>>21329853It was literal years between the release of Black Mesa up to Lambda Core, and Xen. So they felt like they needed to make the next part more significant to be worth the wait.
They actually cut a lot for the current iteration of Xen, but where they thought they cut enough, it really should have been more.
Being the one part of Black Mesa where they had relative free reign, they were off the rails and had little to restrain their ambition.
Honestly, if everyone's biggest compaint about Black Mesa's Xen is that it's too long, that's fine. It's still a vast improvement compared to og Xen 