poor guy didn't make it. The power loader robot didn't help when it thought he was cargo. the only thing left of him was his hardhat. Yeah, crazy stuff happened all the time at BM
@@Postaldude2003I used to work as a security guard in Anomalous Materials lab before the incident happened, I am so happy I was lazy asf back then that I skipped a day when the accident happened. Too bad the military couldn't save a single soul in there, the hell was in there anyways? Why did they even nuke the place? :(
@@claudespeed626 skipped a day? Did you come back to the dormitories, or did you just leave the Black Mesa without anyone noticing? And how are you still alive?
I think you are lying; you can't just leave Black Mesa for a day without a valid reason. It's an enormous, top-secret facility.
Showed this to my coworker who is only freshly 21 and has never heard of half life. Had this guy flipping out that he'd never heard anything about what happened until he Googled it himself a few minutes later
I loved the shot of the rocket in the air
The tie Clinton is wearing is so hilariously inappropriate for delivering a press conference of this nature. Haha
This recreation is more competent (and convincing) than the real NBC broadcasts we have today 🤨
Fucking awesome. Could you do the follow ups and seven hour war too?
I'm working on more stuff like this. The question with the seven hour was is how realistically they would have been able to construct news broadcasts while the world is actively being rear-ended.
@@macdrown3892 Maybe do more stuff in between then?
@@macdrown3892 The Combine could have targeted military communications infrastructure but deliberately spare civilian comms so that civilians could see their militaries being destroyed live, to demoralize them
@@macdrown3892 There's this video that details the entire 20 year history of the combine and suggests that the seven hour war happened a month after the black mesa incident, so if you wanted to follow that idea then there's certainly enough room to make more broadcasts about the developments of the incident.
You just earned yourself a new sub@@macdrown3892
this is great stuff man! You should really do more of this stuff man!
STILL WAITING FOR A HALF-LIFE MOVIE/TV SERIES
Talk about a massive gate... people got no idea.
Crazy level of accuracy, if the lipsyncing was perfect I'd say this is perfect in every way
I love the backdrop of the Hoover Dam in Nevada while their discussing a science facility in New Mexico
would've been cool if you snuck G-man somewhere in the background of the footage as if he's keeping tabs on everything all at once.
Clinton: "Please, leave me alone until after the investigation."
“Why do we all have to hear these ridiculous lies?”
The Black Mesa Incident is so well documented that despite it being fictional I can see someone in the future checking it out and believing it really happened.
Pronouncing Laissez-Faire as lazy fair is the most accurate part
1:00 so Bill Clinton is the reason why I can’t go through surface tension without dying 5 million times in a row?
God, these are finally being made. Thank you.
Oh man, this is awesome. Like a year ago I found a long very detailed 'news rundown' by Black Mesa of the events of Half life 1 - the 7 hour war' which it ended at. This is even better
I still remember the day this broadcast happened.
I was 16 at the time, just a dumb teenager not having a care in the world about anything.
I lived 42 miles away from Black Mesa, Heck i even had friends whose moms and dads worked there.
We were fucking terrified, especially when their parents didn't answer calls or texts.
Only a few hours later there were Military jets flying overhead towards Black Mesa.
A few Ospreys landed in our town, there were military men rounding everyone up threatening to shoot anyone that didnt comply with them.
We got relocated to a shelter in Armarillo, Texas.
The journey took hours just to get to the border, we werent allowed to speak or even have anything to eat or drink.
It still hurts just to think about that day.
someone needs to send this to mark ladlaw
Already did, but feel free to spam him with it
And meanwhile, Chell is jumping through portals somewhere in Aperture.
Better put this on a VHS tape and sell it on a garage sale.
“In other news, Aperture Science is celebrating bring your kid to work day.”
My uncle Barney worked there, nice guy, he’s always buying beers for friends
The idea of Dick Cheney saying the president should be honest and forthcoming with information is hilarious.
This is extremely well made.
Uncle Gordon went MIA that week…we miss you!
Tony sounded deep faked, but Bill sounded like an impersonator. Have to accept you just can't tell any more.
Props for the details, probably didn't even notice them all, it blends so well, like the very authentic sounding high-frequency-syllable-only distortion on Tony's bit. Someone set the audio gain a bit too high on the VTR!
Damn this is great. Archived Combine Invasion/7 Hour War footage when?
"I did not have sexual relations with that vortigaunt!"
This a canonical news broadcast in my headcannon. thank you
The nightmare of the Resonance Cascade never end.
I would love to see this as a movie. So eerily realistic.
dude, this gives major monument mythos vibes. bravo!!
I took a lot of inspiration from the work of Alex Casanas for this video.
We waaaant more! Amazing job!
This is actually really awesome man, keep up the work!
This is really excellently made, the voices especially are incredible.
imagine a time traveler leaving this clips in a vhs in the 80s lol
In other news, Aperture Science stock rose 300%, despite allegations of mantis men.
There are some FOSS tools you can use to also sync lips to new audio too, I think independent of language (I did it for the one video on my channel, this is not a plug just relevant).
I really like the editing done in this, the beginning is really really convincing
The potential is really scary, but it's cool to see tech come this far in such a short time
Found this gem just in time, gonna be super useful for a TTRPG campaign of the black mesa incident i'm running. Very realistic, good job
would be very horrible if this had happened in real life
Its so cool when games takes real event figures and then make it to their games event history
Sounds like the Elite's are playing with Toys, not from this World.
GOD DAMN THAT AUSTRALIAN SOUNDS ACCENT WAS INCREDLE
This is really neat and well done!
If I can add some constructive criticism, the gray military uniform at 1:52 wasn't implemented until around 2004, about 4 years after this event. I know a lot of folks likely won't mind, but it's something that stood out to me.
Other than that little detail, again, this is really good!
That's Slick Willie for you- always with the smooth talk.