Celebrate Half-Life 2’s 20th Anniversary With A Tribute Video & A New Look At Half-Life 2 RTX

By Sherri L. Smith on November 14, 2024 | Featured Stories GeForce RTX GPUs Half-Life 2 RTX NVIDIA RTX NVIDIA RTX Remix

A crowbar, a pair of glasses, and headcrabs, lots of creepy headcrabs. Back in 2004, Half-Life 2 made an indelible mark on a generation of gamers. Considered one of the most influential first-person shooters of all time, Half-Life 2 has earned over 30 Game of the Year Awards and a loyal legion of fans. A blend of story and gameplay, in a time when games were either or, Half-Life 2 changed the trajectory of games. And if that wasn’t enough, Valve allowed fans unprecedented access to mod the game, a move that further cemented its legacy in the gamer zeitgeist.

Celebrating The 20th Anniversary Of Half-Life 2

November 16th marks the original launch of Half-Life 2, and to commemorate the game’s 20th anniversary, we’ve released a tribute video celebrating the game’s enduring legacy, along with a new peek at the much-anticipated remaster, Half-Life 2 RTX.

Wishlist Half-Life 2 RTX On Steam Today!

To help celebrate the 20th anniversary, Orbifold Studios is also announcing that you can now wishlist Half-Life 2 RTX on Steam. So, if you can’t wait to step back into protagonist Gordon Freeman’s shoes, with fully ray-traced graphics, and fight back against the Combine, be sure to add the remastered Half-Life 2 RTX to your Steam wishlist.

In development at Orbifold Studios, a collection of modders brought together by their love of Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 RTX remasters every aspect of the beloved original, while retaining its look and feel. Check out a selection of remastered assets below, in our showcase gallery:

For further updates about Half-Life 2 RTX, stay tuned to the Half-Life 2 RTX website; if you’re a mod developer; you can also sign up to join the project.

RTX Remix Update Introduces New Enhancements

Now, modders can update to version “2024.5.1” of the RTX Remix beta, which introduces a bevy of new enhancements, and enables access to experimental features under active development, such as the new Stage Manager. Stage Manager makes it easier to see and change every mesh, texture, light, or element in your scene from an always updated list. Users can easily filter this list, as well as hide and unhide assets temporarily to accelerate their workflow. Additionally, there’s a new 0.6 release of the RTX Remix Runtime, which brings major GPU and CPU performance improvements. For the full list of RTX Remix changes, check out the release notes.

Users can also now install RTX Remix beta from the Home screen of the newly-launched NVIDIA app. RTX Remix starts up sooner and costs less CPU overhead when launched from the NVIDIA app, making it the best way to discover and use this next level modding tool.

NVIDIA app is the essential companion for users with NVIDIA GPUs in their PCs and laptops. Whether you're a gaming enthusiast or a content creator, NVIDIA app simplifies the process of keeping your PC updated with the latest GeForce Game Ready and NVIDIA Studio drivers, and enables quick discovery and installation of NVIDIA applications like GeForce NOW and NVIDIA Broadcast.

Featuring a unified GPU control center, NVIDIA app allows fine-tuning of game, program, and driver settings from a single place, while introducing a redesigned in-game overlay for convenient access to powerful gameplay recording tools, performance monitoring overlays, and game enhancing filters, including innovative new AI-powered filters for RTX users.

The NVIDIA app incorporates many of the top features from GeForce Experience and RTX Experience, includes an optional login to redeem bundles and rewards, and introduces new RTX capabilities to elevate your gaming and creative experiences. Download now.