Resident Evil Requiem’s producer has commented on the negative reaction to the game’s DLSS 5 AI-powered makeover revealed by Nvidia earlier this year.
Revealed in March, DLSS 5 uses an AI model to alter the visuals of supported games running on Nvidia graphics cards, adding what it calls “photoreal lighting and materials”.
However, the initial reveal was met with strong criticism from many players and games industry figures for how it appears to drastically alter the original art direction of the supported games.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Capcom’s Masato Kumzawa said he considered the strong sentiment around protagonist Grace’s ‘glamorous’ makeover shown in Nvidia’s demo as a positive, because he believes it indicates that the dev team “got the design right” with the original game.
While Kumzawa reportedly couldn’t comment on the team’s involvement specifically, he noted “the fact a lot of players commented they really liked the original design of Grace and didn’t want to see it changed was a positive…”
He added: “It meant we got the design right [and] points to the fact that Grace quickly established herself as a fan favourite, that people had such strong opinions on her design.”
Responding to criticism of DLSS 5 shortly after its reveal, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claimed that demos shown had the support and control of the games’ developers, who he claimed could fine-tune the final effect.
“It’s not post-processing, it’s not post-processing at the frame level, it’s generative control at the geometry level,” he said. “All of that is in the control — direct control — of the game developer,” he said. This is very different than generative AI; it’s content-control generative AI. That’s why we call it neural rendering.”
Steve Karolewics, a rendering engineer at Respawn, was one of those who criticised DLSS 5’s announcement on social media. “DLSS 5 looks like an overbearing contrast, sharpness, and airbrush filter,” he wrote. “Remarkably different frames with the rationale of photo-real lighting? Nah, I think I’ll stick with the original artistic intent.”
DLSS 5 will arrive this fall. Supported games include Resident Evil Requiem, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, EA Sports FC, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
