My critique of Half-Life 2 RTX

I don't want to be the hater guy, but I am really not satisfied with new gameplay and trailer. But with my critique, I want to tell Orbifold studio what needs to be corrected. So treat this more like a feedback post. Let's get right into it.

1. Environments look too bright

Many environments in Half-Life 2 were carefully crafted to match the desired style of the level. The biggest offender here is Ravenholm, this place was meant to look dingy, unsettling and dark. What do we have in HL2RTX? Brightly lit rooms and environments. (This has already been pointed out)

This one is the worst offender, but there are many spots like that in the gameplay video.

2. Environments are still quite empty

Even though there is clearly a lot of effort put into them, nice textures and gorgeous models aren't everything. Half-Life 2 environments look very simple by today's standards, but apart from some small tweaks to the geometry of the level, I feel like very little was done to make rooms in this game look more busy, and detailed.

https://preview.redd.it/09ye0q03w3pe1.png?width=1832&format=png&auto=webp&s=9216bc9ad95fad95fea6abe8c471c0c2802655ca

There are many other rooms like that in the game, and from what I have seen on the gameplay video, very little has been done to make such rooms look better.

3. Character animations need to be remade from scratch

Character animations and enemy animations in Half-Life 2 are very stiff by today's standards, so they need to be completely remade. Zombies are the worst in this department.

  1. There is too much smoke everywhere

Sometimes, you can't really see what is happening, all because of excessive smoke particle use when anything happens. Is it realistic? Probably yeah. Is it fun? No.

Smoke emitted from gunshots severely obscures your vision

You literally can't see Father Grigori bc of the smoke, and the angle this was shot at doesn't help