Zelda: Twilight Princess 4K Texture Pack 4.0 Update - The Faithful Update

Good evening! 🌒

I’m very excited to announce version 4.0 of my Zelda: Twilight Princess 4K texture pack!

This is, without question, the most faithful and polished update the project has received so far, introducing over 240 new faithful 4K textures across the game. In fact, this update is so faithful to the original artistic style of the original game, that I've decided to give this update a subtitle: "The Faithful Update"

This update includes a large number of new environment textures, a fully reworked UI, improvements to character textures, new and refined post-processing shaders, as well as many fixes, tweaks and general improvements, and of course full and greatly improved support for Dusklight and Courage Reborn (the PC ports projects). A significant amount of work has also gone into preparing the pack for future updates and new features made possible because of these ports.

There’s a lot to cover here, so here’s the more detailed changelog:

New environment textures!

Like in previous updates, a major focus of version 4.0 has been expanding and improving the game’s environment textures. Over 240 new 4K textures have been added in this update, making it a little bit smaller than 3.0 in the sheer amount of new textures changed. However, don't let this number fool you! This is not an incremental update, but a complete overhaul in most regards, which you will notice if you compare it to 3.0 and prior versions. The file layout has changed entirely this time around as well, with all textures now neatly sorted into areas and categories, making my textures much easier to merge with other texture projects if you so wish!

Most in-game areas have received extensive texture updates, and many regions that previously had partial coverage have now been improved to feel more cohesive and complete. The new textures cover (but are not limited to) the following areas:

• Sacred Grove (Completely overhauled)

• Lost Woods (Completely overhauled)

• Hyrule Field (Multiple regions, Completely overhauled)

• Ordon Village (Completely overhauled)

• Ordon Ranch (Completely overhauled)

• Ordon Spring (Completely overhauled)

• Faron Woods (Completely overhauled)

• Hyrule Castle Town and surrounding areas (Completely overhauled)

• Lake Hylia (Completely overhauled)

• Gerudo Province (Completely overhauled)

• Snowpeak Province (Completely overhauled)

• Kakariko Village

• Zora River

• Several additional dungeons and sub-areas

Unlike some earlier updates, this version doesn’t focus on just a few specific locations, and most areas of the game have been revisited in some way. Hyrule Field, the Faron region and Sacred Grove have seen especially significant improvements in this update. Visual effects have also been updated and now look substantially higher quality than before.

Completely reworked UI!

Version 3.0 included a fully reworked user interface, with most UI elements recreated at higher resolutions. Version 4.0 builds on this and includes a lot more!

• New icon textures for the remaining missing icons.

• More consistent presentation across menus, HUD elements and icons

• Remade several icons to better match the original style.

• Visual adjustments intended to stay faithful to the original design whilst still being high fidelity.

The updated UI is intended to better match the overall quality level of the texture pack and provide a more comfortable experience when playing at modern resolutions without style clashes or pixelation.

Improved character textures!

Character textures have received a broad quality pass in this update.

Many key characters, NPCs and enemies have been revisited to:

• Improve overall texture quality

• Increase quality consistency

• Better align with the original game’s visual style

The intent here is refinement rather than redesign, focusing on subtle improvements that help the textures blend more naturally with the rest of the game.

Dusklight additions!

Since the last version, many major developments in the Twilight Princess-community has occured, including the release of Dusklight (previously called 'Dusk'), a PC port of the game! This version offers many substantial improvements over the emulated version in Dolphin, such as support for high frame rates (60 fps and beyond), easier modding, tons of quality of life improvements and improved quality in many ways. The last version of my texture pack partially supported Dusklight already, but it had major flaws and many textures were missing or didn't display correctly at all in Dusklight. This has now been fixed with version 4.0, and all missing textures from the 3.0 version now show in Dusklight correctly!

Also, there are major improvements coming to the pack in terms of efficiency and optimizations. The 'Mobile Edition' of the pack will be receiving an upgrade to it's file format for the textures, theoretically reducing the file size of the pack by over 150% and increasing load times and boosting performance even further. This upgrade is still in the works, but should become available as a small patch to 4.0 later!

Increased consistency and overall quality improvements!

A large portion of the work in this update has gone into revisiting older textures to improve consistency across the pack.

• Older HD textures have been cleaned up or adjusted

• Reduced visual inconsistencies between neighboring areas

• More cohesive presentation throughout the game

The goal is to enhance visual clarity and consistency while respecting the original game’s art direction.

Fixes, tweaks and other improvements!

In addition to new textures, version 4.0 includes:

• Numerous texture fixes and UV alignment fixes

• Small visual tweaks across many areas

• General cleanup and polish throughout the pack

These changes help improve overall quality and presentation, even if they’re not always immediately noticeable and only become apparent if you focus on the details.

Updating from an older version is super simple:

For Dolphin users: Just copy & paste the "GC" and "Wii" folders inside the "User" folder in the texture pack directory over to the new version's User folder and it should work straight away!

For Dusklight / Courage Reborn users: Just delete (don't overwrite, delete!) the existing "GZ2" folder from a prior version's texture-replacements folder with the new one from this version and that should do the trick!

That's mostly it for this update. Enjoy!

There are two versions available for download: The 4K version and the 1080p version. Both are identical except for the textures resolution being halved in the 1080p version compared to 4K!

Note: The 4K version will look a bit better than the 1080p version, even if you don't have a 4K display. This is because the textures are physically larger and contain more detail in the 4K version, no matter what resolution display you're using!

(The texture pack does not work on real Gamecube/Wii/Wii U consoles).

Read more information about the texture pack on my website!