After seven years in development, Albert Marin and his small team have completed their exhaustive reworking of Resident Evil 4’s graphics on PC. Compared to some other projects where developers upscale or otherwise modernize the visuals for a new generation or platform of hardware, this team pored over every image asset, using funds donated by fans of the project to improve upon Capcom’s PC port of the game.
In some cases where old textures just didn’t look all that good at a higher resolution, the team remade many of them from scratch using photos or AI, while striving to remain faithful to the aesthetic of the original game. When I interviewed Albert Marin in early 2021, the team had amassed over 4,500 Photoshop files and had put in over 9,000 hours of work on the project.
Personally, I’m surprised (but glad) that the team didn’t receive a cease and desist order from Capcom — especially closer to when the VR version released on the Quest 2. In a show of good faith, the company even pinned a forum post about the fan-made patch on Resident Evil 4’s Discussion page on Steam. You love to see it.
This HD project, which can be installed as a patch for Resident Evil 4 on Steam, doesn’t make any gameplay adjustments. Instead, every rock, ammo box, doorknob — even the cutscene visuals — have been lovingly updated by the team. For people who may have recently played the Resident Evil 4 VR game for Quest 2, this could be a fun way to experience the most polished version of the original third-person game.
If you want to give the HD project a try for yourself, here’s how to do it:
Buy Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition on Steam (it’s just $4.99 until February 3rd) and install the game
Ensure that you have 37GB of extra storage, as that’s the uncompressed size of the HD project’s package of assets
Head to one of the direct download sites listed at the HD Project’s site or alternatively snag the torrent
Extract the HD project files once the download is complete and then head to their site for the latest step-by-step instructions to install the patch to your game files
If you want, consider donating a few bucks to the team for making the HD project free