Wolfenstein: Youngblood now has RTX ray tracing support

Six months after launch, Bethesda optimizes its multiplayer-driven Wolfenstein game for NVIDIA's raytracing tech.

Raytracing is a game-changer that breathes a new level of immersion and visual quality in specific games. We've seen it in Control, whose reflections are absolutely dazzling with RTX on, and now the same enhancements are coming to Wolfenstein: Youngblood.

MachineGames today released a patch that not only tightens up frame rates and optimizations across the board, but adds in RTX support. The game is kind of a strange choice for raytracing--it's a game based around co-op multiplayer and engagement where fidelity doesn't necessarily matter as much as it would in singleplayer FPS titles--but it's nonetheless a shooter set in a kind of small-scale, verticalized world with a stylized Nazi-occupied 80's vibe. So there's plenty of opportunities to show off the new lighting and reflection effects.

It's possible this is a test run for both Doom Eternal and Wolfenstein 3, which should both support raytracing on PC (and next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X).

"MachineGames and Arkane Studios Lyon released an update for Wolfenstein: Youngblood on PC that includes the highly anticipated NVIDIA ray tracing support. Players can now experience the ray-traced reflections throughout each of Wolfenstein: Youngblood's levels. Any surface, if it's reflective, will feature accurate, high-quality, high-detail, lifelike reflections that elevate graphical fidelity. In action, ray tracing truly shines, with weapon effects reflecting, and dynamic real-time reflections being reflected on enemies and moving game elements," reads a press release.

NVIDIA recommends the following resolution settings to hit 60FPS:

With DLSS enabled, we recommend the GeForce RTX 2060 for 1920x1080, the GeForce RTX 2070 for 2560x1440, and the GeForce RTX 2080 for 3840x2160, enabling all GeForce RTX gamers to experience Wolfenstein: Youngblood's graphics and ray tracing at max settings at 60 FPS+ (note, users with 6GB of VRAM may need to lower texture detail by one level).