With the improvements made to the ShadPS4 PlayStation 4 emulator in the past year, playing Bloodborne on PC has become a reality even without an official port. The emulation improvements also paved the way for mods that unlock the game's framerate past the 30 FPS cap of the vanilla release and introduced visual enhancements.
Among the visual overhauls released for the now-classic PS4 action role-playing game is the Bloodborne Remaster Project created by fromsoftserve, a known Souls series modder. Over the past few days, the project became Shadows of the Hunt, undergoing some massive changes fueled by the modder's desire to push "artistic flair" against realistic visuals and "boring" ray tracing trends that are dominating the industry of late.
The launch of the Shadows of the Hunt mod, now available from Nexus Mods, was announced in a new video shared by fromsoftserve on YouTube, which goes over its features. The most notable are the inclusion of dynamic shadows, parallax occlusion mapping to many surfaces, point lights for elements that emit no light in the vanilla version, higher resolution skyboxes, and more.
Possibly more interesting, however, is the inclusion of alternate color grading, which gives Bloodborne a rather peculiar feel. Although quite different from the vanilla grading, fromsoftserve believes it suits the game well: "Bloodborne is cosmic and weird and f*cked up, and you can have a very weird looking game," the modder said in the video.
"I'm actually far more interested in an image being interesting than realistic. I think the industry is way too focused on realism, and they’re forgetting that we’re playing games. I think that’s more interesting and has more 'soul' to it than just trying to make it look like a photograph," fromsoftserve continued in the video to highlight how their approach has a more artistic flair that is in stark contrast to the almost obnoxious search for realism that is dominating video games as of late.
Ray Tracing and Path Tracing are two other trends that have dominated the video game industry in recent months, and the new approach in the Bloodborne Shadows of the Hunt mod is also a pushback against how ray-traced features are being used.
"I love ray tracing and path tracing, but I think the industry is using it currently in a somewhat boring method where they’re just trying to make it look realistic. Making lighting unrealistic is also awesome and fun." Seeing the visuals most of the industry, especially Western developers, is pushing nowadays that is making it difficult to distinguish one game from another, it's difficult not to agree with fromsoftserve.
Besides any further improvements Shadows of the Hunt mod may bring in the next few months, 2026 is still setting out to be an exciting year for Bloodborne fans, even without an official remaster on the horizon. The ShadPS4 team is currently exploring the possibility of enabling the game's online multiplayer features on PC, which will truly transform the emulated version into the definitive edition of the game once they become available.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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