Now that the world has been teased about it for several months, Portal RTX is about to be released. The release date was announced by Nvidia, and the greatest part is that it is free for Steam users who already own the original game. One of Valve's most popular games, Portal, provides players with challenging physics puzzles to solve while being controlled by a malevolent AI. The game received widespread acclaim and a sequel in Portal 2, but the franchise has since completely died down. 

According to Nvidia, the release date of the graphically improved update Portal RTX is December 8. The company's original November launch schedule has been somewhat delayed, but fans still only have to wait for around another week, according to a blog post that announced the release date in December. The free Portal DLC adds ray tracing and newly created high-resolution textures to the 2007 puzzle game. Full ray tracing is supported by DLSS2, and DLSS3 by Nvidia boosts frame rates by 2.8 for those who use RTX 40-series graphics cards. 

Whether Valve and Nvidia will handle any of Valve's other titles similarly is unknown at this time. The Left 4 Dead series, which already extensively relies on light and shadow to generate shocks, as well as Half-Life 2, which has aged quite a bit, may also benefit from this treatment. Another great option for Portal's immediate sequel is Portal 2. All of these games require a lot of resources, thus upgrading them would probably be harder and/or take longer than doing it for the original Portal. 

Although Portal RTX is bringing the story into the present, it has been revisited previously as well. Aperture Desk Job recently featured Cave Johnson and Aperture Science, and a future Dota 2 update will have an announcer voice pack including J.K. Simmons, who plays Aperture Science's voice. Given that Valve has several games in development, the recent activity surrounding the Portal series may be a sign that something fresh is on the horizon for the franchise. Fans will just have to test out Portal RTX and wait to see if another game is planned because the business is infamous for keeping quiet.