[olivierestsage]

I know it's a bit silly to criticize something offered for free -- I'm glad it's there for those who want it! -- but I really feel like something of the original aesthetic has been lost in translation here. The before-and-afters aren't always flattering to the new version; everything is glowing orange. Darker atmospheres have become brighter.

[moolcool]

It reminds me of the Alan Parsons quote "Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment"

[smallmancontrov]

Yeah, well, HN top-posters mirror popular opinions to obtain upvotes rather than using upvotes to make correct opinions popular :P

(I'd like to draw attention to posts down-thread from people who have actually played the damn thing, who seem to agree that the overblown lights are more prominent in the marketing material than in the actual game.)

[macrocosmos]

Love it.

Sorry if this doesn't add anything, I normally just vote when I feel that about a comment.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Who cares if this comment doesn't add any value.

Why do we really want to create value? I think we can all just be ourselves like you did by writing this comment.

There is no need to be sorry

[cadamsdotcom]

What a beautiful comment even though it is beautifully off topic :-)

Love the sentiment - knowing it’s ok to “just be yourself” adds value to others reading this. And often as not, what you say while being yourself is actually a contribution, you just don’t know it.

And now back to the half-life remake.

[ListeningPie]

The original aesthetic, including lighting, was made keeping the original limitations in minds. Kind of running old sprite games on LCDs instead of CRTs makes them look jagged.

So it's different and a tech demo, but I agree it's not necessarily better and could be one the reasons it is free.

[zeroCalories]

Yeah when looking at games like Alyx it seems like the vision isn't too far off. Personally I don't mind the RTX version as I always found hl2 to be depressingly boring to look at.

[dowager_dan99]

The boring aesthetic really matches so much of the game though; soviet-era architecture is awfully boring too.

[bl4ckm0r3]

I thought exactly the same things about the illumination, i feel like it's too much "look how cool rtx is" and not enough "this should be scary and dark". In this, and other demos, i also felt like refractions are exaggerated, like floors that seem like mirrors is not really realistic to the end user. Sometimes it reminds me of when hdr pics came out and everyone was overdoing it. (But it should be a settings problem more than anything else!)

[jorvi]

> Sometimes it reminds me of when hdr pics came out and everyone was overdoing it.

Or old games that oversold insane amounts of bloom[0] as HDR..

[0]https://i.imgur.com/NdgHLCy.jpg

[staticman2]

With ray tracing Nvidia made a new technology that breaks everyone's PC performance then they sold the solution to that broken performance as a card upgrade with better ray tracing hardware. Even though the Ray tracing doesn't necessarily look any better, just different, we now have to upgrade cards to solve the broken PC performance Nvidia caused themselves...

[diggan]

I think what parent is complaining about is the "Art Direction" rather than the technology itself, and I think I agree. Some of the feeling and mood been lost in the translation, sadly. I'm sure if they had some better art direction (maybe they didn't have a person from Valve to help with this?), it could have been a lot better in that regard, even with ray tracing and the rest.

[beastman82]

It looks awesome.

[roboror]

I think A/B viewing is throwing you off. It looks great when you actually play it.

[overgard]

I actually like it; but I think the point is more to demonstrate cool tech than to be true to Half Life's mood. It kind of reminds me of when in the 90s games started supporting colored lightings, and briefly everything was uh, very colorful. Although I think this is a lot more tasteful than that!

[smallmancontrov]

Can someone who has played it tell me if they really lit up most/all of Ravenholm like this or if they are just showing us a few lights cranked to 12 in the promotional material?

[accrual]

I just played it a bit - IMO it's plenty dark.

I used Alt + X to get into settings and decrease the brightness from 50 to 40, but even without that it felt dark, dark enough that I couldn't see anything down an unilluminated hallway.

It looks and feels great though, I'm excited for the full release.

[roboror]

The concern is overblown. The lighting doesn't seem out of place when you're playing, just in A/B testing. It's way better and more accurate overall.

[robin_reala]

Digital Foundry have a side-by-side playthrough and discussion of Ravenholm comparing HL2 RTX and the launch-day HL2 from DVD on a period-correct machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHRS0TO89UI

[hombre_fatal]

Man, this reminds me of watching the E3 HL2 physics demo as a teenager all over again.

[robin_reala]

Pachinko!

[ericol]

Most video games allow for configuring brightness right at the start.

My impression is that they were more interested in showing the improvements than being faithful to the original atmosphere.

[crest]

Some of the new scenes are just too damn bright, but the few that preserved the atmosphere looked really good in the trailer.

[taco_emoji]

Could be a factor of settings--I wonder if they just bumped the brightness to emphasize the differences, especially for a tiny video.

[zokier]

I don't understand why they made everything have that weird sickly yellow cast. It's so weird.

[jonwinstanley]

Isnt it all a bit bright too?

[whalesalad]

On the contrary I find OG HL2 to be one of the ugliest games of all time. It's so dark and gray and flat.