One of the best things about emulating Nintendo Switch games is that modders can enhance them with new HD Texture Packs. In February 2024, Breath of the Wild got one. And now, Tears of the Kingdom got a 4K Texture Pack.

This mod, made by HDPacks, upgrades all the game’s textures, even the terrain. The modder used AI tools to make the old textures look sharper and more detailed, while still keeping the original art style of the game.

Going into more details, many textures have been changed to use less memory and to load faster. If your PC has a lot of VRAM (like 12GB or more at 4K), you can skip texture recompression to get slightly better texture quality. But if you don’t have much VRAM, or if the game crashes, you should turn on texture recompression (BC3). This pack also adds some new textures, improves memory use, and fixes texture glitches in shrines. Most other bugs (not caused by emulators) should also be gone.

In other words, this isn’t a simple AI Texture Pack. Instead, it brings numerous memory tweaks and visual improvements. So, kudos to the modder for creating something this good.

In a way, PC players can now enjoy a “remaster” of Tears of the Kingdom. They can run the game in 4K and use this texture pack to make everything look sharper and better. Let’s be honest. If Nintendo makes a remaster for the Switch 2, it would probably look just like this. So, PC gamers basically got a free remaster already.

You can go ahead and download this 4K Texture Pack from this link. Do note that you will need an emulator with 8GB extended DRAM to use it.

Here’s also another awesome mod for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This one adds a first-person camera, giving you a totally new way to play the game. I really think you should check it out, especially if you prefer playing games in first-person mode.

You can also find AI-enhanced texture packs for many more games, like Far Cry 3, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Blood 2, Dark Souls 2, FEAR, and Batman: Arkham Asylum have also received their own. And then we have those for Resident Evil: Revelations, Revelations 2, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, Resident Evil 7, and Tomb Raider: Legend. Let’s also not forget this one for Palworld and this one for Thief 2014.

Enjoy and stay tuned for more!

John Papadopoulos

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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