Resident Evil Requiem is the first RE Engine game where lighting isn’t decoration. Path tracing changes how you read dark corridors, and readability is essential in a horror game. The settings menu is intentionally short, so tuning it is easy once you know which three options really eat your frames.
The settings menu
| Setting | Options | Performance cost |
|---|---|---|
| Ray Tracing | Off / Normal / High / Path Tracing | by far the biggest |
| Shadow Quality | Low / Normal / High / Max | high |
| Volumetric Fog Resolution | scaled | high in foggy scenes |
| Ambient Occlusion | Off / Low / Normal / High | medium |
| Texture Quality | Low / Normal / High | VRAM, not GPU load |
| Texture Filtering | Trilinear → ANISO x16 | negligible |
| Mesh Quality | Low / Standard | low |
| Hair Strands | Off / On | low |
| Anti-Aliasing | Off / FXAA+TAA / TAA | negligible |
Capcom offers fewer sliders than most PC games and tunes the rest itself under the hood.
Is path tracing worth it?
In this game, yes, with one caveat. Path tracing is the most expensive option in the menu and also the only one that changes the experience, not just the screenshot. How light behaves in dark corridors, shadows on rain-soaked surfaces, a single flickering bulb changing an entire room: in a horror game, that affects tension and readability, not just visual fidelity.
If your rig can’t hold a stable frame rate with it, turn it off rather than lowering everything else. Stuttering path tracing is worse than a clean rasterized image, especially during chases.
How to tune it, step by step
- Decide on ray tracing first. Path Tracing, High, Normal or Off: everything else gets tuned around that choice.
- Set Texture Quality to High if you have the VRAM. It costs memory, not GPU performance, so it’s almost free on cards with headroom.
- Filtering at ANISO x16. Practically free on a modern card, and surfaces at an angle are visibly sharper.
- Lower Shadow Quality first when you need frames and want to keep ray tracing.
- Then volumetric fog. It costs the most in exactly the scenes where the game looks best, so it’s a real trade-off.
- Anti-aliasing: TAA. The FXAA+TAA combo tends to blur the image at common resolutions rather than help.
What to expect from your rig
- Current high-end cards handle path tracing at 4K with upscaling, and comfortably at 1440p.
- The mid-range has to choose: ray tracing on Normal or High at 1440p, or path tracing at 1080p with upscaling.
- Older and lower-end cards do better with ray tracing off and everything else turned up. The rasterized game still looks excellent.
Frame rate plays a bigger role here than in other games. Boss fights depend on parry timing, and unstable frame pacing directly robs you of those windows.
FAQ
If your card can hold a stable frame rate with it, yes: it changes how the game reads. If not, turn it off completely instead of lowering everything else.
Ray tracing, by a wide margin. After that come Shadow Quality and Volumetric Fog Resolution.
Not directly; it uses VRAM. On a card with enough memory, High is basically free.
TAA. The FXAA+TAA combo tends to soften the image at common resolutions rather than clean it up.
Because the parry and dodge windows are tight. Unstable frame pacing costs you fights, especially against The Commander.
Information verified as of 7 September 2026. Drivers and patches shift performance, so treat the ranking of how demanding each setting is as the lasting part, not the specific frame rates. More on the game: all bosses and how to beat them. Elsewhere: Crimson Desert basics, ARC Raiders for beginners, which PS5 to buy and the Game guides section.