Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty Visual is a mod that gives the original game gorgeous photorealistic graphics with incredible natural lighting effects and shadows.
Of course, this mod purely focuses on the visual side of Grand Theft Auto IV, which creates a curious effect when paired with the animations in the original game. It’s a little like it’s stepped out of time but I suppose this is preferable to the shambolic state of the official remasters of Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas. Noodley NPCs, supersized cars, rain that reminded us of liquid concrete streaking across the screen, the list of issues with the remasters went on and on. Obviously, this wasn’t a brilliant look when we remember that Take-Two Interactive shut down a number of unofficial mods for these games ahead of the release of the Definitive Trilogy.
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Fortunately, Rockstar Games has rolled out a patch to ameliorate the experience of playing the games, but modders were already busy as bees to address what was lacking with the official remasters. With things like Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty Visual, it’s evident that the preservation of classics clicks together when the studio and the passionate community of content creators are in tandem with each other.
Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty Visual transforms the original Grand Theft Auto IV’s city with upscaled textures, parallax textures, reworked vehicle materials, extended reflections and shadows and more. These changes don’t conflict with the older files and matches the day-night cycle, which is thanks to the wizardry of modder orange-brains, and so Grand Theft Auto IV looks exactly how you remember it. Not exactly how it actually looked. There’s a difference there.
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The early access version of the mod is available through the modder’s Patreon but its final version will be free to everyone. Fingers crossed it isn’t “threatening the economy” of Take-Two Interactive’s future releases and isn’t scrubbed from the Internet.
Featured Image Credit: orange-brains via PatreonTopics: Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar Games