Quake II RTX Will Be Free, Release June 6

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Jeff Fisher shows off Quake II RTX

Nvidia announces its Quake II RTX, a ray-traced and enhanced re-release of the original, available for free on June 6.

The news was delivered by Nvidia's senior vice president, Jeff Fisher, at the company's press conference at Computex 2019 in Taipei.

The game will feature a total of 3 single player levels, and owners of the original, will also get the full game and multiplayer access as well. Quake II RTX will be downloadable both from Steam and directly from Nvidia's website. The RTX title is being released in partnership with Bethesda.

The company also disclosed a bundle available with RTX graphics cards and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, along with a new trailer for Sword and Fairy 7.

Andrew E. Freedman
Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • nitrium
    Will this look more or less identical to the original or waaaaay betterer? If not, is there any point to this?
    Reply
  • JQB45
    I've seen demo's of the development, it looks quite a bit better. Maybe a little to shinny but for free and as far as games go a smallish download I'd get it if I had an RTX capable card.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    JQB45 said:
    I'd get it if I had an RTX capable card.
    Ha your weakness disgusts me...
    I'm gonna get it for my 1050ti and laugh at it as it will play it at some 5FPS or something.
    Reply
  • JQB45
    TerryLaze said:
    Ha your weakness disgusts me...
    I'm gonna get it for my 1050ti and laugh at it as it will play it at some 5FPS or something.

    Don't think NVidia will allow us to active RTX since we do not have cards that meet the requirements. Which 1050ti do you have?
    I have the EVGA GTX 950 FTW.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    JQB45 said:
    Don't think NVidia will allow us to active RTX since we do not have cards that meet the requirements. Which 1050ti do you have?
    I have the EVGA GTX 950 FTW.
    Wasn't there some software shenanigans?I mean they ran RTX demos on AMD cards after all.

    It's just a slightly OC otherwise normal MSI 1050ti.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    nitrium said:
    Will this look more or less identical to the original or waaaaay betterer? If not, is there any point to this?
    There's a trailer showing comparisons between original and the RTX version. It pretty much looks like a 20+ year old game with some improved lighting effects. They don't appear to have touched the level geometry or animations or anything like that...

    unGtBbhaPeUView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unGtBbhaPeU

    It's a bit like what Half-Life: Source was to Half Life, though Quake II is far older at this point than half-Life was when its port was released.

    Also, the headline is not really accurate saying "Quake II RTX will be free". You are getting a 3-level demo for free. Likely the same Quake II demo that's been available since the late 90s. You have to own a copy of the game if you want to play the whole thing. So, all you are really getting for free is the new renderer.

    I suspect the main point is to provide source code to give developers an example of how they could incorporate RTX into their games, since the code for Quake II has been open-sourced for a number of years.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    There ARE mods out there that make Quake II look not as old, with AI-assisted upscaled textures and surface improvements - the new renderer makes lighting much better, if you add better textures the game does look much better. Now, it would need more complex 3D models to really be made up to speed.
    Reply