Nvidia is recruiting for a new division, called Lightspeed Studios, with the apparent intent of adding real time raytracing effects to classic games. The story comes from a job listing spotted by DSO gaming, with the listing claiming that the intent is to bring state of the art visuals to classic games without affecting the game play.
Quake 2 RTX demonstrates that retrofitting games in this way is possible, but it also demonstrates that, having injected lovely RTX effects to the game, you’re still dealing with a lot of chunky low polygon characters with chunky low resolution textures, blasting each other into chunks with some pretty lighting effects. So whatever classic games Nvidia has in mind fingers crossed they aim for something where a visual upgrade makes a more substantial difference. Maybe even something that has been unavailable or non-functional to people with modern systems.
At this point Nvidia hasn’t revealed which classic games are in line for this treatment so now is as good a time as any to speculate, in order to be appropriately disappointed when it isn’t No One Lives Forever 2. Because it won’t be No One Lives Forever 2. Nothing is ever No One Lives Forever 2. But what it if was?