The famed Black Mesa research facility has a new owner.
Something is afoot at blappeture.com! The Blappeture Mesa site, which came to the notice of the internet at large earlier this evening, sports an oddly-familiar logo and a link to a recording of none other than Cave Johnson, the head honcho of Aperture Science, announcing himself as the new owner of Black Mesa, the cutting-edge research facility that served as the setting of the original Half-Life. He also called for the immediate shutdown of Black Mesa’s anomalous materials research “before you idiots end the world.”
It’s definitely the voice of Cave Johnson [or someone who does an absolutely picture-perfect impersonation of his delivery and management style], but a quick /WHOIS reveals that the blappeture.com domain was registered on April 30 by Joe Angry of Madbox, Newfoundland, which, I’m sad to say, is a fake address. Probably a fake name, too. So what’s going on?
Alas, it looks like the whole thing is an elaborate troll. While some long-suffering Half-Life fans are continuing to search for the hidden meaning, the general consensus is that somebody is messing with us. Steam forum users, and probably others elsewhere, pointed out that the audio clip is actually an Easter egg found in the new “Perpetual Testing Initiative” DLC for Portal 2, and the rest of it could have been put together by anyone. As a long-suffering Half-Life fan myself, the mere reference to Black Mesa in a Valve game gives me hope that somewhere, somehow, the wheels are turning, but this particular site? It’s fun, but I don’t think there’s anything to see here.
Don’t forget to click the Blappeture Mesa logo on the way out, though.
Published: May 9, 2012 06:20 am