Half-Life 2 RTX Remix Developers Respond to Concern From Some Fans That It Ruins the Original Game's Atmosphere

The hotly anticipated Half-Life 2 RTX launches its demo today, March 18, and IGN sat down with its developers to discuss how they reimagined Valve’s 20-year-old masterpiece using Nvidia's RTX Remix tech, and debate the concern from some fans that it negatively impacts the original’s atmosphere.

The modding team Orbifold Studios used RTX Remix to modernize Half-Life 2, adding full ray tracing, remastered assets, and DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation. It is free DLC for Half-Life 2 owners, and its demo is out now on Steam.

However, not everyone in the Half-Life community believes RTX Remix actually improves upon Half-Life 2. Various complaints based on early gameplay footage revolve around RTX Remix’s new lighting, which some have said “strips away” the original’s atmosphere.

The iconic Ravenholm area is dimly lit in the original, but some fans say RTX Remix makes Ravenholm too brightly lit, reducing the effect of its horror ambience. “Ravenholm has gone from ‘moody’ to ‘obvious tech demo’,” one commenter said.

The feeling is the pursuit of realism with RTX Remix pulls away from Valve’s original art direction, that artistic choices made by Valve over 20 years ago are negated by RTX Remix’s impact on lighting.

That’s a point IGN put to David Driver-Gomm, co-lead of Half-Life 2 RTX Remix at Orbifold Studios, in our interview, the video version of which is above. In his response, Driver-Gomm said the modders were absorbing the feedback now, and insisted Half-Life 2 RTX was not a finished product by any means, so could be tweaked in the future.

“When you have different tools, you make different decisions and you make some that are born of necessity and you make some that are born of art, and we have to try and unpick why they did what they did,” Driver-Gomm explained.

“Did they do this because it was intentional or did they do this because there was a limit, right? That was done because that was what the engine at the time allowed.

So then when we come and we remake the zombie to a modern fidelity, we use modern technologies like ‘hair cards’ in order to achieve an end result that we hope would kind of be in the artist's mind's eye at the time.

“There are going to be a wide variety of opinions. There's going to be a lot of people who feel like something would be done differently, and a lot of that feedback is stuff that we are taking on board and working with organically.

“And then to a certain extent, some of it is just, we all love this game, so we all have very different opinions on how it should be treated and how the art should come across.”

Driver-Gomm then said that Orbifold Studios’ mod is its interpretation of Half-Life 2, and any mod team is free to have a go at making an alternative using the RTX Remix technology.

“It’s moddable,” Driver-Gomm began. “Remix is out there, Half-Life 2 works with it because we're doing it. There is always room for people to put in their own interpretations, and I feel like that is the healthiest way to approach it.

“Half-Life 2 RTX is an interpretation, right? We're pretty proud of it. We think we're doing a lot of research to get it pretty on point. If people disagree, which is entirely their right to do so, then they have the tools to go and make that alternative interpretation.”

The lighting isn’t the only complaint from some Half-Life 2 fans. Others have pointed to perhaps over-eager clouds of smoke emerging from fire and explosions may obscure the player’s vision. At one point in IGN’s demo gameplay, below, at 3:50 mark, Father Grigori’s shotgun blast and reveal is obscured by smoke, potentially causing the player to miss a key story moment in the game.

Driver-Gomm said the team is already looking into the smoke issue, and explained their process there: “We have Source particle experts on the team and you can see the result of that with things like our new fires and our new explosions. In places where we haven't yet been able to author something different, we've been working with the base game materials and that's kind of how we've ended up where we are with that smoke.

“Again, it's an evolving process. Mods are not a thing that's like one and done and that's it, it's finished, right? That's never been mods. It's never going to be mods. It's always living and breathing. It's always responding to feedback. It's always deciding, does this person have a point or do I feel that my vision is worth pursuing, and hopefully the results will win out.

“It is a complicated thing. We know we're doing something that a lot of people feel very strongly about here with remastering Half-Life 2, and key moments like that are things we are actively working on to make sure match up with the original.

“But this is a demo. This is not the full final game. This is not us saying that this is it always and forever. The point of this demo is to go, we've done a pretty strong foundation here. We've covered a huge amount of assets, we've covered a huge amount of the environment. We want to see what the people think.”

With the demo for Half-Life 2 RTX Remix now released, thoughts inevitably turn to whether Orbifold Studios will take on Episode 1 and 2 next. Driver-Gomm kept his cards close to his chest, but did say if his team doesn’t continue on, another could.

“Episode 1 and 2 have a lot of assets which are shared with Half-Life 2, right?” he said. “Once we finish Half-Life 2, those will already be done by 70% for Episode 1 and about 50% for Episode 2. We'll have to see when we get there, but there's absolutely nothing stopping a community effort, even if we don't, from just picking up where we left off and wrapping up the work to be done.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.