The patch that players have been waiting four years for has finally arrived, as NieR: Automata PC has finally received a patch from Square Enix. Will it actually fix NieR: Automata, or even just some of the problems that players have been having? Who knows, but at least the players have something.
What's in the NieR: Automata Steam patch?
Borderless video settings have been added to the game, along with a Fidelix FX CAS feature. If HDR is enabled on Windows it'll automatically boot in HDR, which is cool. Anti-aliasing functionality has been tweaked, and about 270 UI textures for icons, backdrops, and UI elements now support 4K resolution.
Cut scenes have had their bit rate improved and all pre-rendered cutscenes have been adjusted so they will now play in 60 FPS and display in the correct aspect ratio without stretching. A new Global Illumination feature had been added that can be set to three different levels: High, Medium, or Low.
Ambient Occlusion/Bloom has been changed, with the rendering targets for both being changed to dynamic resolution based on the game's resolution.
As for bug fixes, it's now possible to switch between recently selected display modes for screenshots, such as full screen and windowed mode or between borderless and windowed mode by using Alt + Enter. The mouse cursor is no longer displayed when using a gamepad controller, and the frame rate has been stabilized at 60 FPS under the default settings. There are other "stability related fixes", but they weren't elaborated upon, although hopefully they'll stop my editor complaining about how the game crashes for him anytime he launches it, mods or no mods.
The potential downside to this patch is that it might break the FAR mod, which is a mod that has helped make NieR: Automata playable for a lot of people. The main features of the mod are actually included in the patch (native fullscreen resolution, adjusting global illumination, adjusting bloom and ambient occlusion), but things such as a freecam look and framerate unlocker were not included in the patch.
We'll have to see if this is only the first in a series of patches that will fix up NieR: Automata, which is remained unplayable for some over the past four years. Check out the update page here.
Have you managed to beat NieR: Automata on Steam without tons of glitches and bugs? Let us know in the comments!