Valve’s Half-Life 2 has just reached its 20th anniversary (we muse on its significance and that of other games released in that incredible month here). To celebrate the achievement, the developer is giving away free copies of the title (along with Episodes One and Two) until later today. You can get the game and its expansions by visiting the respective page on Steam, which can be done via the link here.
Valve has also uploaded a 20th anniversary documentary, which reveals many interesting tidbits about the game’s making. Perhaps even more interesting, though, is Gabe Newell’s explanation of why Half-Life 2 Episode Three was never released.
You can’t get lazy and say, oh, we’re moving the story forward. That’s copping out of your obligation to gamers. Of course they love the story. They love many aspects of it, but saying that your reason to do it is because people want to know what happens next… You know, we could have shipped it. It wouldn’t have been that hard. My personal failure was being stumped. I couldn’t figure out why doing Half-Life 2 Episode Three was pushing anything forward.
I think that Half-Life represents a tool we have and promises made to customers to capitalize on innovation and opportunities to build game experiences that haven’t been involved previously, and I think that there are no shortages of those opportunities facing us as an industry.
Moreover, Valve pushed out a minor title update for Half-Life 2. The patch mainly focuses on quality improvements, along with subtle graphical changes. Here’s the complete changelog:
- Fixed pops, holes in the world, fading-out and disappearing objects across the game.
- Rebalanced the lighting across Half-Life 2 to account for playing with HDR on or off, using the original release as reference.
- Cleaner, smoother horizon lines thanks to new radial fog!
- Added higher-resolution lightmaps across the game!
- Removed green glow from the G-Man model’s eyes in the opening of the game, and restored the reflective glint as seen in the original release.
- Fixed missing grass sprites and blacked-out models throughout the game!
Updated Graphics Settings
- Choose either the original launch day blood and fire effects, or those created for the episodes, when playing the Half-Life 2 base game!
- Play with only the highest detail models in High Quality mode!
- Get smoother lightmap shadows at Very High shader detail, thanks to new bicubic lightmap filtering!
Gamepad, Input, and Steam Deck Updates
- Gamepad controls have been updated to match the Half-Life 1 anniversary update.
- Aim Assistance has gotten an overhaul making it feel better to use, and there are more configuration options available. Aim Assistance can be enabled separately for gamepad or mouse/keyboard input. The amount of assistance can be tuned up and down, and it’s no longer tied to a skill setting. Want to play on Hard with high aim assist, or Easy with it off? Knock yourself out.
- The Steam Deck main menu has been updated with all of today’s additions including the Episodes, Workshop, and new input configuration. The Steam Deck version of the main menu will also appear when you play Half-Life 2 on a PC running Big Picture Mode.
NVIDIA is also celebrating the Half-Life 2 20th anniversary” by announcing a “Half-Life 2-themed” GPU giveaway for the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER. As a reminder, Orbifold Studios is currently making an RTX Remix remaster.
