What simply occurred? Valve is celebrating Half-Life 2’s twentieth anniversary with a large replace, a non permanent free giveaway of the total sport, and a bundle together with the 2 episodic expansions and new developer commentary. Additionally, a two-hour YouTube documentary sheds gentle on the canceled third growth, revealing new particulars for followers.
If you are one of many few Steam customers who nonetheless would not personal Half-Life 2, now could be your probability to add Valve’s blockbuster first-person shooter to your library completely – for free – till November 18. The bundle additionally contains each follow-up episodes, plus the sport has acquired a main replace in celebration of its twentieth anniversary.
The patch would not overhaul the sport’s graphics to the extent of the upcoming RTX Remix mod, nevertheless it brings dozens of bug fixes, minor enhancements, and new options.
Newly added Steam Workshop help makes it simpler for gamers to uncover and set up the numerous mods created for Half-Life 2 over time. Players can now choose the “Lost Coast” chapter straight from the sport’s primary menu, and the developer commentary characteristic beforehand launched within the episodic expansions is now built-in into the bottom sport, with three and a half hours of new audio.
The replace additionally revises visible parts like lighting, grass, HDR results, and draw distances. Additionally, menus and the HUD add help for numerous ultrawide facet ratios and gamepad configurations. For these searching for nostalgia, gamers can toggle the lighting and results from the sport’s authentic 2004 launch.
Meanwhile, Valve has launched hours of archival footage on YouTube chronicling the event of Half-Life 2 and its episodes. Among the subjects coated, the canceled Episode 3 is probably going to be essentially the most intriguing for followers. The documentary gives the primary official particulars on the growth in years.
Through new footage and idea artwork, Valve reveals that Episode 3 would have largely taken place within the Arctic and launched an ice gun. The builders confessed they might have simply shipped Episode 3 however finally did not due to a lack of contemporary concepts that might meet the corporate’s high quality requirements. However, a group of followers is presently growing a free marketing campaign impressed by a draft of Episode 3’s plot, which collection author Marc Laidlaw printed in 2017.
Other new movies embody demonstrations from Siggraph 2000, E3 2002, and E3 2003. Valve additionally introduced an expanded reprint of Raising the Bar, the ebook documenting Half-Life 2’s growth, which has been out of print since 2004. The second version contains newly uncovered idea artwork from the three episodes.
In tandem with Valve’s celebrations, Nvidia has joined the festivities by unveiling a customized Half-Life 2-themed GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics card. This GPU is designed to showcase the upcoming RTX Remix mod, which is able to add real-time path tracing and up to date textures to the sport. Fans can enter a contest on Nvidia’s web site to win the cardboard, and the upcoming mod now has its personal Steam web page.