Months after originally teasing it to the public, Portal RTX‘s release is now just around the corner. Nvidia has given the release a launch date, and best of all, it’s free for Steam users who already own the original game.
Portal is one of Valve’s biggest hits, serving the player with brain teaser physics puzzles to figure out all while a murderous AI directs them. The title saw huge success and a follow-up in Portal 2, though the series has gone largely quiet since then.
Portal RTX was revealed back in September, and now it’s scheduled to release on December 8. Portal RTX is essentially the same game as Portal, but with a huge visual overhaul. Utilizing the power of ray-tracing capable graphics cards, the game has now been upgraded with new hi-res textures, high-poly versions of the existing models, and 4K graphics. Fifteen years after Portal‘s original release, the game has arguably never looked better. Nvidia DLSS 3 also helps to dramatically boost frame rates and stabilize them, as well.
While Portal RTX was designed with Nvidia RTX graphics cards in mind, fans of the series with high-tech gaming PCs will be glad to know that any ray-tracing capable GPU will work. For those who lack the graphics power necessary to utilize these new features, players can instead stream the game through GeForce Now. It’s a great time to revisit the game, or for players who missed out the first time around to try Portal in a revitalized form.
At the moment, it’s not known whether Valve and Nvidia will give the same treatment to any of Valve’s other games. While it’s aged quite a bit, Half-Life 2 could potentially benefit from this treatment, as could the Left 4 Dead series, which already heavily relies upon light and shadow to deliver scares. Portal 2 would also be an excellent choice as the direct follow-up to Portal. However, all of these titles are fairly resource heavy, so it would likely be more difficult and/or time consuming than upgrading the original Portal.
While Portal RTX is bringing the series into the present, it’s not the only time that Portal has been revisited recently. Aperture Science and Cave Johnson recently made an appearance in Aperture Desk Job, and J.K. Simmons, his voice actor, will also be featured in an upcoming Dota 2 update as an announcer voice pack. The recent activity surrounding the Portal series might be a hint that something new is coming to the franchise in the future, as Valve has multiple games in production. With the company being notorious for being tight-lipped, though, fans will just have to try out Portal RTX and wait and see if another game is in the cards.
Portal RTX releases on December 8.
