Possibly the most impressive fan remaster of a video game to date?

Way back in February 2014, two RE4 superfans—Albert Marin and Cris Morales—officially began work on their ambitious RE4 re-texture project, making their first blog post about their intentions. It was originally meant to be purely an HD texture pack.

But in the course of eight years—in which Albert and Cris toiled away for more than 13,000 hours on the project and spent around $15,000 of their own money (this was later made up by around $16,000 worth of donations) for hardware, software, textures, programming support, and travel—the visual overhaul came to include not only textures, but 3D edits, lighting, UI, collision detection, cinematics, and fixes for long-standing bugs introduced into the game’s many ports. The final result is a stunning remaster of a classic game that touches every aspect of its visuals. If there is a more impressive fan-made remaster of a video game, I do not know it. Below is the official release trailer.

One thing that stood out about this project immediately was that Albert was determined to locate as many of the original source locations for the game’s textures as possible. He began doing research as early as 2008 into where Capcom had done their source photography. Luckily, about half of these locations ended up being in his home country of Spain (which is where the game itself is set), while most of the rest were in Wales. He would spend about $1,200 travelling to eight source locations in Europe.

But how he located all this stuff, I have no idea. He even found a random chunk of rock in Segovia that was used for one of the game’s mine sections:

Further, a lot of RE4’s textures actually came from multiple sources, such as this door, which borrowed elements from Seville, London, and Rome:

Or how about these doors from Seville and Toledo?

After Albert located all this source material and took his own photographs, it was time to start doing the actual modding. This included, of course, re-creating a lot of textures from scratch, in cases where the original was unknown or destroyed (Albert recalls seeing the destruction of a random wall used in the game in his home town of Barcelona).

Their first release came fairly quickly (less than a year later), on Christmas day 2014. It included a re-texturing of only the “Village” portions of the game, i.e., chapters 1 and 2. Even this early release was a massive improvement:

Little did these two intrepid modders know at the time that they would end up returning to this section years later and make it look even better!

Their next release of the “Castle” section (chapters 3 and 4) would not happen for more than two years, in late March 2017. Unlike the original Village release, this one included 3D, lighting, and effects enhancements, things that Albert had learned to do along the way. In an email exchange I had with him, Albert was keen to credit the help of some outside programmers:

I got the help of some programmers who created tools based on info I discovered when hex editing certain files. Without these tools I wouldn’t have been able to edit lights, effects and other files so easily. The programmers also found out how to edit some other files that I had no idea how to even locate (collision data, for example).

All of this led to an even more impressive visual upgrade than the previous one:

It was around this time that Cris was forced to stop active work on the project due to family and work commitments, though he remained administrator of the project’s website. Albert continued on alone.

About a year later, in July 2018, the project’s penultimate release was posted, which not only included the final “Island” section of the game (chapter 5), but further 3D and lighting tweaks to earlier releases (especially the early “Village” release), and also work on the “Separate Ways,” “Assignment Ada,” and “Mercenaries” modes of the game.

This release touched almost every visual aspect of the game, and for someone who is less of perfectionist than Albert is, this might have served quite well as the project’s final release after more than four long years of work. Albert, however, was not content. He knew he could make it look even better with things like edits to enemies and NPCs, further refinements to weapons and items, and fixes to bugs in the PC port.

And so over the next three-and-a-half years, Albert did another complete pass through the game, using everything he had learned during his previous years of work to make it all look as good as he possibly could while staying faithful to the feel of the original... including even remastering the 512×336 cinematics. And besides this, he hired other programmers to do things like fix a bug that removed transparency from the item pickup screen:

...restore depth-of-field effects that had appeared in the Gamecube and Wii versions, but had been removed from the other ports:

...and add support for ultrawide resolutions (I'm sure he was thinking of @rorie):

...plus many more improvements and fixes than is practical to list here.

And now the whole thing is out, and wow, let me tell you, it is pretty friggin’ great!

The thing I particularly appreciate about the work done on this project is that Albert and Cris tried very hard to stay faithful to the feel of the original game with their upgrades. As Albert said previously in interviews:

One of the main goals of this project is to be faithful to the original. And here is where subjectivity plays an important role: Low resolution textures leave a lot to the imagination, and you know... every person’s imagination is different! Sometimes we receive complaints even when we use the exact same texture, but in HD resolutions, because the low-res textures looked like they were dirtier or muddy or something like that. But the HD re-creation looked too clean in comparison, depending on what the person interpreted when looking at the low-res surface. ... [So] we use our aesthetic judgment and try to avoid making anything stand out too much. We try to avoid evoking reactions of “Hey! This is new!”

As a result, playing this remaster makes me feel a bit like I’ve been transported back in time to 2005. I mean, I know in my head that the game has never looked this good. But in my heart, and through the rose-tinted glasses of my memory, I remember RE4 looking amazing back when it first released. And it did! But it was “amazing” for a letterboxed Gamecube game in 2005. This remaster retains all of the original’s feel while creating a whole new level of fidelity.

Thankfully, this project hasn’t run into the legal problems and cease-and-desist orders that some fan remasters experience. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that it isn’t a stand-alone product; you need to buy the Steam version of the game for it to work, so ultimately it’s just a massive mod, released for free. Given this, Capcom has given the project their official blessing, probably because they know that it can only help the game’s sales.

Maybe the one pity about this whole project is that it sounds unlikely that Capcom will integrate all these upgrades to future ports of the game. In an email exchange I had with Albert, he cited copyright issues as a major hurdle:

I’m afraid Capcom can’t integrate it because they’d need to be sure each and every texture source image has no copyright problems and this is almost impossible to track for them.

But even if I won’t ever be able to play this remastered version on my Playstation, having it on Steam is pretty good, especially considering that the upcoming Steam Deck should allow for a portable option (pending a compatibility check).

In the meantime, there continue to be persistent rumors about an official RE4 remake in the style of the recent, successful RE2 and RE3 remakes, though it remains unannounced. But Albert isn’t worried that a possible remake would steal the HD project’s thunder:

The remakes are really different games. Even now, the original Resident Evil 2 & 3 receive their own mods and visual improvements (Resident Evil 2 and 3 HD Seamless Project). They are different and complementary experiences. Just think about any Hollywood remake. Most of them don’t hurt the original movie, and they are alternative visions of the older title.

He’s right about that. The long-rumored remake may end up being a good game, but the original isn’t going anywhere. It is remembered too fondly by too many people, myself very much among them. In fact, I would be very surprised indeed if a remake could fully recapture the magic of the original. Some games are greater than the sum of their parts, and this game is surely one of them.

Resident Evil 4 has long held a special place in my heart. Playing it for the first time in 2005, when I was still in college, was practically a religious experience for me. It is easily one of my top five favorite games ever, and it still holds up: it’s one of the very few titles more than fifteen years old that I still go back and play regularly. As such, I’ve been anticipating playing the final version of this lovingly crafted remaster about as much as a brand spanking new triple-A title.

So far, it hasn’t disappointed.

With many thanks to Albert and Cris for their many years of hard work, there’s never been a better time to play Resident Evil 4. Download the completed mod here:

https://www.re4hd.com/?page_id=9303

Note: All images are courtesy of Albert Marin. My sources were the official project website, a 2018 interview with TooFarGone, a 2021 interview with The Verge, and personal email correspondence with Albert.

P.S. Given all his years of work on this, I’ll forgive Albert for preferring the Blacktail to the Red9, even though the Red9 is objectively the better gun. :-P

EDIT: See the 18th post in this thread for a tour through the new easter egg secret area that the modders added toward the end of the Village section!