NaturalVision Evolved Looks Incredible
Bit of a short one from me tonight. I found this trailer for the fan-made NaturalVision Evolved mod for Grand Theft Auto 5 almost a week ago, and it has stuck with me.
I’ve not really been interested in taking another look at GTA V since it came out. I wanted to like GTA Online but it turned into a bit of a disaster zone, by my reckoning. You always hear about the rampant cheating and hacks in it — but, possibly like you, I just assumed it was hyperbole. That it couldn’t possibly be that much of an issue.
*sigh*
It was. Every other game session I tried, you’d get at *least* one hacker in.
In any case, NaturalVision Evolved! It has actually been in development for a number of years, and was looking very good even back then.1
Seeing this though, and how far it’s come, well — I might just have to do a reinstall at some point in the near future.
The technical prowess of the team involved in putting this mod together aside — the trailer itself is also a work of art!
I have to assume this will require a fairly grunty machine to run and look like this but I’m up for giving it a try.
… Also… I have to wonder… Will they end up making GTA V modded look better than GTA VI’s release state? Despite GTA V being almost 10-years old at this point? Hah. That would amuse me greatly. And I can see it potentially happening, too.
Stuff like this is really why I love modding so much, though. The ability to extend the life of a game well past the point it would’ve otherwise become irrelevant. Be that through the addition of content or just refreshes to the visual style, it’s all fantastic by my book.
Long live modding!
This was posted during Blaugust 2022, the annual blogging event hosted by Belghast. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in year-round!
Footnotes
- ‘Evolved’ is the latest iteration of this work, but the team’s efforts date back further. Here is the 2017 trailer for ‘NaturalVision Remastered’ which focused more on weather and environmental affects while keeping performance largely similar to that of vanilla.
