The community has all but given up hope that Half-Life 3 will ever launch, even in light of Half-Life Alyx coming soon, but that doesn’t mean that the beloved games are not fondly revisited every now and then by nostalgic fans. This now means that Half-Life, Half-Life: Opposing Force, and Half-Life: Blue Shift are getting modded with a new AI-enhanced HD Texture Pack that looks incredible.
Developed by a modder known as Leaufai, the 2.8 GB texture pack uses machine learning to upscale the visuals of the classic Half-Life games up to 400%, according to the creator. Titled Half-Life: ReSrcd, it is described as “[making] the classic game look sharp and modern, while keeping true to the original aesthetic.” To run it, you will need the Xash3D FWGS engine - luckily included in the download so no worries there. The description also adds that the modder is unsure whether the mod is compatible with platforms other than the Steam version on which it was tested.
After promoting the new mod on Reddit, one user asked whether Leaufai would be porting the textures to Half-Life: Source to benefit from the improvements in lightning. However, Leaufai says although he could theoretically do it, he couldn’t do the expansions so he felt it “wasn’t a good starting point.” However, the idea is not completely scrapped: “If popular enough maybe,” is the final consensus. Still, not all users care for the improvements: many consider the original to be better-fitting and more coherent due to the low poly count of the original.
Half-Life: ReSrced is not the first HD texture pack for the game to hit the market. Half-Life: Gold was a popular one that scratched the itch for most players, and a very recent one is called the ESRGAN HD Texture Pack from January this year. And the fact that Black Mesa was a thing only goes to show how much fans needed something like the original Half Life while Valve wasn’t delivering.
If you’re looking to play the first game but you find the original textures displeasing to your used-to-4K eyes, this pack might bridge the gap until Alyx comes out. But then again, we might get a little too used to these textures, and virtual reality might prove insufficient. Who knows?
