After Portal with RTX, Nvidia is tapping Half-Life 2 modders to give Valve’s classic FPS a ray-traced upgrade. There’s a trailer, but no release date yet.
Half-Life 2, the acclaimed first-person shooter from Valve, is getting a remaster in the form of a mod that will add ray-traced graphics to the game, Nvidia announced Tuesday ahead of Gamescom 2023.
Bringing cutting-edge visuals to Half-Life 2 is a fitting upgrade for the game, which itself delivered astounding technical advancements for its time, including a realistic physics simulation that was integrated into gameplay via elements like the Gravity Gun. There’s no word yet on whether this remaster will arrive in time for the game’s 20th anniversary, which is roughly 15 months from now in November 2024. Nvidia cautioned that development on Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, as the project is known, “has just begun.”
Half-Life 2 RTX follows in the footsteps of Portal with RTX, which was released in December 2022. Portal with RTX was made by Nvidia’s in-house Lightspeed Studios team using RTX Remix, a modding platform that is designed to allow modders to more easily create ray-traced remasters of classic games. RTX Remix — which Nvidia announced in September 2022 — is not yet available to the public, but the company has granted early access to four top Half-Life 2 mod teams, which are working together on the mod under the banner of Orbifold Studios.
Asked to clarify whether Nvidia is paying the people working on this project, a company representative told Polygon that Nvidia is “not at liberty to discuss commercial relationships.” The available evidence suggests that development is being conducted on a volunteer basis: This is functionally a mod for Half-Life 2, and it’s being made by modders familiar with the game, rather than Lightspeed Studios or Valve. In fact, Orbifold Studios is “looking to invite the entire mod community to join the effort to build Half-Life 2 RTX,” Nvidia said in a news release.
