There is no denying that Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is one of the best first person shooters to grace the consoles, and the PC recently. The game combines amazing storytelling, brilliant cast, terrific sound, and over the top acting with blistering fast gameplay.
Needless to say, many view Wolfenstein 2 as the game that reinvented and revived the first person genre.
As with most first-person games to come out recently, this game is also on the demanding end, and while it does not require a supercomputer to run properly, the good news is that much like most of the games that come on PC, Wolfenstein 2 can be tweaked extensively based on your requirements.
Before I start telling you what you need to tweak, you can take a look at the official system requirements first in order to have a better understanding and see what settings you should be tweaking and, which settings you should leave as they are.
Minimum
- Processor: AMD FX-8350/Ryzen 5 1400 or Intel Core i5-3570/i7-3770
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 770 4GB/AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB or better
- Storage: 55 GB available space
Recommended
- Processor: AMD FX-9370/Ryzen 5 1600X or Intel Core i7-4770
- Recommended RAM: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB/AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB or better
- Storage: 55 GB available space
PC Settings
As always, before heading into the main tweaking, I always suggest making some changes to the PC settings in order to ensure that everything is in order.
As for the changes you would need to make, there are not too many, so you should be done in a matter of a few minutes, and that is about it.
- The first thing you need to do is to make sure that your graphics card drivers are up to date. This goes for both AMD, as well as Nvidia graphics cards. Normally, both companies release optimized drivers before the game comes out, and if you are playing it right now, there is a high chance that you already have the latest drivers, but in case you don’t, then make sure you download the latest drivers.
- If you are using a laptop with a dedicated GPU, then you need to know that the game’s .exe file has to be set to use the dedicated GPU, and not the integrated one. The .exe file is titled NewColossus_x64vk.exe.
- Another tip for the laptop users is to make sure that the laptop is turned to high-performance mode, and if you really want to enjoy the proper performance, make sure your laptop is connected to the charger, because that way, all the components will be getting the max power they need to operate at max speeds.
- Last but not least, just make sure you have the latest version of Direct X installed, so you are not getting any launch errors or something similar.
Optimal Graphics Setting
Now, this is the important part that you need to understand the most. These graphics settings are completely subjective and normally based on the PC you have.
If you have a highly powerful PC, then you really don’t have to worry about tweaking these settings as the performance will be as good as you would expect, but if you have a mid, or low range PC, then you should definitely check out the tweaks that I am about to list down.
One more thing that you should know is that tweaking these settings will definitely have an impact, but again, it will be largely based on the PC you have, because these settings are in direct relationship with the PC you are running.
With that said, let’s go ahead and have a look
Basic Graphics Settings
The graphics settings in Wolfenstein II are divided into two portions, the first one is where the basics are; these are for people who just want to have on the go experience, and the second one we have the Advanced Video Settings which are for people who want to tweak the settings and make the gameplay experience truly their own.
Firstly, we are going to take a look at the basic settings so you can have a better understanding, and then we’ll move on to the advanced settings.
- Video Quality Profile: Custom.
- Resolution: For the best possible results, just let the resolution match the native resolution of your monitor. I.E. If your monitor is 3440×1440, then the game resolution should be the same.
- Window Mode: Full screen.
- Vertical Sync: Turn it on if you don’t have a G-Sync capable monitor, and turn it off if you do have a G-Sync enabled monitor.
- Motion Blur: Turn it if you want to avoid nausea.
- Anti-Aliasing: If you are gaming at higher resolutions like 4K, or UWQHD then turning the anti-aliasing off is a nice idea because you would not get the jags. If you do, you can turn it on by a smaller degree to have that issue fixed. With that said, this setting needs to be tweaked based on your preference.
Advanced Graphics Settings
Again, as stated before, these settings are more likely to have the most amount of impact on your performance than the basic settings, but that does not mean you should avoid them altogether. Basic settings are important too, so that is one thing out of the way. As for the advanced settings, let’s have a look at those.
- Field of View: 100. This setting is completely based on preference and has no real-life impact on performance.
- Lights: Ultra.
- Shadows: Ultra.
- Particles: Ultra.
- Direct Occlusion: Medium. If you have read the article describing ambient occlusion in detail, you would know about the negative impact on performance it has.
- Reflections: Ultra.
- Decals: High.
- Motion Blur: Off. Again, some people say that motion blur looks good, while others detest it, so it is entirely subjective.
- Image Streaming: High.
- Water Quality: High.
- Volumetric Quality: High.
- Material Aniso Filter: Anisotropic 8X: Has no real life effect on the frames.
- Lightmap Aniso Filter: Anisotropic 4X: Has no real life effect on the frames.
- Image Ansio Filter: Anisotropic 8X: Has no real life effect on the frames.
- LOD Switch: High.
- Deferred Rendering: Off.
- GPU Culling: Off.
- Async Compute: On. AMD graphic cards can gain massive benefit from this.
- Chromatic Aberration: On.
- Depth of Field: On.
- DoF Anti Aliasing: On.
- HDR Bloom: On.
- Sharpening 2.0.
- Film Grain: 1.0
- Resolution Scale: Off.
I should mention it again that these settings are not the be all and end all, as they will have different performance increase or decrease in the game based on different computers. So that is one thing that you must keep in mind.