PC Gamers Can Now Play Fan Remasters of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Return of the King

Many fans consider The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to be two of the best Lord of the Rings games ever made. And now, both games have received a visual upgrade thanks to new HD texture packs. These fan-made remasters make the games look sharper while keeping the original style.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King originally launched on the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. By today’s standards, their textures look dated. And that’s where these HD texture packs come in.

Created by modder The128ReBits, these HD texture packs enhance every texture in both games. The modder claims that these aren’t mindless “one-click” upscales. Instead, every environment, character texture, and UI element has been treated with care to ensure the result feels like a natural evolution of the original vision.

These packs are for the Nintendo GameCube versions. To use them, you’ll first need the GameCube PAL ROM files for these LOTR games. You can then download the packs from here and here.

Once you have downloaded them, you’ll have to open the Dolphin Emulator, click on File (top left corner), and select Open User Folder. (Alternatively, you can manually go to AppData\Roaming\Dolphin Emulator).

Then, navigate to Load\Textures\. If the folder doesn’t exist, create it. Extract the downloaded .zip file and place the GLOS69 folder (for The Two Towers) or the GKLS69 folder (for Return of the King) inside the Textures folder. And that’s it.

If you are using another regional version of the games, the custom textures will not load. To make them work, you’ll have to rename the folder to match your game’s exact ID. You can find these IDs on the download pages of the packs.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was never released on PC. However, we did get a PC version of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in November 2003. Still, if you want to replay it, I suggest playing the GameCube version with this HD Texture Pack.

I’ve also included two videos below. These videos feature some before/after comparisons. As such, they can give you a pretty good idea of what you can expect from them.

Have fun!

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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