Half-Life 2 RTX Remix Gives Valve Classic Upgraded Visuals from Nvidia

As part of Gamescom 2023, Nvidia has revealed Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, a community-made remaster of Valve’s original first-person shooter sequel. Nvidia published a trailer for the visually enhanced classic today, revealing side-by-side comparisons that show off upgraded graphics for some iconic locations. A release date for the remaster has not been revealed.

The group creating the project is actually four separate Half-Life 2 modding teams that have come together to form a new banner: Orbifold Studios. Some developers working on the project have experience on projects like Half-Life 2 VR, Project 17, Raising the Bar: Redux, and more. This new Half-life 2 remaster features realistic fabric and outfits as well as environments that pack in far more detail than what was seen in the original release, but it’s going to be a while before it launches. For now, Half-Life 2 RTX is early in development.

“Our goal with Half-Life 2 RTX is to deliver a new way to experience Valve’s classic, using cutting-edge rendering tech to bring the game to life in a way never before possible,” the developers said on their new Orbifold website. “At the same time, we’ll be remastering all of the game’s assets, to be made available to the community for free. With Half-Life 2 RTX and the release of its assets, we hope to ignite new passion within the community to explore the potential of RTX in remastering classic mods, or making new mods with RTX in mind!”

This community-mase take on Half-Life 2 isn’t the first project to utilize the RTX Remix toolkit. In late 2022, Nvidia released Portal with RTX, which gave Valve’s legendary puzzle game a facelift similar to what we’re seeing with Half-Life 2. Shortly after its release, community modders used the same tools to launch an upgrade for 2008 mod Portal: Prelude. For a better look at what’s to come, you can see its reveal trailer below.