Last March, Capcom confirmed that Resident Evil 2 Remake, Resident Evil 3 Remake and Resident Evil 7 will receive a “next gen” patch that will introduce significant technical improvements. We do not yet have a complete list of all the graphic changes, but we know that one of the most important will be the introduction of ray tracing.

As many of our readers know, ray tracing can be used shadows and surrounding occlusions, reflections, refractions and caustics, as well as global illumination. With this in mind, it is clear that Capcom has a lot to choose from, although I personally believe that it will be ideal to integrate such technology into shadows, reflections and lighting. If it were possible to choose only one on the theme of the performance, lighting would undoubtedly be my choice.

At this point, we can only wait until Capcom decides to release the patch and publish a complete list of included graphics enhancements, although we can already tell you that the next generation patch will have a significant impact on the minimum requirements. According to the Japanese company, the requirements of the Resident Evil 2 Remake will be higher after the application of the new generation patch, and the leap is so remarkable that it can ultimately have a significant impact on many users.

Minimum requirements for Resident Evil 2 Remake

• Windows 7 as operating system or higher.
• GeForce GTX 760 or Radeon R7 260x graphics card.
• DirectX 11.

Minimum requirements for Resident Evil 2 Remake after the “next gen” patch.

• Windows 10 as the operating system or higher.
• GeForce GTX 960 or Radeon RX 460 graphics card.
• DirectX 12.

As we can see, there have been three important changes that affect the operating system, graphics card, and DirectX version. We will need Windows 10 and also a more powerful graphics card. This last change is easy to understand because The NVIDIA GTX 700 Series doesn’t play well with DirectX 12 (It only supports this API at level 11_0, while GTX 960 offers 12_1 support). And in the case of AMD, I imagine that the requirement for the Radeon RX 460 is due to a performance issue rather than anything else, as it supports DirextX 120, just like the Radeon R7 260x.

Capcom has made it very clear, you will not play Resident Evil 2 Remake with the current minimum requirements, so if you want to continue using it, you will need to upgrade your PC. It would be nice if Capcom gave the option not to install the patch a new generation for those who will not be able to meet the minimum requirements.

On the other hand, I remember it very well Resident Evil 2 Remake offers better performance under DirectX 11, so I hope that Capcom took this into account when integrating the “next gen” patch and increasing requirements, and accompanied it by appropriate optimizations. We don’t have an exact release date, but I hope to share with you an article on evaluating the improvements that the patch will implement as it becomes available.