Almost two months have passed since Nvidia first revealed its DLSS 5 AI slop filter to the masses, and it would seem that, due to the lack of references to the tech in the weeks since, the internet has successfully bullied the company into keeping quiet about its “AI-powered breakthrough.”
However, Eurogamer saw a fun opportunity to twist the knife one final time today during its interview with Resident Evil Requiem’s game director Koshi Nakanishi and producer Masato Kumazawa. Grace Ashcroft, one of Resident Evil Requiem’s protagonists, was chosen to be the unfortunate poster child for Nvidia’s DLSS 5 reveal on March 16, and her oddly redesigned appearance was the subject of thousands of “DLSS 5 Off/DLSS 5 On” memes in the weeks that followed.
While producer Kumazawa couldn’t directly comment on the team’s involvement with the DLSS 5 tech and its resulting showcase trailer, he did state that he saw the negative reaction to Grace’s redesign as a huge positive. “The fact a lot of players commented they really liked the original design of Grace and didn’t want to see it changed was a positive,” Kumazawa told Eurogamer. “It meant we got the design right [and it] points to the fact that Grace quickly established herself as a fan favorite, that people had such strong opinions on her design.”
While I agree that Grace’s brilliant design did have a lot to do with the negative pushback, the thing that really soured me on it was that the DLSS 5 filter seemed to embellish her makeup for some reason. Perhaps it was a side effect of the lighting side of the tech, but it’s just so odd that Nvidia saw the filter exaggerate her eyeshadow to that degree and yet still opted to put it front and center in its showcase video.
Either way, Kumazawa’s hedged response to the criticism does add credence to the reports that developers at Capcom weren’t too happy with Nvidia’s DLSS 5 reveal. While the producer obviously couldn’t outright dogpile on the tech, given Capcom and Nvidia’s ongoing partnership, circumventing criticizing DLSS 5 by complimenting Grace’s unaltered design instead comes across as a very smart form of rebellion to me.