[PC] How to fix Garrus' low resolution face with a simple config tweak [ Edited ]

[Fred_vdp]

This guide is for the original PC release of Mass Effect, not the Legendary Edition.

This guide was originally posted on the BioWare forum by Vordimier.

Mass Effect has an issue where Garrus' face has low resolution textures. That's because the game uses the low LOD version of Garrus' textures at all times. LOD (level of detail) determines the quality of textures based on how far the object is. Far away objects have low level of detail, while nearby objects have high level of detail. Garrus, however, has low LOD textures when he's closeby.

To fix this, you can tweak a Mass Effect config file by changing the minimum value of the level of detail. The welcome side effect is that some other textures in the game look better as well.

Here's how to do it:

1. Locate the BIOEngine.ini file, which by default is located in Documents / BioWare / Mass Effect / config.

2. Open the file with the text editor of your choice. I recommend Notepad++.

3. Find the section called [TextureLODSettings].

4. look for the following three lines:

TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Diff=(MinLODSize=32,MaxLODSize=512,LODBias=0)
TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Norm=(MinLODSize=32,MaxLODSize=512,LODBias=0)
TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Spec=(MinLODSize=32,MaxLODSize=256,LODBias=0)

5. Change the values so that these lines look like this:

TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Diff=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=512,LODBias=0)
TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Norm=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=512,LODBias=0)
TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Spec=(MinLODSize=256,MaxLODSize=256,LODBias=0)

That's it.

Edit: Comparison pictures no longer online, but trust me on this one!