As I mentioned in my Dragon’s Dogma 2 review, despite the announcement of NVIDIA DLSS 3 being available at launch, NVIDIA’s frame generation technique is nowhere to be found.
That, on top of other performance issues caused by CPU optimization that CAPCOM has promised it’ll try to address and the newly discovered microtransaction controversy, has translated into a rocky start for Dragon’s Dogma when it comes to Steam reviews. The current average score from users is ‘Mostly Negative’, with a very low 39% approval score. Of course, that might change in the future if some of those issues are solved.
Meanwhile, modder PureDark has already figured out how to enable NVIDIA DLSS 3 in the game. Unlike most of his mods, this one can be downloaded for free via this Patreon page.
After speaking with him via Discord, I found out why. PureDark said the developers had NVIDIA’s frame generation implemented in Dragon’s Dogma 2 but hid the toggle in the graphics options to enable it. The reason may be that some users encounter freezes when DLSS 3 is enabled, not unlike the early Starfield FG mod. Anyway, to forcefully enable DLSS 3, PureDark created his own streamline dll (sl.interposer.dll) and swapped the game’s call to turn frame generation off, switching it on instead.
To briefly test the mod, I booted the game and fast traveled back to Vernworth, the capital of Vermund, by far the most taxing location in the game with its many NPCs and buildings.
As you can see from the CapFrameX overlay, the frame rate nearly doubles with DLSS 3 enabled on a GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. The stuttering encountered while roaming the city’s streets is not entirely eliminated, but the sense of fluidity is much improved. This bodes well for whenever CAPCOM decides to expose the DLSS 3 setting to the public, allowing users equipped with GeForce RTX 40 hardware to get a much smoother gameplay experience.
Of course, the CPU optimization issues are wider in scope than just toggling frame generation, but that burden is entirely on CAPCOM to fix. Meanwhile, this mod can work as a bandaid.
Just extract the file to the root Dragon’s Dogma 2 folder and overwrite. Make sure you’ve turned on NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution and NVIDIA Reflex in the game settings. DLSS 3 should be enabled by default if you have compatible hardware, and it can be toggled by pressing END on your keyboard.
