Personally I never really like graphical overhaul mods that do more than just add subtle technical improvements to what's already there. The art direction is usually such an important part of a game that doing things like changing colours, shadows, and textures always seems to lose something that made the original coherent and unique.

The official remasters of Halo 1 and 2 are good examples of how not to do it, Halo CE Anniversary edition in particular is truly horrid. Initially I was quite warm to Halo 2's treatment, but on a subsequent replay I felt that the new graphics took something away from the composition of many of the scenes.

Games' graphics and level design are designed for a specific level of graphical fidelity at that time in history. Going back to things and adding more greebling everywhere and making the shadows fancier won't necessarily improve the game, signposting is a subtle art and it's easy reduce clarity with additive changes.

Doing graphics overhauls and remasters right, without corrupting the original art direction is really really tough. Most of the time it tends to go wrong, hopefully Desolation turns out great.