Someone used Claude to give GTA 2 a huge graphical makeover, so I had to try it

Published Nov 10, 2026, 6:00 PM EST Gaming has been Samarveer’s greatest passion, and the Literature graduate in him takes immense joy in dissecting games for their themes, messages, and impact. Samarveer holds a deep appreciation of gaming, and considers the platform to be the most immersive and impactful across all media. He can be found engaging with gaming communities online, always ready to debate the finer points of ray tracing or itching to write an 8-page collegiate thesis on any game that impacts him emotionally. We are just about a week away from GTA 6 coming out, and it would have been perfectly normal for even GTA V or GTA IV to make the rounds in the news cycle. GTA 2, however, was not on my bingo card (or anyone's) for receiving a rejuvenation in 2026, and yet, here we are. Nvidia's RTX Remix software gives new life to old games by introducing path tracing into their rendering pipelines. That's exactly what someone used to nearly remake Grand Theft Auto 2, which, at this point, is just as old as me. After trying it out myself, it felt like playing a modern top-down game that I swear could've come out just yesterday. GTA 2 just got the RTX Remix treatment From basic ray tracing to a full path-traced makeover Before someone used Claude to give GTA 2 the perfect path-tracing treatment, there was an earlier version of this project, and it was already impressive. GitHub user gebdag created the gta2-rtx-remix, taking a game designed around '90s-era hardware, and letting it realize the full potential of a modern-day RTX GPU. Apparently, though, that wasn't enough. The new project — GTA2 RTX Upgraded — was taken much further by user kirrm3la using Claude Code, who improved the game's materials, lighting, and overall rendering in ways that make the original RTX Remix implementation look almost primitive by comparison. The result, then, isn't "GTA 2 with prettier lighting," however. What you get (and what I just played) is a 27-year-old game that feels like a completely different visual experience. That is particularly wild because GTA 2 was the last mainline Grand Theft Auto game to use the top-down formula before GTA III dragged the series into 3D. Games like Chinatown Wars later proved Rockstar hadn't completely abandoned the formula, but GTA 2 remains one of its most recognizable 2D experiments. And now, somehow, this 27-year-old game looks like it belongs on a modern PC. The Claude-assisted version adds physically based materials, path-traced lighting and reflections that react to the world around them, turning what was once a collection of flat sprites and simple effects into something surprisingly convincing. GTA 2 looks nothing like I remember Even the smallest details now react to the world around them Since a huge part of the GTA games (especially the earlier ones) is driving from payphone to payphone as fast as possible, the biggest change is, of course, the cars. The Claude-assisted version gives their metal surfaces physically based rendering materials, so they no longer look like flat textures sitting on top of sprites. Paint catches light properly, glass behaves like glass, and reflections move with the environment instead of being baked into the original artwork. The same treatment extends to the game's nastier details. Blood pools across the road now interact with the lighting, while the flashing red and blue lights from police cars and ambulances spill onto nearby surfaces. That includes other vehicles and even the player character, and together these additions make the world of Anywhere City feel far more coherent than GTA 2 ever had any business feeling. Daytime gameplay is remarkably beautiful, yes, but GTA 2 RTX Upgraded truly shines at night. Every time I drove under a streetlamp or beside a neon-lit building, my car immediately reflected them. The reflections themselves whizzed past every car in motion, and the new lighting system was particularly impressive when I saw my car's headlights dynamically light up and reflect on civilians and buildings around me. At this point, night gameplay in GTA 2 with the RTX Remix Upgrade mod flexing its muscles feels like playing a different game altogether, and it almost feels like a fantastic palette cleanser before GTA 6 finally drops on November 19. You can get GTA 2 running like this yourself The setup is surprisingly painless Getting GTA 2 itself is probably the hardest part, simply because Rockstar has completely delisted it from its storefront. Fortunately, the project's GitHub repository points you towards the files you need, so you won't have to wander around the internet looking for a copy of a game that's a quarter-century old. Once you have GTA 2 installed, the actual modding process is almost laughably simple. Download the original open-source RTX Remix files, extract them directly into your GTA 2 installation folder, then grab the Claude-assisted Remix files and put those into the same directory. After that, just click the GTA2 executable to get going. Thankfully, there's no elaborate mod manager, installation wizard or ritual sacrifice required. It's not as simple as downloading an RTX Remix version of Portal or Half-Life 2 right off the Steam storefront, but it's the next best thing in terms of being frictionless. When GTA 2 RTX Remix launches, you can immediately start experimenting with the new rendering pipeline, including full path tracing and the various graphical options RTX Remix offers. In fact, you can even enable frame generation, which is particularly amusing in a game this old. Watching GTA 2 run at a smooth 60fs with modern GPU features is probably the closest thing to overkill you can do to a top-down crime simulator from 1999. Claude Code's strangest legacy might be game modding It's been wonderfully absurd to see the modding community embrace Claude Code and other AI coding tools to breathe new life into games that predate the hardware we run it on by decades. GTA 2 was never designed for any of this, which is precisely why seeing modern rendering techniques work on it feels so satisfying. The bigger question is how long this particular era of AI-assisted modding can continue. Anthropic has already started placing tighter restrictions around reverse-engineering existing software, decompositions, and similar workflows. Whether that ultimately slows down projects like this or simply pushes developers towards more creative ways of working remains to be seen. For now, though, I am absolutely here for the madness. GTA 2 RTX Upgraded