Dark Souls 2 New Mod Introduces Volumetric Fog, Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion And Other Lighting Improvements

Dark Souls 2 is kind of the black sheep of the Souls series due to some of its mechanics that make it feel a little different than the other entries in the franchise by FromSoftware, and so it hasn’t aged particularly well. While there isn’t a lot that can be done for the gameplay, modders are continuing to work on the game’s visuals, introducing so many improvements that make the game almost look as good as the most recent games by the Japanese developer.

The DS2 Lighting Engine Softs mod, which can be downloaded from Nexus Mods, introduces new features to the game’s lighting engine which improve the game’s visuals quite a bit. Among the new features are volumetric fog, high-quality Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion, an updated shading model for surfaces, and more. While the mod is still in an early stage of development, it already looks great, as highlighted by the screenshots below.

As already mentioned, Dark Souls 2 is among the most divisive entries in the series developed by FromSoftware, mostly due to some of its gameplay mechanics, level design, and a world that is not as immediately recognizable as Lordran and Lothric. The original release was so controversial that FromSoftware released a definitive edition called Scholar of the First Sin that includes the game’s excellent DLC expansions as well tons of gameplay changes that addressed some of the issues of the original release, although only partially.

Dark Souls 2 is now available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One worldwide.