[Update]: The update has now arrived, and I'm happy to say it has brought with it one additional surprise - the removal of the often-controversial Denuvo DRM!
Ever since Nier: Automata landed onto Steam it was plagued with a whole assortment of technical problems. Unfortunately, neither Square Enix nor PlatinumGames did much of anything to fix these issues over the years, and so players were forced to rely on third-party mods in order to achieve basic functionality like making the game run at the resolution it was set to.
Thankfully, all of this nonsense will be changing for the better in the near future. As a part of the upcoming July 15 update, NieR: Automata will be fixing many of its long-standing technical issues and finally making the Steam version as solid as the more recent Xbox Game Pass one.
If you're wondering just what exactly is being changed, wonder no more as the devs have now released the full patch notes. Have the brief list:
General Changes
• Borderless Video Settings
Borderless video settings have been implemented.• Fidelity FX
A Fidelity FX CAS feature has been added.• HDR
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.• Anti-aliasing
Adjustments to the anti-aliasing functionality• UI textures (4K)
Approximately 270 UI textures for icons, backdrops and UI elements etc. now support 4K resolutions.• Cut scenes
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.• Global illumination
A new “Global illumination” feature has been implemented. This can be set to three different levels; High, Medium or Low.• Ambient occlusion/ bloom
The rendering targets for ambient occlusion and bloom effects have been changed to dynamic resolution based on the game’s resolution.Bug fixes
• 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.
While I haven't tried the Xbox Game Pass version myself, it's apparently pretty good and avoid most of the pitfalls of the original Steam release. So considering that this new version is based on the Xbox Game Pass one, we should be in for a rather nice treat!
You can keep an eye on the update's launch, as well as check out the updated reviews, over at Steam. Enjoy, and here's to hoping this is the last time we'll have to discuss NieR: Automata's bugs!