Dark Souls 2 Lighting Engine Mod - Modernising And Enhancing An Overlooked Classic

Seeing DF doing special coverage of mods on a more regular basis is absolutely awesome. Halo 2 is having its E3 lighting engine restored in some form, and I hope we'll get to see it covered as well in the future! Anyway, great video!

Weirdly, the things this mod adds (DLAA to replace FXAA, additional shadow casting sources, volumetric fog, GTAO, more shadow casting objects, etc) are all things added with FF14's Dawntrail update too. Seems to be basically everything you could add to an old deferred rendered game. Except this manages much more transformative visuals.

Incredible. Things like this are why I love being able to game on a PC.

It's remarkable how much of a difference lighting can do to the overall visuals of a game, the original looks rather flat here compared to the modded ones, so much so that the lighting seems to be making many of the textures look better, and I suspect this is without a texture mod which could make it look even better. It's also remarkable what passion over profit can achieve, basically, modders are doing this because they want to make it better, whereas a lot of publishers don't care and their focus is more on the profit not the quality of the game, at least that's the impression you get with the majority of publishers.

Yes indeed. This video came completely out of the blue. Thanks Tom!

People always point to Ubisoft when they talk about downgrading games but i'll never get over how amazing DS2 looked in the E3 trailers and early gameplay

Holy souls was not expecting a ds2 vid

Fascinating. I'd say lighting is by far the most important part of game's visuals. Proper physically correct lighting transforms any game, that's why I'm stoked for HL2 RTX remix!

This is imo the perfect application of visual remakes and everything of that sort. Like I look at the original DS1 and I really don't think it needs any work, like it's cool to mod but not essential because it's what it was meant to be, it still holds up. But DS2? We know the notorious development it went through, we've literally seen how it was meant to look before being forced to cut so much down. So seeing it be almost restored in that sense really has a huge impact. It's beyond just fun modding, it's almost "saving" the game if you will. Praise the modding community :)

Almost a decade later and we may get the lighting that was anywhere near what was shown in the trailer.

This mod is the perfect excuse to start a new playthroug of DS2 for me

Love this mod. Been using it for several years now and it just keeps getting better. I also recommend using a mod called Modern UI which is designed for the DS2 lighting mod and significantly improves the Hud and menus while retaining the original style.

I'm a simple man. I see DS2, I like.

This looks so good. If anyone is turned off by the slightly duller look, I’d say this could easily be remedied by a slight boost to the highlights in post processing, if this is still easily achievable these days. I’ve been off PC for a while. Are those refx post processing injectors still a thing in 2024?

DS2 is a better co op experience than DS3 for me. Also DS2 has so many bosses it's ridiculous.

This is some brilliant work. DS2 was really let down badly by the technical shortcomings of its engine.

I'm always pleasantly surprised when Tom makes a PC-focused video.

Perfect time to replay. Man, this is why I game on PC.

Awesome that you guys are going over this. I recently replayed with this lighting mod and it was very much worth it, amazing visual update

Ppl make fun of RT and stuff but THIS is a good example of how important lighting in games is (I know it's not RT, but that makes it even more clear). Looks stunning. Guess it's time for a replay. Been 10+ years.