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Half Life 2 is one of the highest praised videogames of the new millennium, and many people worldwide have fond memories of the game, with many still replaying it and modding it to this day.

Many modern developers grew up with HL2, and it was the love for it that brought a group of them together creating Orbifold Studios, and with the brand new release of the RTX Remix technology by NVIDIA, Orbifold Studios announced a year ago a brand new remastered project for the original Half Life 2 titled "Half Life 2 RTX".

Today, NVIDIA's YouTube Channel released a brand new tribute video in celebration of Half Life 2's 20th Anniversary, in which the development team behind the remaster talk about the different aspects and implementations that they have worked on to bring this new project to life, which will be added to the original Half Life 2 as a free DLC upon release.

November 16th marks the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2. Back in 2004, Half-Life 2 left an unforgettable mark on a generation of gamers. Learn more about the development team at Orbifold Studios and their challenging journey to bring full ray tracing, remastered assets, and DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction to one of the greatest games of all time.

Half-Life 2 RTX is developed by Orbifold Studios. 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 to this classic.

Half-Life 2 RTX is early in development and is a community effort looking to excite talented modders and artists everywhere. If you are interested in joining the project, we encourage you to apply via the Half-Life 2 RTX Project website: http://www.hl2rtx.com/ or follow the project at: /hl2rtxofficial

Alongside the 20th Anniversary video, the Half Life 2 RTX Steam page is now live as well for those that want to wishlist the free DLC, although the RTX free DLC still doesn't have a set release date.

Half Life 2 RTX on Steam
Half Life 2 RTX Official Website

 

[Latiodile]

L for only announcing it for the anniversary and not actually releasing it for the anniversary

 

[Bluer]

In the meantime, Valve is making updates basically everyday to their locked testing branch of vanilla HL2, so there is a high chance that something akin to the original Half-Life's 25th anniversary update will happen. Fingers crossed.

 

[SylverReZ]

Too bad they didn't make Half Life 3.

 

[N10A]

It does look a lot better than that awful portal rtx thing that they did. Although for me rtx is one of those things where it's most noticeable when it's done poorly.

 

[Axido]

Good thing I haven't played HL2 yet.

 

[Xzi]

Looks amazing, will definitely be worth a replay once released.

 

[GengarsGhostlyGiggles]

i'm interested. I'm currently playing half-life 2 in VR with a vr mod, and that already is mind boggling amazing.

 

[LoggerMan]

So sad that Valve isn't really making games anymore. They make many billions selling other people's games, making their own games probably seems like a gamble by now. I guess it was all just a job to them, a means to make money, rather than a passion for making great games.

 

[Xzi]

So sad that Valve isn't really making games anymore.

I mean they have to be pretty much the only developer who still updates the games they released in the 2000s, and then there's Half-Life Alyx and Deadlock...

 

[OilFreak]

This looks a lot more respectable than Portal RTX. I'll still probably play the original though. The lighting in Valve games is always very deliberate and I don't trust a third party company to update it.

 

[supergamer368]

I have an AMD card, so I assume this won't even boot on my system like Portal RTX. I'm more interested in what Valve themselves are cooking up for the HL2 anniversary, since they've been working on something in a separate branch for a little while now.

 

[CanIHazWarez]

Don't tease me with this and then tell me it's not available.

 

[Jayro]

This looks a lot more respectable than Portal RTX. I'll still probably play the original though. The lighting in Valve games is always very deliberate and I don't trust a third party company to update it.

This was community-made and then green-lit by Valve for official release, just like Black Mesa was. I'm excited to play it. The new assets look incredible.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Hmm, IIRC Portal with RTX was not well received. Will this be given the same lukewarm welcome?

 

[Jayro]

Hmm, IIRC Portal with RTX was not well received. Will this be given the same lukewarm welcome?

What was wrong with it?

 

[HarveyHouston]

What was wrong with it?

I think some people had trouble getting it working well, despite meeting specs.

 

[OilFreak]

What was wrong with it?

Portal's deliberate lighting and visual design was thrown out the window in favor of making it look fancy. Also it was based off Portal's DX8 mode for some reason.

 

[Jayro]

Portal's deliberate lighting and visual design was thrown out the window in favor of making it look fancy. Also it was based off Portal's DX8 mode for some reason.

Damn, I'll never complain about DX9 in TF2 ever again.

 

[Sphaa]

Too bad they didn't make Half Life 3.

I kind of understand why they don't.
The expectations for that game is soo high that people are going to complain about it nomatter how good a HL3 would be, I think it's impossible to make it good enough to satisfy the fan-base.