Ramblings

You are lucky! For the longest time, extracting assets from Unreal games was the biggest pain in the ass you could imagine. In fact, I collected an ungodly list of tools for entering Unreal games, but you will only need one: FModel. I created an entry in my list of tools, but you can just google for it or take this direct link to their Github page.

Fmodel is quite amazing - for beginners, It does the job of dealing with .pak and .utoc archives. Back in the days, you had to do this with a funny script that you downloaded from a funny website, which then revealed .uasset files which you had to load into a different program that then let you extract files from there. Back then you needed QuickBMS, and then you needed UModel, and then you needed a way to figure out WWise. Fmodel does all of this for you!

Additionally, there are some good odds that you will need jmap. See their Github page. You will probably be interested in the jmap_dumper-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip file.

In many cases, it can be useful to make a copy of the game folders. This way you can work on the game files without touching the actual installation of the game, ie. you don't break anything. This is not strictly necessary but I like to do it to have a distinct “working directory” instead of working with the live game files.

The important step to working with Fmodel is configuring it correctly. On the top menu, open Settings.
The strictly necessary settings here are marked with a star:

• Output Directory is the folder to which Fmodel will extract when you extract files. This can be anything, select something convenient.
• Archive Directory is the folder containing the game files. This can be the files from the actual game folder, or it can be a copy of the game folder you placed elsewhere. Importantly, the selected folder must contain the .pak and .utoc files.
• UE Version is the version of Unreal Engine that was used during development of the game. How to determine UE Version \\Primary Approach: Use the Properties tab of the game's executable. Unreal Engine games are always opened by running <gamename>-Win64-Shipping.exe. Right Click → Properties → Details will give you a table of values, including “File Version”. A file version of 5.6.1.0 corresponds to Unreal Engine 5, Version 6.1. In FModel, that will be shown to you as GAME_UE5_6 (probably followed by a string of numbers).
  
  Alternative Approach: Google.
  
  Emergency Approach: Try around.
• Texture Platform is a setting that determines how the game's textures will be read. Unreal Engine saves them differently based on platform, if you are extracting from the files of a Desktop game then you will want to select Desktop/Mobile.

Determining Unreal Engine Version