I’m not even going to try and say that the PC port of NieR: Automata was perfect. Because it was far from it. Despite myself having a somewhat decent experience, I don’t call a framerate drop between 45-50 acceptable. Not from a title that ran a bit better on the PlayStation 4 Pro. And I’m not the only person who felt this way. Basically the port is an optimized mess, however, the game is damned good.
Trust me, there are multiple complaints about several issues in the game. Check out the NieR: Automata subreddit here for more detail on that.
Update: Can’t forget about DrDaxxy, who first found the issue with the global illumination shader issue in the first place.
So what does one do about this? Wait for a patch to eventually come? Well, that’s what most of us were doing, that is until Andon ‘Kaldaien’ Coleman stepped in. You may remember his name from the fixes he developed for Bandai-Namco’s Tales of Zestiria, Tales of Berseria and even Final Fantasy X. He, like many, wasn’t satisfied with the state of NieR: Automata and stepped in to do something about it. Now thanks to him, many gamers have happily reported that they’re able to play the game at a much higher framerate, on multiple setups. All thanks to a little tool called Far or “Fix Automata Resolution”.
I’m also happy to report that I’m able to hit a solid 1080p/1440p@60fps on both of my gaming PCs now. Previously I was sub 55FPS in open world segments at 1080p and worse at 1440p.
But exactly is this fix and how can you apply it? Well, I’m glad you asked. The fix basically corrects the fullscreen resolution bug and adjusts settings with the global illumination shader. After trying it out for myself, it definitely makes a big different. Effectively, you’ll be able to increase/decrease the amount of global illumination being used. Apparently, the game is set at 128, which is causing the performance issues. This tool can let you change to either 64 (no change in looks), 32 (minimum changes noted) and to 16 (very noticeable downgrades). People have reported that all three settings have provided major framerate improvements.
There’s also an OSD that’s built in to the FAR tool. Pressing Ctrl+shift+o will togged it on/off. It’s defaulted to on
You can refer to this post here on how to use the tool to its fullest.
Now that you know what the fix is, let’s get to installing it.
Method #1
Download the automated installer file here. Once you’ve downloaded it, simply run it and everything should be good. There have been reports of it not installing correctly, so if this applies, head to method #2.
Method #2
If the installed doesn’t work for you, download the files via the compressed archive (here). Once you’ve downloaded it, extract the files directly to your NieR: Automata directory. You can find this here “D:\steam\steamapps\common”. Be sure to change the drive letter assignment if yours is different.
If you run into any issues, Kaldaien has been providing support (here) and on the official Steam forums (here).
An unofficial fix, one that Square Enix and Platinum Games take note off. Hopefully they’ll provide an official fix that addressess the issuses. And if not, you know where to turn to.
