Stunning Mod Makes Dark Souls 2 Look Remastered

Dark Souls 2 fans are rediscovering a mod that transforms the base game into a beautiful new experience. The base game was released over 12 years ago, in 2014. You’d imagine the graphics don’t hold up to today’s current-gen console standards. But the original title by FromSoftware still looks stunning, even by today’s standards.

This becomes even more apparent thanks to the Dark Souls Lighting Engine, available on Nexus Mods from creator Ganaboy. The 2023 lighting mod sheds a new light on the game, literally. X user TheIshikawaRin has shared new screenshots from a game running the mod, and fans are falling in love with it all over again.

Dark Souls 2 Has Never Looked This Good Before

The Mod Completely Overhauls The Lighting System

There are plenty of mods that update game graphics out on Nexus Mods and other modding communities. The Lighting Engine mod shows that sometimes, all it takes is changing the light to show off the game’s best features.

The mod overhauls lighting in the Scholar of the First Sin edition of Dark Souls. This edition included all the game’s DLCs, but it also changed the lighting to provide more contrast. The mod builds on this, and adds ambient light, cast shadows, and dynamic lighting properties to nearly all light sources—including bonfires and torches.

The mod also adds distant scenery, which gives the illusion of depth and boosts immersion even more. All the settings can be configured and tweaked to bring the best parts of Dark Souls 2 into the spotlight.

The result can be seen in TheIshikawaRin’s gorgeous new screenshots. At first glance, these impressive images could be the screenshots from an official new remaster. As X user Chettlar writes, the lighting in these screenshots makes the game appear “so deeply atmospheric.“

Dark Souls 2 Is An Underrated RPG

One Of The Best Soulslike Games Out There

Sometimes gamers balk at picking up older games out of fear that they’re outdated or won’t look or play as well as their modern counterparts. And while Elden Ring was an incredible game, it owes a lot to its predecessors.

Dark Souls 2, called by many in the Soulslike community “Peak Souls,” is a must-play for fans of the franchise or genre. The game has a rating of 91 on Metacritic, the highest out of all the Dark Souls titles. By combining Dark Souls 2 with a mod like The Lighting Engine, you can make the title feel like a brand-new game.