Introduction

Senua's Saga: Hellblade II is now available on PC and Xbox Series X|S. It is developed using Unreal Engine 5.3 and incorporates several cutting-edge technologies, including:

• Nanite virtualized geometry
• Lumen, an advanced lighting system for global illumination and reflections
• Virtual Shadow Maps
• MetaHuman
• Niagara VFX system
• Chaos Physics for realistic simulation of clothes, chains, hair, and belts

The PC version supports several advanced features:

• NVIDIA's DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation (DLSS 3)
• NVIDIA's Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA)
• Intel's Xe Super Sampling 1.3 (XeSS 1.3)
• AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3) from day one

However, AMD's FSR 3 Frame Generation isn't supported at launch.

Intel's latest version of XeSS introduces two new upscaling profiles: "Native AA" and "Ultra Quality Plus" with 1.3x resolution scaling. It also updates existing profiles:

• "Ultra Quality" from 1.3x to 1.5x
• "Quality" from 1.5x to 1.7x
• "Balanced" from 1.7x to 2.0x
• "Performance" from 2.0x to 2.3x

The game uses Unreal Engine 5's Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) for native resolution instead of a standard TAA solution, with the ability to upscale. TSR doesn't have standard quality levels like Quality, Balanced, or Performance. Instead, players adjust the render scaling ratio in the game settings, which ranges from 50% to 100% at 4K and 1440p, and from 67% to 100% at 1080p. In our tests, we used the following TSR render scales:

• Quality mode at 67%
• Balanced mode at 58%
• Performance mode at 50%

TSR is the only upscaling solution that supports Dynamic Resolution Scaling (DRS).

To run Senua's Saga: Hellblade II at maximum graphics settings and reasonable framerates at native resolution, a powerful GPU is necessary. Therefore, upscaling solutions are crucial. Different games have varying implementations of NVIDIA's DLSS, Intel's XeSS, AMD's FSR, and UE5's TSR. We are excited to examine how these temporal upscalers perform in Senua's Saga: Hellblade II.



Below, you'll find comparison screenshots at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p resolutions, showcasing different quality modes for XeSS, FSR, and DLSS. Screenshots for TSR, DLAA, and DLSS Frame Generation are also available in the dropdown menu. For a dynamic view of these technologies, watch our side-by-side comparison video. This video reveals issues like shimmering or temporal instability that might not be evident in still images.

All tests were conducted using a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU at High graphics settings. To enhance image clarity, Variable Rate Shading, motion blur, film grain, and chromatic aberration were disabled. The game features DLSS Super Resolution version 3.5.10 and DLSS Frame Generation version 3.7.1.

Screenshots

Side-by-Side Comparison Video

Conclusion

Senua's Saga: Hellblade II heavily relies on upscaling technologies, which are enabled by default when you first launch the game. This makes sense, as the game is one of the most visually impressive titles developed with Unreal Engine 5, demanding a lot from even high-end hardware without upscaling.

The game uses different amounts of sharpening for each upscaling solution. DLSS uses a new feature called "Automatic Sharpness," which adjusts based on resolution, and can be disabled to reveal a standard sharpening slider set to 35 by default. FSR 3 includes a sharpening slider also set to 35 by default. In contrast, TSR and XeSS do not use sharpening at all, with no option to enable it, resulting in softer images compared to DLSS and FSR 3.

Intel's XeSS has three optimized kernels for various architectures. The Advanced XeSS Upscaling Model is used on Intel Arc GPUs with XMX engines, offering the best performance and quality. There is an optimized kernel for Intel Integrated Graphics and a Standard XeSS Upscaling Model for other architectures supporting Shader Model 6.4, including recent AMD and NVIDIA cards. This standard model is simpler, with lower performance and quality, and was used in our tests with an RTX 4080. If DP4a instructions aren't available, such as on the Radeon RX 5700 XT, slower INT24 instructions are used instead.

Unfortunately, all upscaling solutions suffer from immersion breaking ghosting and smearing on small flying objects, such as dust or insects, across all resolutions in their "Quality" mode. XeSS has the most visible amount of these artifacts, and this does not improve with higher resolutions, meaning that 1080p XeSS "Ultra Quality" and 4K XeSS "Ultra Quality" modes will have the same amount of ghosting and smearing on screen. The amount of visible ghosting and smearing artifacts in the DLSS and FSR 3 image varies depending on resolution: at 1080p and 1440p they are visible the most, whereas at 4K artifacts are still present, but to a much lesser degree, where they are not very distracting during gameplay. Unreal Engine's TSR is the only upscaling solution that has visible ghosting artifacts around Senua during fast motion.

Speaking of overall image quality with different upscaling solutions enabled, the FSR 3 image has the most unstable image quality compared to other available upscaling solutions. It struggles to retain details in moving vegetation and small thin objects, such as fishing nets, resulting in shimmering and pixelation both in motion and when standing still. The FSR 3 image also has a degraded quality of particle effects, especially visible on fire, sea waves and water effects in general. The typical disocclusion artifacts with pixelation in motion are also present, especially around Senua's hair when moving through the world or around her sword during combat. Running FSR 3 in "Native AA" mode will reduce the visibility of these artifacts, but unfortunately won't eliminate them completely. Also, the overall image quality with FSR 3 enabled looks noticeably softer compared to DLSS even when the sharpening values are equal, but not as soft as TSR and XeSS that do not use sharpening at all.

However, all these graphical upscaling issues observed during our testing might be not so important because of the general art style of this game. Senua's Saga: Hellblade II in general has a very dark and moody design of its game world, with heavy use of volumetric fog and dynamic smoke effects that are almost always visible on screen, and this style somewhat helps to cover temporal instabilities from upscaling during normal gameplay, especially during intense combat, making issues less visible or distracting. The game also uses extensive post effects that somewhat cover temporal artifacts, such as film grain, motion blur, chromatic aberration and depth of field, and most of them cannot be disabled without manual modification of the config files.

Regarding performance, the DLSS, XeSS 1.3, and FSR 3 implementations provide a solid 35% performance boost in "Quality" mode at 4K, and around 30% at 1440p and 1080p compared to native rendering. With DLSS Super Resolution in "Quality" mode and DLSS Frame Generation enabled, you can expect slightly more than doubled FPS across all resolutions compared to native rendering. Native FSR 3 and XeSS have a performance cost of around 5%, compared to the native TSR solution, and the DLAA solution runs at the same FPS as the native TSR solution, but offers the best graphical experience overall, and can be combined with DLSS Frame Generation for a better than native image quality and FPS.