Nier: Automata’s PC port was a disaster, one so bad we’ve written headlines about it like, “It’s Ridiculous That Nier: Automata Still Hasn’t Been Patched On PC.” Then, when Square Enix seemed unwilling (or unable) to fix it, “Fan Creates Patch To Fix Nier: Automata’s Graphics.”
And that was back in 2017! It’s now 2021 and the game still hasn’t been updated. However, with a Game Pass release on the way, Square Enix have finally been compelled to act. A patch for the Steam version was announced back in April, though with no accompanying release date fans again grew impatient, wondering when Square Enix would ever get around to fixing this.
Turns out it’ll be this week, with a planned July 15 release for what Square Enix is calling the “Steam Patch”. This will try to fix…well, all kinds of stuff:
- Borderless video settings have been implemented.
- A Fidelity FX CAS feature has been added.
- The system will now detect whether HDR has been activated in the Windows display settings, and automatically boot the game in HDR mode if it has.
- Adjustments to the anti-aliasing functionality
- Approximately 270 UI textures for icons, backdrops and UI elements etc. now support 4K resolutions.
- The bit rate has been improved and all pre-rendered cut scenes adjusted, so they will now play in 60FPS and display in the correct aspect ratio without stretching the picture.
- A new “Global illumination” feature has been implemented. This can be set to three different levels; High, Medium or Low.
- The rendering targets for ambient occlusion and bloom effects have been changed to dynamic resolution based on the game’s resolution.
- It is now possible to switch between recently selected display modes for screenshots, such as between full screen and windowed mode or between borderless and windowed mode, by pushing the Alt + Enter keys together.
- The mouse cursor is no longer displayed when using a game pad controller.
- The frame rate has been stabilized at 60FPS under default settings.
- Other stability related fixes have also been implemented.
All of that should have been there and working at launch, or if not then soon after! It sucks that fans have had to wait four years for this, and it sucks they had to use community-made workarounds in place of official support that whole time.
