Knights of the Old Republic is undoubtedly one of the better Star Wars games out there, and entirely deserving of a new sequel. Given that BioWare probably aren’t going to be allowed to make that a reality anytime soon, this shiny new mod that offers a whopping 3GB character overhaul is probably the next best thing for now.
ESRGAN (which stands for Enhanced Super Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks) has been used recently to breathe new life into a ton of older games, including Final Fantasy VII and Morrowind. We can thank modder Red11BY for using the AI neural network to add a new dimension to the 16-year-old Knights of the Old Republic.
The ambitious mod offers new HD textures for all the NPCs and player armour sets in Knights of the Old Republic, all upscaled to a a resolution of 2048×2048, via ESRGAN. If you’re feeling the urge to revisit one of BioWare’s best games, this is the perfect excuse. Simply head to Nexusmods and follow the installation instructions.
If you were wondering, the same modder also went and did the same thing for Knights of the Old Republic II, because of course they did. I don’t know what we did to deserve modders, but I thank God every day that we have people in the world who are simply passionate about finding new ways to change up old games.
This is Red11BY’s biggest mod, according to their own description. As such, they warn that while the mod certainly won’t break your game, some of the textures might look a little but off. In theory though, they say, everything should be fine.
They explain:
This is my biggest mod and its far from perfect. I haven’t tested most of these textures but It will not break your game or something. Some textures may look off but in theory everything should be fine.If you found some bugs please post them in comments.
Personally, I reckon old Red11BY is being humble. There are some seriously impressive overhauls in the mod, going from the screenshots I just had a cheeky rummage through. Plus, any excuse to replay Knights of the Old Republic is fine with me.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.