A leaked development build of the upcoming Half-Life 2 RTX has revealed brand new screenshots as well as early gameplay footage.
A video showing early gameplay footage as well as never-before-seen screenshots and renders from a development build of the unreleased Half-Life 2 RTX have been making the rounds on the internet. The footage shows path traced global illumination in effect, with the gravity gun serving as a light source in darker areas, affecting the overall composition of scene lighting. Explosive barrels also light up areas realistically upon blowing up.
Half-Life 2 RTX Leaked Screenshots
Screenshots and renders from Half-Life 2 RTX leaked via the aforementioned development build can be seen below.
The above screenshots and renders from Half-Life 2 RTX highlight some of the remodeled assets, giving the game the look of an official remaster. The leaked development build this footage is taken from is likely from 2023, and the final version is expected to look better and more polished.
In related news, on the occasion of the Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary, Valve released a documentary that brought members of the game’s development team back to talk about its production. Writer Marc Laidlaw mentioned that he still doesn’t know what Half-Life 2: Episode 3 would have been if it had been built because it hadn’t been completed. It was set in the Arctic and centered around the Borealis.
Valve engineer David Speyrer recalled the development team working on enemy blobs based on the iso-surface technology that it later used in Portal for the paint mechanic. The blob enemy could change its shape, and it could also split into smaller blobs that hopped around like headcrabs but behaved differently. He was working on a weapon called the Ice Gun, which allowed the player to create amorphous shapes out of ice. The gun also came with what was described as kind of a “Silver Surfer” mode, where the player could extrude the ice in front of themselves, run along it, and use it to cross gaps or chasms.
