Dark Messiah - HD Texture Pack

mercy said:

In case of a simple guy, who puts new textures into the game with whatever method, all the quality-assurance & art direction process is missing!! Basically texture packs FCK UP the games original visual style.

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That is true. But I've also seen texture packs that were upscaled from the originals or done by hand based on the original textures so they are as true to the original art direction as possible. They still somewhat pop out because they are too sharp.

I think it's kind of an uncanny valley problem. If you add HD textures to an older game they are in contrast with the relatively low-poly models. If you then add high poly models it's a little better, but the animations are mostly still archaic in these games so it still feels odd. Even if you add new animations, which combined with textures and models is a lot of work, you will probably have the same problem with the games lighting or effects and most of the time that is something a modder can't really fix since that is baked in in the game's engine (without getting the source code, at least).

Now don't get me wrong, it's not that huge of a problem as I may seem to suggest. I still use the HD texture mods and models and I love them. Noticing a low-res texture (for example, a blurred mess of light background with dark line in the foreground where there's supposed to be some kind of text) or a particularly low-poly model can be just as off putting or even more.