Africa needs to be portrayed as technologically advanced beyond western comprehension first before you can do anything dark and gritty with the setting. That's the only way to make it not racist in the minds of Disney brained Americans.
I honestly was not a fan of this when I first saw it but if this basically MCs black mesa style xen with the end being it's original hl1 xen then I guess it fits the direction the game is going artistically
Old MC had a hard to describe sorta Aphex Twin vibe to it that has been almost completely whitewashed away and lost to history at this point