NieR: Automata screenshot of 2B and an overgrown robot

The Steam version of NieR: Automata has sadly been a technical mess ever since it first launched. Between strangely implemented resolution settings, glitchy anti-aliasing and the broken aspect ratio during cutscenes, playing through NieR: Automata was a bit of a nightmarish experience without mods to fix all of the nonsense.

With that in mind, I am incredibly happy to say that the developers have now returned in order to fix up most of the long-standing issues and bring the Steam version up to the same level as the Xbox Game Pass one. Here's what has been changed:

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.

The good news doesn't end there, however, as NieR: Automata has now also dropped the often-controversial Denuvo DRM. So if you've previously had performance issues make sure to give NieR: Automata another shot as the removal of DRM, on top of all of the changes, could go a long way towards providing a smoother experience.

Have fun, and here's to hoping the update has finally fixed all of the problems and we can just enjoy NieR: Automata as intended from now on!