The PC gaming icon that is Half-Life 2 recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, and Valve pulled out all the stops with a major new update integrating the game with its episodes and adding a commentary track. The studio also released a two-hour documentary about the making of the game and what was going on at Valve during its development, which is absolutely crammed with fascinating digressions about the challenge it set itself. And one of them was lighting.
The development of Half-Life 2 was rooted in what multiple staff describe as "the tech wishlist", which would take six years to fully realise and was absolutely foundational to what Valve wanted to achieve with the game.
