Batman: Arkham City might be over a decade old, but for a game that first arrived on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, it still looks pretty good. Lighting, textures, animations, and effects were all top-notch for the era and still hold up even today. Arkham City looks even better with the 2016 remaster on the PS4 and Xbox One. The PC version, however, never received that extra graphical touch.
One Batman fan just wouldn't stand for that. Six years ago, modder GPUnity embarked on a journey to remaster Batman: Arkham City themself, using both AI-upscaling technology to refine Arkham City's textures as well as manual improvements done by hand. Over 1,000 textures have been improved thanks to the Batman: Arkham City HD Texture Pack, which you can download now over on Nexus Mods.
The bulk of the improvements can be seen just by looking straight at the ground. Stone, dirt, rubble, concrete--all of it looks far sharper. Some even have entirely new designs where the original textures just weren't detailed enough. The mod also features improved shadow quality and increased shadow draw distance, both perfect for a game as dark as Arkham City.
To make installing the Arkham City HD Texture Pack easy, the mod comes with its own handy installer. It also allows the user to fine-tune the new features added in the mod, such as the new shadow draw distance, a field of view slider, and texture tessellation distance. Installation is just a matter of clicking a few buttons, with the installer automatically creating a backup should you wish to return to the vanilla experience.
One thing users should be aware of is that this mod isn't small. The normal version of the HD Texture Pack is 4.58 GB, while the "lite" version is 1.87 GB. The lite version omits most of the environmental textures but keeps the improved character and object textures. DirectX 11 support is added too, so it'll be better for modern GPUs. For detailed instructions, head over to Steam for the full guide.