Arrowhead: Something Stirs in the Clouds
Six months ago, the soon-to-be Arrowhead team was watching a movie together. That movie was The Mist, a Frank Darabont adaptation of the Stephen King novella. You might know this book: It rather famously inspired the entire core base of what became the first Half-Life game. This is going somewhere — and is not a thinly-veiled request for you to go see and/or read The Mist, though you really should, and as blindly as you can — but bear with me. The Mist is about a clandestine science experiment that deposits alien creatures straight out of a 1950s pulp science fiction magazine on an unassuming Maine town. One of us said “This concept would make an amazing Half-Life game!”, followed by someone else saying “It would be cool if they actually made that.”, immediately followed by someone else saying “I mean, we could.”
Six months later, we now have Arrowhead, a science-fiction horror game set in the Half-Life universe. We’ve borrowed from a lot more movies since then, have talked about it just about every day, and have made a nice chunk of stuff to fulfill our vision of a world ravaged by the same aliens you fought in the steely corridors of Black Mesa.
Arrowhead is our way of returning to the mood and themes of Half-Life 1 while exploring a new and relatively undeveloped period in the Half-Life universe. In Half-Life 2, the Episodes, and Alyx, we see a world ravaged by Xen’s ecosystem meshing with ours in hostile ways. We wanted to explore this on its own, and how it may have begun, but without the overhead presence of the Combine. As a result, Arrowhead takes place after the events of Half-Life 1, but you won’t be witnessing the Seven Hour War or fighting off Striders. Instead, you’ll be experiencing the “First Days,” watching as completely uncontrollable Portal Storms cascade across the globe, depositing alien flora and fauna everywhere. You’re not a hero, and you’re certainly not Gordon Freeman. Your own hardscrabble fight amidst the alien horrors in the way of survival will be filled with terror, hardships, and maybe even a few tough sacrifices along the way.
Let’s talk about it.
Handing this section over to our incredible 3D Artist, Gmadador:
Arrowhead’s models have been a large focus for me on the project. I’ve made about 8 full character/monster models, most with fully fleshed out animation sets, with many more to come.
While making these models, my main goal has been replicating the style of the artists that made the wonderful low poly models and designs of HL1, and translating it to roughly HL2 fidelity. We still want to keep that lovely stylization that HL1 has, though, so we’re intentionally going in that direction rather than trying to make everything fit HL2. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at HL1 art by Chuck Jones, Ted Backman, and Dhabih Eng to get a feel for what they were actually thinking of with a specific design, rather than just remaking the in-game model directly. The in-game models tend to have a lot of weird details and quirks that work well on a low poly model with low res textures, but that doesn’t really work well in our case. The Subject Freeman series by Decepticoin has also been a huge source of inspiration and reference for updating those designs.
The results aren’t always 1:1, but we hope that the spirit of the originals still shine through!
So here’s something you might not know: Level design is hard! It’s the aspect of the project we struggle with the most. For the last six months, we’ve mainly been working on one location in the game: A national park besieged by all sorts of Xen creatures. Short on resources, you’ll need to rely on the cover of nature and your own inventiveness to make it out of the woods. We would love to show you gameplay, but that’s all sorts of rough at the moment. We have some cool shots, though!
We’ll have a lot more to share at a later date! Things are on paper, in greybox stages, and are generally taking shape, but it’s far from presentable. It’s undoubtedly the aspect of the project we’ll need the most help with. More on that at the end!
As for enemies…
You’ll be fighting a ton of classic Half-Life aliens in Arrowhead, but we didn’t just want a cheap nostalgia pull. These creatures will have a LOT of exciting and unexpected new behaviors. As we work on them, we’ll show off the best and leave the rest for you to discover yourself!
Focused music production on a project where a lot of the game is still taking shape is tricky, but at the same time, it’s an incredibly great tool for establishing and speculating on the certain moods and action pieces we might end up exploring. With that being said, here’s a ten track concept EP! Sounds of Arrowhead does not represent music that’ll be used in the final game, but it does represent the general type of music you’ll be hearing. Leave us feedback, whether you liked what you heard or not! It’ll push the direction of our soundtrack pretty significantly.
Here are some words from our incredible composer, Emily:
In this case, the soundtrack was specifically designed to sound more textural/rhythmic rather than explicitly melodic. A large motivator for this approach was really the lack of attention Kelly Bailey’s original Half-Life soundtrack has been given as a reference point for Half-Life mod soundtracks. There’s a common reference point for a whole lot of mods now, which essentially all seem to come from the catchy melodies and drum patterns brought about by tracks like CP Violation (from Half-Life 2’s soundtrack) and Vortal Combat (from Episode 2’s soundtrack). While these approaches are certainly wonderful, I feel they’ve become a bit stale in comparison to the almost primal, industrial approach of the original Half-Life soundtrack, which is what I’ve tried to lean into heavily here. Rather than being explicit “songs” that start and end, I’ve tried to design tracks that work seamlessly with the existing diegetic ambiance in the levels themselves.
Key points of reference included Kelly Bailey’s work on the Half-Life and Portal soundtracks, 90s sampledelia/trip-hop production (Massive Attack, Portishead, and DJ Shadow being mass influences on my work in general), and ambient music artists such as the inescapable Brian Eno and Angelo Badalamenti’s stellar work on the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Mulholland Drive soundtracks.
Sounds of Arrowhead is available on YouTube and Bandcamp, with additional releases on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, and other services coming soon! Pick your preference, or let us know if you’d like to stream it on other services. We’ll see what we can do!
I’ve had a lot of fun figuring out the basic narrative of Arrowhead over the last six months. Overall, we have the broad strokes of the story we want to tell down, including a rough journey and a few developed characters. All of this is incredibly early stuff, and sections of it will undoubtedly be modified, removed, or compressed later when it comes time to build it. Obviously, telling you a whole lot about the current story would both spoil the surprise and give you unhealthy expectations, but I can talk about a bit!
Throughout the first half of May, I ran a small ARG on my website focusing on one of our initial characters, Dale (he’s the downtrodden looking fellow with the black hair up there). Dale is a Black Mesa scientist you’ll meet in Arrowhead, far from home and on a mission to expose the horrors of the military’s Black Mesa massacre and subsequent coverup to the public. This ARG focused on daily logs he wrote about his life and work at Black Mesa, chronicling what he experienced leading up to the Resonance Cascade. This was a great character development exercise that helped us figure out a ton of plot-related things, and was overall really fun to write.
I’ve also written several vignettes. Vignettes are pieces of descriptive writing that aim to describe a detailed portion of the game’s journey in order to assist with the level design, art, and audio work. These do not reflect finished or even unfinished content, only our creative direction, which was in constant flux when these were written! I’m putting them here anyway because I think reading them is a good way to click with the tone we’re going for.
“The Canyon” can be read here!
Primary influences (not counting things like movies, we’d be here awhile) in my Arrowhead writing are Stephen King (The Mist, From a Buick 8, The Dark Tower, and others), Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian), and Ross Joseph Gardner, whose brilliant work on the Half-Life comic A Place in the West singlehandedly convinced me of the depth you can put into the Half-Life universe.
I’d love to tell a story that takes all of the brilliant work everyone else is doing and gives it the context it deserves. In the meantime, I’ll be finding more ways to share fun little stories with people in the near future!
We hope you’ve all enjoyed a look at the last six months of Arrowhead! This has been an amazing experience for everyone involved so far, and we’re incredibly excited to hear your feedback! From here on out, we’ll be updating a lot more frequently in a pretty open way.
If you’d like to keep following our progress, there are a few ways to do it! You can follow us on Twitter at @ArrowheadDev, where we’ll keep you updated with new content, news about upcoming articles, and anything else that’s pertinent. We’ll also be tweeting a lot about the *process* of creating Arrowhead, whether that be creative or technical, on our respective personal accounts. If you want to see the nitty gritty stuff, follow the team at @Gmadador_, @thetaxgoblin, @obligatedtosnow, and @Ciefstatten! We’re foregoing a Discord for the time being, so if you have any reasonable questions about the game, its development, or how to join the team, feel free to DM @ArrowheadDev! For more official inquiries, we can be reached by email at ArrowheadDevs@gmail.com!
That’s all for now! Signing off. Remember to keep your gun loaded, your brain on alert, and your eyes adjusted to the dark.
It might just save your life.
If you were just interested in learning about the project, you can stop reading here. If you want to actually help us make it, read on!
First off, we’re looking for a web designer! We’d love to give the project a nice website to serve as a hub for everything. This is a one-time paid position and requires no other obligations to the project. DM us on Twitter or email ArrowheadDevs@gmail.com if you’re interested and we can discuss specifics!
Here’s a sentence you’ve probably heard before: We’re looking for level designers and concept artists! Another sentence you’ve probably heard before: These are volunteer positions! We’re a small team of creatives making something we’re really excited about, and we’d love to work with other people who are excited about it too. Unfortunately, that vision is in the Source engine and we are broke. If you’re interested, I’ll quickly outline the application process below. Please don’t filter yourselves out by assuming you’re not up to snuff. Our criteria is super basic, and if you meet it, I encourage you to apply even if you personally think your work is mediocre!
For our applicant process, we try to keep things as streamlined as possible. The first section of the form asks for general information, the second is tailored to your specific interest on the team, and the third is some final housekeeping before you submit. If there’s any confusion regarding formatting, wording, or anything else, feel free to DM us on Twitter and we’ll get it sorted.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Concept Artists should, ideally, have 3–4 pieces that showcase their style well.
- Level designers must have one playable map they can show us. Level design applications with only attached screenshots for reference will unfortunately be ignored :(
- Please have a portfolio! Your portfolio can literally be a folder in Google Drive and doesn’t need to be fancy whatsoever. Loose links to images or videos are fine, but slightly annoying!
- This applies to everyone and is super important. We’re a team of good friends who love working together in a very collaborative space, so please know you’re comfortable working like that before applying!
- No racists, homophobes, transphobes, or general bigots. We don’t like you and you won’t like us. Go away.
Okay, signing off for real!
