Dusk wasn't originally supposed to get a full graphical remaster just five years after launch. In its initial reveal at the 2022 PC Gaming show, New Blood head honcho Dave Oshry called it an update "nobody asked for, so we're doing it anyway," and the "HD" moniker for the tastefully updated weapon and enemy models was really more of a bit. Hell, the guy who made most of it wasn't even a professional developer at that point: "I saw the trailer for Dusk HD and was like, 'Oh, haha, Dusk but HD, what a joke,'" David "Garumin" Bonin told me in a recent interview.
"But then I just had this gut feeling: what if it wasn't a joke? What if it was more than just a tech demo for an SDK? What if we went all in, and that started this weird little obsession where I set aside my own personal projects, and I just started digging through."
Dusk HD had a far simpler mandate to start with: New Blood just wanted to include some mods of its own alongside Dusk's long awaited Steam Workshop support and that modder-friendly SDK. "It had been so long since we promised Workshop support that we're like, we need to make this really robust," Oshry said. "We should put some mods on it ourselves."
After being inspired by the 2022 teaser for Dusk HD—which at that point mostly featured the work of New Blood developer Cody Lambert—Garumin began producing more hi-fi takes on assets from the famously lo-fi shooter, treating it like almost like a second job. "After 100+ objects and textures I was like, 'I should probably just contact the team and see what they think.'"
The response from New Blood, as you might guess at this point, was extremely positive. "Garu approached us and he was like, 'Hey, I've actually been making HD versions of every single asset in the game, would you like to take a look?'" said Dave Oshry. "Like most people that ended up working in New Blood he just kind of bothered us until we said yes—it's literally how everybody's gotten a job here."
Garumin began assessing each individual model and texture in Dusk for a revamp, either working directly on creator David Szymanski's original assets, or starting from scratch with the original on hand as reference. It's a process that demanded constant revision, with Szymanski offering critique along the way. New Blood developer Ben "Zombie" Moir said they ended up with a "model graveyard" from all the changes—something else that might eventually make it to Dusk's Steam Workshop.
"We all kind of agreed: 'Fuck it, let's go all the way with this,'" Oshry said. After that PCGS teaser of Dusk HD in 2022, the add-on didn't make its way into players' hands until December 2023, but commitment to quality and meticulous evolution of Dusk's original art style means that the HD version avoids the pitfalls of so many bad FPS remaster projects.
We're on the other side of the planet from the infamous FakeFactory Cinematic Mod for Half-Life 2 here. PCG contributor Noa Smith likened the jump from Dusk to HD to the difference between 1997 graphics and 2004 graphics, and that almost equally retro reinterpretation of Dusk's look makes for a perfect companion to the original art.
"We could have stopped at so many points and people would have been like, 'Oh, that's pretty cool,'" Oshry said. "But we decided to go all the way, and that's how Dusk HD grew into this beast."
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