Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a breath of fresh air on PC

I assumed Dragon Age: The Veilguard would person problems connected PC, not only owed to nan horrendous larboard of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor from EA past year, but besides because of nan truth that it’s been successful improvement limbo for respective years. But I’ve put a fewer hours into nan crippled connected PC crossed immoderate different hardware, and I’m pleasantly surprised. There are a fewer unsmooth patches, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard is coagulated connected PC.

After tinkering pinch nan crippled a bit, I’m present to springiness you nan champion settings to optimize your capacity connected PC, arsenic good arsenic immoderate of nan cardinal differences you request to cognize astir successful nan settings menu. This is simply a monolithic RPG, and I only had a fewer days to trial it, truthful capacity mightiness dip later successful nan game. For nan first respective hours, however, my acquisition was great.

Best settings for Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has a beautiful dense graphics menu. Thankfully, location are descriptions for each of nan settings, 4 presets, and a unrecorded preview arsenic you set settings. Certain settings, specified arsenic texture resolution, require a restart to apply, and nan crippled specifically called retired each mounting I would request to restart for whenever I adjusted them.

After playing astir a bit, present are nan champion settings for Dragon Age: The Veilguard: 

• Texture quality: Medium
• Texture filtering: High
• Lighting quality: High
• Contact shadow: On
• Ambient occlusion: Off (or HBAO without ray tracing)
• Screen abstraction reflections: Off (on without ray tracing)
• Volumetric lighting: Medium
• Sky quality: High
• Ray-traced reflections: Selective
• Ray-traced ambient occlusion: Selective
• Ultra ray tracing: Off
• Level of detail: Medium
• Strand hair: On
• Terrain quality: High
• Terrain decoration quality: Medium
• Visual effects quality: Medium
• Depth of field: Cinematics
• Vignette: On
• Motion blur: Off
• Post processing quality: High
• Field of view: 100%

As I’ve seen pinch games for illustration God of War Ragnarök recently, jumping instantly to nan Ultra preset seldom does overmuch for nan visuals. That’s nan lawsuit here. The champion equilibrium betwixt capacity and image value is successful nan Medium to High settings, pinch immoderate settings, specified arsenic lighting and texture quality, showing fundamentally nary quality astatine their Ultra settings.

We’ve redeeming up immoderate capacity for ray tracing here, too. This is nan first clip successful years of penning capacity guides that I’ve ever recommended turning ray tracing connected successful my recommended settings. There are a mates of reasons for that. First, ray tracing makes a beautiful large quality in Dragon Age: The Veilguard — much connected that later — and second, you tin take to usage selective ray tracing.

I emotion this feature. It fundamentally applies ray tracing to areas wherever you’ll announcement it most, skipping past smaller portions of nan image that whitethorn correspond a large capacity nonaccomplishment without a ocular payoff. You tin spot that successful action successful nan segment above. With afloat ray tracing, you tin spot a reflection successful nan puddle, whereas selective ray tracing skips that reflection each together. You’re improbable to moreover announcement a puddle is here, truthful selective ray tracing makes sense.

It’s not excessively demanding, either. With nan Ultra preset and selective ray tracing on, I was capable to get betwixt 45 and 55 frames per 2nd (fps) pinch nan RTX 3060 astatine 1080p, moreover during combat, and that was without immoderate upscaling. With DLSS group to Quality mode, I was easy hitting complete 60 fps.

The different mounting I want to telephone retired is strand hair. This is 1 you’d easy skip complete successful nan menu, and possibly moreover move it off. Don’t make that mistake. Not only does strand hairsbreadth make nan hairsbreadth of your characteristic look much realistic from a physics standpoint, it besides wholly changes really lighting and shadows interact pinch your character’s hair. I cognize it seems small, but it makes a immense difference.

You tin spot really large of a quality it makes for yourself successful nan video above. My optimized settings are successful nan middle, flanked by nan Ultra preset connected nan near and nan Low preset connected nan right. At 4K pinch nan RTX 4090, I was betwixt 35 fps and 50 fps pinch nan Ultra preset. With my recommended settings, I changeable up betwixt 70 fps and 85 fps, each without rubbing a azygous upscaling option.

Ray tracing successful Dragon Age: The Veilguard

As you tin spot successful nan settings above, Dragon Age: The Veilguard includes ray-traced reflections and ambient occlusion. Reflections speak for themselves, but gamers mightiness not beryllium accustomed to ambient occlusion. It refers to nan ambient shadows that popular up everyplace erstwhile 1 entity occludes ray from hitting another, casting a soft shadow. You tin spot successful nan video above, peculiarly successful nan grass, really location are soft intermediary shadows that aren’t coming without ambient occlusion.

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Ray tracing makes a beautiful large quality erstwhile it shows up, arsenic you tin spot successful nan image above. With ray-traced reflections turned off, you tin hardly moreover show your characteristic is opinionated successful water. With it on, you get these beautiful reflections that are reactive to nan h2o ripples arsenic you walk. Even pinch selective ray tracing, you’ll spot these large showcase areas.

The different facet moving successful ray tracing’s favour in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is its performance. If I’m capable to get astir 50 fps astatine nan Ultra preset pinch ray tracing turned connected pinch an RTX 3060, each without rubbing upscaling, that’s beautiful bully for a AAA crippled released successful 2024. There are surely immoderate PCs that will struggle pinch nan mounting turned on, but I ideate they’ll beryllium fewer and acold betwixt — astatine slightest fixed nan astir communal graphics cards among nan Steam hardware study each month.

Upscaling successful Dragon Age: The Veilguard

You tin get awesome capacity and image value retired of Dragon Age: The Veilguard without upscaling, but it has a wealth trove of options if you request a small capacity boost. You get DLSS 3, FSR 3, and XeSS, each of which travel pinch 4 value levels down to nan performance-boosting (but visually ugly) Ultra Performance preset.

The quality successful image value betwixt them isn’t arsenic stark arsenic I’m utilized to. DLSS surely wins retired of nan three, but each of nan upscaling options are coagulated here. The biggest rumor I noticed was pinch FSR. If you look intimately astatine nan arrows and hairsbreadth of my characteristic successful nan video above, you tin spot immoderate smearing that isn’t coming pinch DLSS aliases XeSS.

If you don’t want to usage 1 of these devices for immoderate reason, you’re free to move them disconnected and alternatively usage an anti-aliasing option. The crippled supports some Nvidia’s Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA) and AMD’s FSR 3 Native Anti-Aliasing, though DLAA looks a spot better. If you find yourself pinch capacity headroom — which is decidedly a anticipation fixed what I saw successful nan crippled — I would instrumentality pinch DLAA if you can.

Finally, you person entree to DLSS 3 Frame Generation, though nary FSR 3 framework generation. DLSS 3 Frame Generation surely looks nan best, but FSR 3 framework procreation would person gone a agelong measurement here. The crippled is Verified done Valve’s Deck Verified programme for nan Steam Deck, and I would’ve loved to spot immoderate framework procreation options to boost nan smoothness connected nan handheld.

Shock and awe

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Outside of a amazingly agelong clip to compile shaders erstwhile you first load nan crippled — adjacent to 20 minutes pinch a Ryzen 7 9700X — Dragon Age: The Veilguard runs amazingly good connected PC. I’m still moving my measurement done nan game, and I’ll beryllium keeping a adjacent oculus connected capacity if thing pops up arsenic I dive further into my playthrough. But if my first fewer hours pinch nan crippled are immoderate motion of what’s to come, I’m excited.

The 2 large takeaways present are ray tracing and strand hair. Both do a batch for nan ocular value of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and they’re worthy nan sacrificein different areas of image value to move on. Thankfully, nan crippled runs a batch amended than its visuals would suggest, truthful I don’t fishy astir gamers will beryllium stuck pinch large ocular compromises.