Features
Everything the remaster adds sits on top of the original game, and almost all of it has a switch in the options menu.
Kept and changed
Visuals, audio, missions, the city's layout and the feel of the world stay original. Controls, camera, vehicle physics and quality of life are where the remaster improves.
London as it was
The city, its streets, traffic and people are read from your own disc. Nothing is rebuilt by hand.
KeptEvery mission
Mark’s and Frank’s stories, the cut-scenes and the timing of each chapter play as they did in 2002.
KeptThe voices and the score
Every line of the original English cast and the score, played from your disc as they were recorded.
KeptNo HUD
You still read your health from your clothes and your route from the car’s indicators.
KeptControls that answer at once
Camera-relative movement on foot that never waits on an animation. Keyboard and mouse or gamepad, all remappable.
ChangedA free camera
Look around Mark, Frank or the car with the mouse or right stick. While driving it eases back behind you after a moment.
ChangedCars you can drive
A rewritten vehicle model with predictable grip, assisted counter-steer and stable braking. Each assist can be turned off.
ChangedModern conveniences
Skippable cut-scenes, an autosave after every mission instead of only at a chapter’s end, widescreen and an unlocked frame rate.
Changed
Graphics
Two lightings to choose from: the PS2’s own, with its fog and sky, or the remaster’s physically based High lighting. Everything below scales down to a phone.
Hybrid ray tracing
Ray traced reflections on car paint and window glass, ambient occlusion and the shadows of street lamps, on GPUs that support it.
Global illumination
A baked irradiance volume gives the shade the sky and the city’s bounce light. The game bakes it on its first run.
Shadows
Cascaded sun shadows over buildings, cars and people, contact shadows for feet and kerbs, and shadows from local lights.
Night and lamps
Street lights, headlights and lit windows as area lights, volumetric light shafts and lens flares.
Rain
Rain in tiers up to GPU particles, wet roads with streaks and spray, and drops on the lens. The original half-built its rain and cut it before release; here it finally falls.
Snow
An optional winter: snow that falls in showers, settles on every open surface, takes tyre tracks and footprints, and turns to slush when the rain comes.
FSR 3.1 and HDR
AMD FSR 3.1 temporal upscaling, FSR 1 and SGSR for weaker GPUs, and HDR10 output with a choice of tone curves.
Materials
Normal, roughness, height and metal maps, from mods or generated, on the original’s textures or the HD pack.
Post effects, opt-in
Motion blur, film grain, vignette, lens dirt and colour grading are all there, and all off unless you want them.
Gameplay
The missions are the original’s. What changes is how it feels to play them.
Driving assists
Speed-sensitive steering, counter-steer, ABS and traction control, each with its own toggle. Mouse steering if you want it.
Car damage
Enhanced deformation, breaking glass, fires, skid marks, tyre smoke and exhaust.
Combat
Aim assist for gamepads, an optional crosshair, ragdolls, and hostages taken as the original takes them.
Living streets
Traffic that changes lanes and keeps clear, pedestrians with foot placement on stairs and kerbs, police with tuned aggression.
3D audio
Front, back and height, Doppler and walls that muffle sound, with a binaural mode for headphones.
Put it back
Where a change alters how the game plays, there is a setting to restore the original behaviour.
Platforms
One engine on every platform, built from the same code.
Desktop
Windows, Linux and macOS on Vulkan. Gamepad and keyboard + mouse are both first-class.
Phones and tablets
Android and iOS with on-screen touch controls, a memory budget for the device and textures re-encoded for mobile GPUs.
Your settings
Every option is in the menu and in a plain text file, so a preset can be shared as a few lines.
Try it on your own machine
Without a disc image it opens a test scene, so you can see how it runs first.
Coming soon