Experience Half-Life 2 like never before. Return to City 17, held within the iron grip of the Combine and the Consul. Reunite with old friends, and enemies. Traverse vicious canals, make new allies, and brave the horrors of the Quarrytown. Immerse yourself in a revitalised combat system featuring old arsenals made new again, with added features to raise the bar in gameplay. You've been waiting for quite some time, now. It's time to climb aboard.
Latest full release: Division 2.1, the full second release of RTBR with Gordon's escape from City 17, meeting with Eliden, and the passage through Ravenholm. Also featuring an updated version of Division 1 bundled in one release. 2.1 featured further reworks to Division 1 and patches to Division 2.
Latest demo release: Division 2 Demo, a snippet of the second part of RTBR, featuring the first six levels of Gordon's escape from City 17
ADDON GUIDELINES:
As of February 2022 we've enabled community addons to be uploaded to the mod page. This can take the form of reanimations, remodels, retextures, maps, sound redesigns, or however else you'd like to customise your RTBR experience and allow others to as well. A lot of the guidelines are contained by ModDB's own rules regarding content, but here's a run-down:
Please stick to these rules or your addon won't be allowed on RTBR's page.
Hey everyone! It's our pleasure to celebrate the 6th anniversary of RTBR's development today, with a look into the near future! We have plans to get a snippet of Division 3 into your hands in the short-term, and to prepare for that, we decided to do a big content release of all the things to expect in that demo! Without further ado, let's get started!
The Depotyard will be the first map of our upcoming Depot demo, and will introduce players to some of the new mechanics and enemy types they will be facing in the demo. Starting in poorly-maintained tunnels, the player will fight their way to a surface-side entry into the depot, and then through a massive storage space that is swarming with Hunters.
One of the new weapons players will get their hands on is the Tau Cannon, teased as part of our Mod of the Year celebration last year! Separated from the buggy, the player will have to seek an alternate ammo source for the weapon during the Depot journey. The Combine don't have boxes of radioactive isotope just lying around, but rebel ingenuity means, as long as you're willing to make a sacrifice, you might be able to keep this thing well-stocked...
As a nice little aside, Joseph has remodelled the iconic popcans with the Consul's branding in mind, in addition to some variants using RTBR-made spoofs of popular soda brands. You'll find these scattered all over City 17, and some may have found their way out into the Wasteland, where less suspicious water supplies are scarce...
The next map in the depot journey sees the player reunite with Alyx, and storm the place with her assistance. Vortigaunts are trapped here by the Combine, amidst the giant turbines of its water-extracting machinery, and it's up to you to free them, fight off the garrison, and push on to find Doctor Maxwell.
The depot journey may be after Gordon's romp through the Antlion Caves, but the antlions are far from finished when you get to the depot. Between a few rogue groups and the frenzied remains of the Hive chasing the player, you'll eventually get the chance to command some yourself – and you'll do so with our take on the classic pheropod.
As part of being a cut-content mod, we've inherited lots of content from the beta that doesn't quite hold up even alongside HL2's props, let alone our own custom set of assets. As a result, one of the more iconic of the cut vehicle wreck models was on the board for a remake, one which faithfully recreates the shape and silhouette whilst adding many new details.
Stalkers are one of Half-Life 2's most gruesome enemies, and of course have a key history in the leak. We are considering ways of channelling both the “freaky assassin” role of their leak counterpart and their “maintenance drone” persona in retail, but for now, have a one-size-fits-all solution which will be spotted working the occasional console in the Depot, and, as you saw for our Triumph Mod of the Year teaser, a few places of Aperture Science.
In Depot 02, the fighting gets real. The antlions are assaulting the depot in full force, even as you and Alyx are in a race against time to track down Eli before the entire facility comes apart around you. Giant underground environments mix with claustrophobic corridors and abandoned remains of human occupation, with both Combine and Antlions making grasps at securing the place.
The third of the weapons being introduced in the Depot demo is the most esoteric – the Steambow, our take on the crossbow concept art! We've chosen to fully-redesign the functionality of this weapon from a one-shot precision weapon, to a double-barrelled long-range option with a secondary fire that will deal AOE damage to enemies and buy you valuable breathing space. Functions are still a WIP at this time, but you'll have the chance to take it into your own hands soon!
And of course, nothing sticks enemies into walls better than repurposed rebar. Unlike HL2's super-heated variant, the Steambow's ammunition more closely resembles actual crossbow bolts, and you'll want to keep yourself stocked-up for the enemy encounters yet to come.
The finale to the depot demo, Alyx has gone to help an injured Eli out of the depot, and it's your turn to be bait. Luckily, a pheropod in your hand means you're not alone in this fight, and antlions will now follow you to victory, tearing through some of the most Combine-dominated parts of the facility, and using your unconventional allies to cross navigational barriers.
That's a wrap on our 6th anniversary update! We are fully-engaged in pushing towards a Depot demo as our Division 3 offering, and expect to have more news and teasers to share with you soon! Before closing up, here’s a few more roles we’re still on the lookout for:
Level designers – We’re still open to having additional support in both the art pass and blockout departments
3D Modellers – More support in our hard surface department will always be appreciated
Programmers – With the amount of custom content coming in Division 3, additional resources in our programming department would be ideal
If any of these roles look good to you, please add the username, kralich, on Discord. Thanks everyone, and I hope you're prepared for RTBR's Depot journey!
The 1.1 release of Salvation, carrying refinements, fixes, and performance improvements throughout!
The 1.0 release of Salvation, the tale of Grigori's exodus from Ravenholm!
The inaugural standalone update for Salvation, the Grigori-focused spin-off to Raising The Bar: Redux, is here! Map progress, model updates, and a new...
An update on the current progress on Division 3, as well as the announcement of our two spin-off mods in development!
The Division 2.1 release, featuring fixes, improvements, and continued reworks to Division 1!
The full release of Division 2 (including an improved Division 1) is HERE!
Half Life 2: Raising the Bar REDUX: Division 2 Demo Release
Raising the Bar: Redux: Division 1.2 Release - here at last!
Raising the Bar: Redux: Division 1.1 Update - HERE AGAIN
Raising the Bar: Redux: Chapter One Release - OBSOLETE
This mod was actually awesome, from the voice acting (which was at some points funny as, understandably, they aren't the original voices), to the levels and models. I would recommend to anyone trying out Half-Life 2 mods. However, I would like to say that in some places there just simply isn't enough ammo, such as in the Ravenholm area, where I had to sometimes kill the zombies with paint cans and such (not sure if it was intentional level design though).
First time playing this mod actually made me feel like I was playing Half-Life 2 for the first time, which is very impressive.
All in all, one of the best mods, definitely recommended.
Will there be air exchange in this mod?
i have installed all hl2 episodes and 2013 sdk singleplayer but everytime i go into the first loading screen after booting it crashes to desktop. any help?
SDK 2013 singleplayer also needs to be set to the "Upcoming" branch
Still broken for me. says "could not load library client, try restarting."
nothing works
you boys are doing magic, it's like i experienced half life 2 from the scratch again
one litle thing to notice - the vechile controls are quite ***, you need to keep that in mind
and shotgun sounded kinda weak.. for a shotgun
in other - this is amazing, waiting for the division 3
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It will show up in my steam library, but will not start. I have HL2: E2 and the 2013 Source Singleplayer SDK (upcoming) it just crashes on start. Same thing with Salvation. What am I doing wrong here? I just want to play this game man.
is it showing any errors?
it just says "hl2.exe has crashed, try restarting the game. if this issue persists, verify game cache" nothing else idk what im doing wrong