Nvidia has pulled a major surprise with their RTX mods.
Today they have revealed Portal Prelude RTX, an update to the highly popular mod Portal Prelude.
Like Nvidia’s other RTX projects, this new version comes with all the accoutrements that RTX provides in modern technology. That includes DLSS 3, their latest upscaling technology, and RTX IO, a technology that allows PCs with Nvidia GPUs to process compressed data more quickly.
But let’s talk about Portal Prelude now. This was not made by Valve, and was actually a mod made completely by fans, that served as an unofficial prequel to the events of the first Portal.
We’ll spoil Portal Prelude’s story in the following two paragraphs.
Portal Prelude sees you playing test subject Abby, who does the gravity gun experiments Chell was doing, but at a time before GladOS was activated. Abby actually talks to Black Mesa’s human scientists testing her, but she has the poor luck to be there the moment that Black Mesa decided to activate GladOS.
Portal Prelude adds in a cameo by G-Man, giving Portal the long wanted connection to the Half-Life franchise. However, since it was made before Portal 2, it wasn’t able to incorporate the stories of Cave Johnson and Caroline. But, because of the mod’s limited scope, it can still reasonably fit in the Portal / Half-Life mythos.
As can be confirmed in the very, very, very old Blogspot based Portal Prelude website, the developers stopped working on the project in 2008, at version 1.1.5. They also clarified that they wouldn’t add support for it with the free version of Portal (remember that?).
Obviously, the mod now has some issues running on newer computers. In fact, if you may not have realized it yet, Portal Prelude was never officially published on Steam. Since it was a mod, Steam had no obligation to publish it on the client, and they also didn’t have to provide support.
All of that is the reason why Portal Prelude RTX is a very pleasant surprise today. This is the first time Portal Prelude is getting officially published on any game store or marketplace for the very first time. Nvidia has imbued Portal Prelude with more legitimacy than Valve ever did.
And you can ask older fans who will tell you that Portal Prelude deserves this distinction, and is also worth your time.
Portal Prelude RTX is free on Steam. Of course, you will need to have a computer with an Nvidia GPU to run it. You can watch the official trailer below.
