Dark Souls 2 path tracing mod completely transforms the game's lighting

Back in November 2025, we covered DS2LightingEngine, a mod aiming to bring real-time path tracing to Dark Souls 2. Now the first videos have surfaced, showing off over an hour of gameplay – and the results are impressive.

The new version of DS2LightingEngine will add support for RTGI (ray-traced global illumination) and full path tracing. For a game that was never known for its visuals, this is a substantial overhaul.

Lighting becomes far more realistic and consistent – exactly what fans who were let down by Dark Souls 2's visual downgrade compared to its early promotional material have been waiting for.

Path tracing will naturally push PC requirements higher. That said, the mod already supports Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR 3.1, so once the updated version with path tracing releases, those upscaling tools should help offset the performance hit.

There's still no release date for the new version of DS2LightingEngine.