Resident Evil Requiem's PC port is an interesting mix of genuine technical progress alongside legacy issues Capcom still hasn't managed to shake off. On the one hand, it's a performant RE Engine title with no apparent shader compilation issues, and there's strong support for modern upscalers. On the flip side, there are some annoying issues. Who ships a PC game these days without a field of view option - or the ability to turn off film grain?

Taking the glass half empty viewpoint first, there are some problems that need to be addressed. The options menu still instantly applies resolution the moment your cursor leaves the dropdown. Meanwhile, changing options like texture quality, RT quality or adjusting the strand hair system require the game to be rebooted - one of Digital Foundry's cardinal sins for PC games. How are you supposed to tell the difference?

Path tracing is an amazingly cool feature we love to see, but what we don't love to see is incompatibility with AMD or Intel GPUs at launch. Using PT also locks you into Nvidia Ray Reconstruction, with no support for the fallback denoiser. Conversely you can't enable Ray Reconstruction for standard RT where it could make a difference, especially as the Capcom denoiser is lacking.

Shader compilation kicks in when the game first boots, and the good news is that you're getting a largely stutter-free experience, and it covers the full range of options, so there's no need to recompile after changing settings. Frame-time "disturbances" are there transitioning between areas, but it's a much better showing than Resident Evil 4.

Here are our choices for optimised settings, alongside Capcom's selections for PS5. Just don't use the FSR1 upscaling they chose for consoles...

Optimised Settings

(8GB VRAM)**

Optimised Settings

(Ray tracing/8GB+ VRAM)

PlayStation 5

Ray Tracing

Off

Normal

Off

Hair Strands

On*

On

On

Texture Quality

Normal

High

Normal

Mesh Quality

Low

Standard

Standard

Screen Space Reflections

On*

On

On

Subsurface Scattering

High

High

High

Lens Distortion

Off

Off

On (+Chromatic Aberration)

Depth of Field

On

On

On

Particle Lighting

On

On

On

Volumetric Fog Resolution

Normal

High

Normal

Lens Dirt

On

On

On

Lens Flare

High

High

High

Shadow Quality

High

High

High

Contact Shadows

On

On

On

Ambient Occlusion

High

High

High

VFX Quality

Standard

Standard

Standard

* Set to off if GPU headroom is insufficient

** 8GB VRAM tests performed on an RTX 3070 at 1440p DLSS Quality and DLAA

Beyond resolution, ray tracing is your primary setting for improved performance, going from path tracing to RT High, RT Normal and no RT delivers the highest gains - anything up to a 350 percent boost from path tracing to RT off when tested on an RTX 4070 Ti Super. Path tracing is something special, with richer local shadows and much more plausible lighting, but of course, in common with other PT options, it's brutally expensive. PS5 Pro uses the RT normal option and that's the best route forward for optimised settings.

For 8GB cards like, say, RTX 3070, the primary limiting factor for optimised settings isn't the compute workload but managing VRAM as 8GB simply isn't enough with RT in play. We can only recommend any form of RT if you have a 10GB or 12GB card. Keep RT off, use normal textures and low mesh quality on 8GB cards. Try to keep hair strands toggled on though - they do consume around half a gig of VRAM but the effect is worth it.

Overall, we've had issues with Capcom's prior PC work but this release is a good one, with good upscaler support, decent RT scaling and mostly solid frame-times. However, there really should be options to disable film grain and to allow DLSS ray reconstruction for the standard RT modes. While it's unlikely you'll be using an AMD or Nvidia card for path tracing, blocking it off for those users goes against the open ethos that PC gaming is built on. We're a patch or two away from the most ideal experience, but this is still well worth checking out.