Plague Tale Requiem system requirements show that we're really entering next-gen

Daniel Sims

Posts: 1,334   +43
Staff
Something to look forward to: With every new console generation, PC system requirements for high-production-value games inevitably jump (and that's generally a positive). That process might have slowed down this time around, but it may finally be coming with a few games this fall that leave the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One behind.

Asobo Studio released the system requirements for A Plague Tale: Requiem on Friday, and they appear to warrant the game's generational visual improvement upon its 2019 predecessor. The minimum system requirements aren't quite as heavy as those for the Dead Space remake, but it may be time for some users to consider upgrading.

The console editions of both games will only support PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, signaling a real turnover in hardware specs. Many are probably accustomed to 8GB of RAM being the minimum requirement for AAA games. Like Dead Space, Plague Tale Requiem is kicking that up to 16GB.

In fact, the recommended system specs for the first Plague Tale game – Innocence – are precisely the minimum requirements for Requiem. These include a GTX 970 or Radeon RX 590, and an i5-4690K or AMD FX-8300 to play the game at 1080p and 30 frames per second with low graphics settings. Requiem requires DirectX 12, Shader Model 6.0, and 55GB of storage space.

For playing the game with ultra settings at 1080p and 60 frames per second, Asobo recommends an RTX 3070 or a Radeon RX 6800 XT. That hardware class is closer to what many other recent games like Spider-Man recommend for playing at 4K.

Requiem's recommended specs likely account for ray tracing, although Asobo doesn't explicitly state it like other developers. For turning up the game's graphics settings at 4K, DLSS (including Nvidia's new DLSS 3 -- exclusive to the upcoming RTX 4000 GPUs) and AMD FSR will come in handy.

Minimum (30fps, 1920x1080 on Low)

  • Processor: Intel Core i5-4690K (3.5GHz)/AMD FX-8300 (3.3GHz)
  • Graphics: 4GB, GeForce GTX 970/Radeon RX 590

Recommended (60fps, 1920x1080 on Ultra)

  • Processor: Intel Core i7-8700K (3.7GHz)/AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (3.6 GHz)
  • Graphics: 8GB, GeForce RTX 3070/Radeon RX 6800 XT

Asobo's recommended specs should roughly indicate the performance players get from using DLSS or FSR in performance mode at 4K since that upscales from a 1080p internal resolution.

A Plague Tale: Requiem launches for PC, Xbox Series, PS5, and Nintendo Switch (through the cloud) on October 18.

Permalink to story.

 
I'm 99% sure this game won't actually look all that good and it will be because of something really dumb like medium or high settings 1080p defaulting to Ray Tracing on.

I just hope games continue to have PC versions/ports with in-game access to turn this kind of crap off still otherwise I bet even a 1060 will be able to run these stupid '3070 recommended' games.
 
"Next Gen" (graphics) onus is entirely in the developer's court. Poorly optimized engines, chase after new tech without substantiating their core gameplay and going after high-res textures without focusing on gamer's gameplay experience all denotes that all flair and no substance, and a huge waste of storage space and underutilization of already available hardware.
 
"Next Gen" (graphics) onus is entirely in the developer's court. Poorly optimized engines, chase after new tech without substantiating their core gameplay and going after high-res textures without focusing on gamer's gameplay experience all denotes that all flair and no substance, and a huge waste of storage space and underutilization of already available hardware.
Great Post
 
"Next Gen" (graphics) onus is entirely in the developer's court. Poorly optimized engines, chase after new tech without substantiating their core gameplay and going after high-res textures without focusing on gamer's gameplay experience all denotes that all flair and no substance, and a huge waste of storage space and underutilization of already available hardware.

100% agree

I feel the root of the problem is the extreme hardware available on the PC side. Too easy for lazy devs to make pretty games with all that disposable power at their fingertips and call it “next gen”.

Look at what the ps3 was able to do with such limited hardware, specifically Naughty Dog with Uncharted 3 and The Last Of Us and even Rockstar with GTAV. Thats great artists and development working together back and forth for years to make their art come to life within the limited spec. Need more of that on the pc side. Why not make a game that can be played on much older hardware. Where is the compression for these textures? Why not work at it more? 80+gb installs are insane.

Ive watched some videos from Modern Vintage Gamer and hes explained how devs compressed many games to port from PS1 to N64
 
What exactly is Next Gen here in this game?
Looks like every big studio game released in last 5 years.
It looks worse than several titles which are already released. Nothing WOWed in this trailer. No great scale, no sense of style, just something out of generic RPG factory.

Actually, it looks like Shadow of Mordor but slower and less fun.
 
Last edited:
What exactly is Next Gen here in this game?
Looks like every big studio game released in last 5 years.
It looks worse than several titles which are already released. Nothing WOWed in this trailer. No great scale, no sense of style, just something out of generic RPG factory.

Actually, it looks like Shadow of Mordor but slower and less fun.
There is nothing next-gen in this game. Any other questions?
 
I loved the graphic in previous part, and can't wait to play the new one. The story telling was very nice and it kept interesting from beginning to end.
 
An app or game quality and performance come from two things:
1) hardware capabilities
2) software encoding capabilities

All those that lived the Xbox 1 or some older consoles, know that if games and apps (eg. xbmc, now Kodi) are well encoded and optimized, we can get a lot of quality juice with few oranges.

If you give too much hardware and freedom to software developers (= Adobe), then the software will be VERY poor. Adobe as an example, they still in 2022 have a lot of trouble going multicore or going generic x86 (they mainly write things for Intel single core) , they mainly don't optimize and don't hardware accelerate their code. That's why I left Adobe and went FREE apps that made about the same but have hardware acceleration: I waited only a few minutes whereas with Adobe I would wait hours.

Conclusion: any piece of software that needs more than a 2020 midrange hardware to give excellent results isn't worth it.
 
"Next Gen" (graphics) onus is entirely in the developer's court. Poorly optimized engines, chase after new tech without substantiating their core gameplay and going after high-res textures without focusing on gamer's gameplay experience all denotes that all flair and no substance, and a huge waste of storage space and underutilization of already available hardware.

Probably 'incentivised' by the GPU makers. There's no other reason why they would do this. Telling the majority that 'you won't be able to play this' is hardly marketing 101.
 
Probably 'incentivised' by the GPU makers. There's no other reason why they would do this. Telling the majority that 'you won't be able to play this' is hardly marketing 101.
Those would need to be some pretty substantial incentives. I dont believe thats the case, especially after hearing more details on the Nvidia EVGA split.

This kind of recommended spec can lose a LOT of sales for a game. The is now way Nvidia or AMD are picking up the slack on that loss.
 
Those would need to be some pretty substantial incentives. I dont believe thats the case, especially after hearing more details on the Nvidia EVGA split.

This kind of recommended spec can lose a LOT of sales for a game. The is now way Nvidia or AMD are picking up the slack on that loss.
I think they do. These things go hand in hand. If a game brings hardware sales they could have a cut. This cut could make up for poorer sales. Everyone wins except gamers. Both Nvidia and AMD "supported" selected titles in the past. I think if you want to make it now as a game developer you have to suck their dks to get promoted and it's only logical they want to sell you the latest videocrap card for 1000 bucks. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if in the future every new game will only work on the latest hardware.
 
People sure are judgmental here and quick to jump to the "lazy devs" argument. The game can push hundreds of thousands of rats on-screen now versus a max of just 5000 on the first game. Wait until it's actually out and running on your machine before being so critical.
 
People sure are judgmental here and quick to jump to the "lazy devs" argument. The game can push hundreds of thousands of rats on-screen now versus a max of just 5000 on the first game. Wait until it's actually out and running on your machine before being so critical.

That's not what the arguement is. What people are suggesting is that they admire developers who make efficient design choices rather than rely entirely on hardware to move thing forward. It's always been great to see new hardware being pushed to its limit, but considering the prices being asked for the latest hardware, this looks kind of cynical.

Moreover we all know this game will be made to run well and look fantastic on two year old console hardware.
 
I think they do. These things go hand in hand. If a game brings hardware sales they could have a cut. This cut could make up for poorer sales. Everyone wins except gamers. Both Nvidia and AMD "supported" selected titles in the past. I think if you want to make it now as a game developer you have to suck their dks to get promoted and it's only logical they want to sell you the latest videocrap card for 1000 bucks. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if in the future every new game will only work on the latest hardware.
But the majority of users have something like a 1060/580 maybe a 1070/5700/3050/6600
 
Somehow I feel Nvidia is sponsoring this title and it will have DLSS3.0 needed to play at 4k.

On Xbox and PS5 (the closest GPU equivalents are the GeForce RTX 2070 / RX 5700 XT) the requirements for running the game are not that demanding; on a PC they feel they can do everything and people will buy...

There is ATM an excess of GPUs on the market, so maybe they have an agreement with someone to give a push to increase sales.

Most of the time I think people are safer with a present gen console where things must be optimized and there will be no "requirements ' surprises". On a PC you must spend hundreds of $/€ every two years (are thousands every 4) of you want to play Ultra settings. Hardware sales will thank you...
 
Back