Not-so Upscaled Game Scenes (NUGS) - 1440p Cutscenes Mod

NUGS for Dragon Age II

"But there weren't any nugs in DA2!?"

Not-so Upscaled Game Scenes (NUGS) is a cinematics mod that replaces Dragon Age 2's 720p cinematic cutscenes (or 'movies') with 1440p clips, featuring 60FPS interpolation.

A 4K version can be found here by fromsoftserve. That's why this is a "not-so" upscaled version!

What to expect

This mod includes upscaled pre-rendered videos of:

• []Main campaign cinematic cutscenes

  []Loading screens, excluding the EA x Bioware video at start-up

  []DLC loading screens + MoTA heist scene

  I prioritized making the cutscenes look cleaner with fewer pixelated spots rather than just sharper, so most of the changes are subtle but they're there.

  Notes

  • []4K version: As mentioned, I'm well aware that there is already a 4K mod for DA2 since 2021. But my monitor can't really display the full benefits of 4K anyway (lol), so I initially upscaled the game's 720p cutscenes to 1440p for my own personal use. Since that 4K mod hasn't been updated in a while, I decided to share my version for any new or returning players who still enjoy DA2 and might prefer or need a 1440p option.

    []Flickering objects: Unfortunately, some of DA2's movies were horribly compressed to death. As a result, some objects in clips will probably look "flickery" due to the original pre-rendered 720p's anti-aliasing and the upscaling model not boding well. Sadly I couldn't do anything beyond tweaking the upscaler's settings to make it less "crunchy"-looking.

    []Interpolation: As with all upscaled low-quality videos, with poor input quality comes imperfect upscaling. Such is the case with NUGS. There are scenes where buildings or objects may look weird when paused as the AI upscaler has to work with the limitations of the original video. Though this shouldn’t be too noticeable unless you're looking too hard for it or pausing the scene.

    Installation

    Installing should be the same as other mods (as it did work for me). Make sure you have a file decryptor like WinRAR.

    • []Navigate to \Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age 2\packages\core\override.

      []Drop the NUGS mod folder into this directory.

      In case this doesn't work, you can directly replace the cutscenes, but this means fully overriding the original files. Back up your video files before doing this:

      [*]Locate the game's installation directory