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!