Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Ninja Concept’s newest narrative action-adventure sport, arrived on Might 21, 2024 for Xbox and PC. Whereas many could also be divided over its easy fight and prolonged puzzles, there’s no denying that Hellblade 2 is a visually gorgeous sport, particularly on a PC with the horsepower to push the sport to near-photorealistic ranges of element.
Learn Extra: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2: The Kotaku Evaluation
If you’re seeking to tweak the graphics a bit additional, or are scuffling with framerate points or a wierd visible artifact that attracts black dots on individuals’s faces, learn on for find out how to change these, in addition to find out how to troubleshoot and tweak the sport to your liking.
Be certain your graphics card drivers are updated
Simply in time for Hellblade 2’s launch, Nvidia has pushed out a brand new driver that particularly addresses efficiency in Senua’s Saga. Even if you happen to don’t have an Nvidia card, nonetheless, it is best to be sure your drivers are updated.
Utilizing Hellblade 2’s graphics settings and efficiency meter
It’s effectively value your time to dive into Hellblade’s graphics settings earlier than you begin up the sport as you need to mitigate how a lot time you spend coping with menus throughout Senua’s journey. In Settings > Graphics you’ll discover plenty of settings to begin with, in addition to a efficiency meter within the upper-right nook of the display that’s roughly self-explanatory.
Learn Extra: Hellblade 2 Studio Reportedly Already Working On Its Subsequent Sport
For those who’re not used to studying meters like this, you’ll need to take note of the “Body” part and the Video Reminiscence bar. The previous signifies what number of frames you’re getting per second (FPS). Hellblade is a really narrative sport, so 30-FPS makes for an honest expertise. I discovered, although, that the sport feels nice at 60 and above, so undoubtedly intention for that if you happen to can.
The following factor you’ll need to mess with is your selection of upscaler, which can fluctuate relying in your graphics card. AMD of us ought to go along with FSR3 whereas these of us on staff inexperienced with Nvidia playing cards ought to use DLSS. The options shouldn’t be used except completely mandatory.
Variable charge shading will scale back how a lot effort your GPU spends rendering non-obvious parts of the display. It sometimes leads to an enchancment in efficiency at a less-than-noticeable lower in visible constancy.
Clicking on “Superior Settings” within the graphics settings will open a drop-down menu the place you possibly can tailor the expertise to your preferences and the efficiency energy of your machine.
Whereas I do want Hellblade 2 had a devoted benchmark instrument, the closest is the “Preview,” activated by urgent the spacebar or the menu button on a controller. This may pull the menu again to indicate a scene with Senua, some foliage, a constructing behind her, and a puddle for reflections while you’re not in a sport. You possibly can then toggle between totally different ranges of high quality for particular settings to see the impact in actual time.
For those who navigate to the graphics settings whereas taking part in the sport and choose the “Preview” choice, it is going to present the energetic scene as an alternative. It is a good technique to troubleshoot particular points you could be having throughout choose moments of Hellblade 2. My desire is to tweak these settings earlier than you load right into a sport for much less distractions, but in addition as a result of the preview choice in the principle menu exhibits extra movement than it does whereas in-game.
In my expertise, I discovered post-processing, results, reflection, texture, view distance, and foliage to be value bumping as much as the Excessive settings. Reflections particularly I discovered to be very a lot value bringing as much as Excessive. The whole lot else I saved all the way down to medium, however your outcomes and preferences could differ.
You should still need to dive into the graphics settings throughout gameplay to tweak issues if you happen to’re not pleased with the settings. I counsel not fidgeting with issues an excessive amount of when you’ve discovered a pleasant candy spot.
Hellblade 2 has an in-game FPS-meter, too
Until you utilize one other program (like TK) to indicate your framerate, you possibly can monitor it in real-time whereas taking part in Saga by going to Settings > Superior Settings > Present FPS. This may pin a frame-rate counter in one of many corners of the display and you’ll modify its opacity and textual content coloration. Since Hellblade 2 has everlasting letterbox bars always, the FPS counter isn’t terribly distracting. And it may enable you to get a way of how effectively your framerate is performing if you happen to’re not used to recognizing framerate dips by eye.
The right way to take care of black dots on character faces
There’s an opportunity you could be scuffling with a bit of visible quirk in Hellblade 2 that dramatically sours the expertise: Dancing black dots on character faces. These will pop up throughout gameplay and thru cutscenes.
In my expertise, after updating my Nvidia card to the newest driver, I haven’t seen this. However if you happen to’re nonetheless scuffling with it, I discovered that bumping up the “Results” setting to “Excessive” made these go away.
What concerning the Steam Deck?
From a qualitative standpoint, Hellblade 2 is finest performed on a giant display, powered by one thing that may reliably ship at the least a strong 30-frames per second. The Steam Deck isn’t the machine for that. It’s going to, nonetheless, run Hellblade 2 with blended outcomes.
Nearly all of my time with Hellblade 2 has been on PC, however I’ve spent just a few hours in transit taking part in the sport on Steam Deck. Headphones, after all, are mandatory right here and given how a lot of the expertise of Hellblade is an aural one, the sport continues to be entertaining in transportable format. That mentioned, you will want to deliver the graphics to Low settings throughout the board, with FSR3 turned on. Even then, the sport will dip beneath 30-frames per second and about 1-2 hours of battery life relying on the age of your battery. 19 FPS was the bottom dip I noticed so far.
It’s definitely “Playable,” however I’d advise counting on a extra highly effective machine to crunch Hellblade 2’s pixels for you. Even counting on Steam’s Distant Play by way of Steam Deck is a greater choice than letting the Deck itself run the sport on its GPU.
No, there’s no technique to take away the black bars with out mods
Hellblade 2 solely simply launched on PC and Xbox and already there are just a few mods for tweaking the visible settings, together with a mod that removes letterboxing. Saga makes use of all kinds of post-processing strategies to create a lush, film-like, surreal expertise. That, mixed with letterboxing, to me is a fairly important a part of the visible look and inventive intent in Hellblade that I’d want to maintain it as is.
Word that mods could or could not intrude with the soundness of the sport, so mod away at your personal danger.
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