The Talos Principle 2 PC graphics settings and controls explored

Modified Nov 08, 2023 15:53 GMT

The Talos Principle 2 is Croteam's latest game, that is strides ahead of its predecessor from a technological standpoint. That said, PC players have a large suite of customizable options to pick from, just like the original 2014 game. Throw in the fact that this is one of the first major Unreal Engine 5 games out on the market right now, and players can tweak the experience as per their preference.

So let's dive into the details and see what options are available to players in The Talos Principle 2, from graphics settings to controls for your desired peripheral.

All PC graphics settings in The Talos Principle 2

The game is a looker, on all fronts (Screenshot via The Talos Principle 2)

The visual settings are located under the Video tab in the Options menu. Graphics, in particular, are under the Graphics Quality category:

Quality presets: Allows you to pick between preset visual settings of Low, Medium, High, and Custom.
Autodetect graphics quality: Click this for the game to auto-select settings based on your PC hardware.
Upsampling Method: Allows players to select between their preferred choice of image upscaling algorithms. Nvidia DLSS 3, Intel XeSS, and MAD FSR 2 are all available options. The in-built TAUU (Temporal Anti-Aliasing Upsampling) and TSR (Temporal Super Resolution) options are also available as alternatives for all users.
Upsampling Preset: Allows you to pick between the rendering resolution of the Upsampling Method. The number of options you see will depend on the Upsampling Method chosen. As an example, DLSS users have the following options: Performance, Balanced, Quality, and DLAA.
Nvidia Reflex: Usable on Nvidia cards to reduce latency.
Sharpness: Adjusts the sharpness of the 3D image scene.
Anti-aliasing: Cleans up jagged artifacts at the cost of performance. Allows picking anti-aliasing quality between Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. Disabled when using third-party image upscaling solutions i.e. DLSS, XeSS, and FSR.
Global Illumination: Controls the quality of indirect lighting, including light bounce, sky shadowing, and even Ambient Occlusion - the latter of which is baked into this setting. Pick between low, medium, High, and Ultra. Note that the latter two options also enable raytraced lighting and ambient occlusion.
Shadows: Determine shadow quality which governs the rendering resolution and the distance at which they display in the game world. You may choose between Low, Medium, High and Ultra.
View Distance: Controls how far out in the distance objects are rendered. Select between near, Medium, Far, and Farthest.
Textures: Determines texture quality of assets, with higher presets offering more detail. Pick from Low, Medium, High, and Ultra.
Effects: Governs the quality of visual effects and lighting. Available options include Low, Medium, High and Ultra.
Reflections: Change the quality and accuracy of reflections on reflective surfaces such as water. Select from Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. High and Ultra settings enable raytraced reflections.
Post Processing: Controls quality of effects like Motion Blur, Bloom, and Depth of field. Choose between Low, Medium, High and Ultra.

As we noted before, raytracing is not a discreet option in The Talos Principle 2. So players will need to use the High/Ultra settings for Global illumination and Reflections to avail of those graphical features.