Featured Image Credit: Rockstar Games
Topics: GTA, Mods, Rockstar Games
With all of the deserved hubbub about how brilliant GTA V was, it’s easy to forget the games that got the series to where it is today.
Now GTA VI is on the immediate horizon, that’s set to blow all of the previous games out of the water when it drops in May 2026 (assuming there are no further delays). As such, the older games are in danger of falling into further irrelevancy, despite absolutely not deserving to.
GTA IV is set in Liberty City, Rockstar’s version of New York, and it’s a bleak and much grittier story with one of the series’ best protagonists in Nico. The only thing that arguably lets it down in 2025 are the visuals, which have begun to show their age in the seventeen years since release.
Fortunately, for the aesthetically focused amongst you, there is a way to catapult those graphics forward if you’ve got a very beefy PC.
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Over on YouTube, the channel Digital Dreams uploaded a showcase of GTA IV running with the RTX Remix Pathtracing Community Remaster mod and it’s safe to say that it looks pretty amazing.
Fans in the comments were impressed with the mod as it is at this current stage, with one saying, “Still needs improvement. Vegetation and water looks awkward, but overall awesome though, especially if they eliminated z-fitting issue.”
Another added, “The PBR materials are not set and there are no properly programmed rain puddle shaders. But the fact that path tracing is running is impressive.”
RTX Remix mods have become very popular in recent years, as modders seek to breathe new life into older games by giving them visuals that are more up to date with current expectations.
This mod is developed by Xoxor4D and it is absolutely worth looking into, with the caveat that you'll absolutely need some serious hardware to get it running properly.
Even with top graphics cards and the surrounding hardware to match, it will be a struggle to keep the game at 60 FPS without additional AI frame generation.
The mod is not currently available to download for members of the public, but by supporting Xoxor4D on their Patreon page, you will get earlier access to it than anyone else when it does launch.
If you aren't too bothered about returning to GTA IV (what's the matter with you?), then you hopefully won't have too long to wait until GTA VI finally takes us back to an all new look at Vice City.