Last week, I was able to Skype with two members of the Valve team about the VR-only Half-Life 2 prequel Half-Life: Dario Casali, a level designer at Valve who has worked on the original Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Portal series. Dario Casali, who has worked on the original "Half-Life", "Half-Life 2", and "Portal" series, and Eric Wolpaw, co-writer of "Alyx", two episodes of "Half-Life 2", and "Portal 2".

I asked Casali if he had played the original "Half-Life" game for inspiration during the making of "Half-Life": before the interview, he showed me a shrink-wrapped copy of the original "Half-Life" on camera Before the interview, he showed me a shrink-wrapped copy of the original "Half-Life" on camera.) He then said he played Half-Life again. But not to the end.

"So I played the original Half-Life 1 for maybe five hours," Casali said. They redid this at Source. And then they redid Black Mesa from the beginning."

"And we played all of that," Casali said. And they did a great job. They did a great job.

The discussion touched briefly on Xen, the low-gravity platform section at the end of the original Half-Life. As Andy noted in his favorable review, the Black Mesa remake of Half-Life completely reimagined the Xen chapter of Half-Life, turning it into "one of the best parts of the game."

Casali may prefer to play Black Mesa, but at least writer Eric Wolpaw is willing to defend the original version of Half-Life's Xen. 'It was 20 years ago,' he says. 'It was great back then

Half-Life: Alyx is out today: be sure to check out our review and guide to choosing the best GPU and headset. We've also updated our list of Half-Life 3 announcements, leaks, and hoaxes.