A new look at the Half-Life 2 RTX project is out of CES 2024 with a look at how the community is bringing Half-Life 2 back to life
One would not expect to hear about a new mod-driven update for Half-Life 2 to get an announcement out of CES 2024, but here we are. The event has been in full swing and during the recent NVIDIA showcase of the new hardware and features, we were all treated to seeing how the Half-Life 2 RTX project will be bringing this classic title back into our lives and with some new visuals. Along with all of the other tweaks and changes that the modding community has gone through to make sure this IP does not die; even if the main developer does not seem to want to give us another full entry into it all.
If you did not know before, the Half-Life 2 RTX project is one where a community of fans have opted to go in and bring this title into the new age with new graphics, assets, and all of the other bells and whistles a modern game would have. All under the Orbifold Studios developer to get this remaster up and running. A remaster that has now shown off the difference between the game running with the RTX on and off during the aforementioned presentation. In some instances, it shows a night and day level of change for Half-Life 2, and in others, it almost highlights how great the original version was out there when it came to what it was doing. Have a look and see just what is coming down the line for us all.
Half-Life 2 RTX — Ravenholm
Realistic lighting and shadowing has been added to each part of Ravenholm, greatly enhancing the moody, dimly lit streets, abandoned buildings, and ingenious traps set up by Father Grigori. Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is a community-made remaster of Half-Life 2 being developed by Orbifold Studios using NVIDIA RTX Remix, the ultimate modding platform. The modders are rebuilding materials with Physically Based Rendering (PBR) properties, adding extra geometric detail, and leveraging NVIDIA technologies including full ray tracing, DLSS 3.5, Reflex, and RTX IO to deliver a fantastic experience for GeForce RTX gamers.
Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is early in development and is a community effort looking to galvanize talented modders and artists everywhere.
I fully get the fandom behind Half-Life 2 and they want to bring this back to life, but I hope this pushes Valve to actually do a version where everyone is paid for the work. That all said, this also rather highlights how much the technology has come out there with the video cards and engines where fans can almost make a game look vastly different than it was before with the time, effort, and talent out there. The bigger highlight is when we see the different assets being made for the Half-Life 2 RTX project here when compared to the older ones. Not to mention what was once thought to be the true height of gaming achievement would now be seen as utter garbage when compared.
Are you blown away by how they have rebuilt a good portion of Half-Life 2 out there and will be looking to give it all a go when it comes? Do you think this could finally push for a new title to be made out there or will that be forever lost to us all? Will this actually help ship more hardware for NVIDIA or just be a solid showcase for the community and nothing more? Take to the comments to discuss it all. We are keeping a close eye on things from CES 2024 and other things like the Half-Life 2 RTX project. We will have all of those updates on the site as soon as we can, so please keep on coming back to see and hear about all of that as we head on into the future still.