Remnant II is the first PC game ‘designed with upscaling in mind’

Preorders for Remnant II, the sequel to Souls-like shooter Remnant: From the Ashes, are tearing up the Steam sales charts ahead of its release tomorrow. But early access players on PC are already playing a familiar tune when it comes to recent multi-platform releases: widespread performance issues even on high-end hardware. Apparently the game is so visually complex (or so poorly optimized, take your pick) that it more or less requires upscaling, such as Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s Fidelity Super Resolution, in order to run smoothly.

A representative from developer Gunfire Games said as much in a post to the official Remant From the Ashes subreddit yesterday. “We designed the game with upscaling in mind (DLSS/FSR/XeSS). So, if you leave the Upscaling settings as they are…you should have the smoothest gameplay.”

As WCFFTech notes, this information is striking a sour note with PC players. Responses in the Reddit post report that even with some top-of-the-line hardware, framerates are dipping well below the generally-accepted 60 frames per second mark. Players are complaining that technology like DLSS, which is generally seen as a “booster” for graphics that can enable smooth gameplay with high-end settings like ray tracing, is now seen as a required crutch in order to get the game to a basic level of stability and performance. Notably, the initial build of Remnant II does not use any ray tracing effects.

Gaming sites are reporting that even with the absolute pinnacle of PC gaming hardware, Remnant II struggles to run smoothly. A post on DSOGaming shows the game running at around 40 frames per second at 4K resolution with the ultra settings in place…on a system that includes a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 and an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor. That absolute-top-of-the-line hardware setup should absolutely slay any current-gen game, but in order to break past the 60fps mark, DLSS has to be enabled.

Gamers are worried about the precedent being set. Despite the visual splendor and performance boost offered by upscaling tech, it’s not ideal for multiplayer competitive games, where lag needs to be kept to an absolute minimum. Hardware-based upscaling is also a relatively new feature, so games relying on it might leave those with older systems forced to upgrade or skip the most visually demanding titles. As one Reddit user puts it, “If DLSS is going to become bread and butter baseline optimization, we’ve got a serious problem.”