The Hell is Us system requirements demand Nvidia RTX 4090 and upscaling

The Hell is Us system requirements are finally here, but unfortunately, I'm finding it hard to get excited about them. It's all because they confirm my worst fear that developers are going to start leaning on upscaling when talking about performance. More surprisingly still is that despite upscaling, these specs are incredibly high for comparatively low performance targets.

You're going to need one of the best graphics cards to get the best out of Hell is Us, according to these specs. Even then, you can only expect 30fps at 4K with some form of upscaling. While it's no secret that gamers have adopted the likes of Nvidia DLSS as a useful tool to aid gaming performance, it should not become a crutch for developers to use when testing the game for system requirements.

Here are the Hell is Us system requirements:

Take our Hell is Us system requirements PC benchmark test to answer the question… Can I run Hell is Us?

The Hell is Us minimum requirements are the only set that look somewhat reasonable for a modern 3D game, even if the CPU demands are a little high.

You'll need an Intel Core i7 7700K or AMD Ryzen 3 3300X alongside an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT. Most curious here, despite the admission that upscaling was used at all times, is that the GTX 1070 isn't DLSS compatible, meaning you'll have to use AMD FSR upscaling if you're using anything below an RTX 2000 GPU.

The RAM requirements here are also 16GB, which may catch out some older or budget gaming PCs. The good news, however, is that upgrading to some of the best gaming RAM is the easiest and cheapest upgrade you can invest in right now.

As for the Hell is Us recommended specs, this is where things start to spiral. The CPU requirements are listed as an Intel Core i7 11700K or AMD Ryzen 5 7600, and remain this way for all other tiers. As for the GPU, you'll now need an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT, a considerable jump up from the minimum tier.

According to the performance targets, this is the hardware you'll need for 1080p, 60fps gameplay, which seems like a low-end experience considering upscaling is also deployed.

Here are the Hell is Us ultra system requirements:

The Hell is Us ultra specs are completely baffling, at least when considering the wider context. You at least only need the same CPUs as the recommended tier (these CPUs are also listed in high and very high), but you'll also need an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 or AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX for only 30fps at 4K, and that is with upscaling.

This is exactly why upscaling shouldn't be factored in when system requirements are being released, because there is no benefit to releasing these high specs, but noting that the performance isn't native, and doesn't hit what is widely considered the minimum expected frame rate standard of 60fps.

Most concerning is that despite upscaling being used – and to the credit of the developer, they have been open about its use – we still don't know how aggressive the upscaling is at each tier. Is it just the Quality setting (which for 4K would be rendering the game at 2,560 x 1,440), or an even lower quality setting, such as Balanced (2,227 x 1,253) or Performance (1,920 x 1,080)? This is important context that is missing and gives me especially bad vibes for how unoptimized the game may be currently.

The Hell is Us download size is currently listed as 30GB, with one of the best SSDs for gaming required across all system requirement tiers.

For more system requirements news, check out the time that Valve tested the idea of ultra system requirements on Steam. You can also read about the Kingmakers system requirements and how they currently shun all AMD hardware.

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