Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s PC features include DirectStorage and extra ray tracing

It looked like the upcoming PC version of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart had already exhausted its supply of glossy, Windows-exclusive features to show off; we already knew it’s coming with DLSS, DLSS 3, FSR 2 and ray traced lighting and shadows. Turns out there’s plenty more, as port developers Nixxes Software have used a Sony blog post to detail quite a few new tech toys – including Rift Apart’s Microsoft DirectStorage 1.2 support.

DirectStorage is simultaneously one of the most exciting recent developments in gaming hardware, and one of the most underutilised: it basically adapts your PC’s process for reading data from an SSD or hard drive in a way that can massively reduce game loading times, but has so far only made it to prime time in Forspoken. I suppose the upside is that once Rift Apart is out on July 26th, DirectStorage’s compatible games list will increase by 100%?

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart - Features Trailer | PC Games

The blog post, penned by Nixxes Online Community Specialist Julian Huijbregts, also announces that Rift Apart’s PC version will also get fully new ray-traced ambient occlusion effects and – for those without an suitably RT-capable graphics card – support for Intel XeGTAO. This is another form of ambient occlusion that, according to the post, should go easier on performance than conventional AO techniques like SSAO and HBAO+. Rift Apart will in fact be the very first game to release with XeGTAO up and running.

The post concludes with Rift Apart’s PC system requirements, which were already in the wild after the seemingly accidental publishing of a Steam announcement last week. Good thing I was too busy to write them up then so can just put them here now like it’s all brand new info, eh?

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Minimum PC specs (720p / 30fps)

• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 / AMD Radeon RX 460
• CPU: Intel Core i3-8100 / AMD Ryzen 3 3100
• RAM: 8GB
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit (version 1909 or higher)
• Storage: 75GB HDD space (SSD recommended)

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Recommended PC specs (1080p / 60fps)

• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 / AMD Radeon RX 5700
• CPU: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• RAM: 16GB
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit (version 1909 or higher)
• Storage: 75GB SSD space

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart High PC specs (1440p / 60fps or 4K / 30fps)

• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 6800
• CPU: Intel Core i5-11400 / AMD Ryzen 5 5600
• RAM: 16GB
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit (version 1909 or higher)
• Storage: 75GB SSD space

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Amazing Ray Tracing PC specs (1440p / 60fps or 4K / 30fps)

• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
• CPU: Intel Core i5-11600K / AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
• RAM: 16GB
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit (version 1909 or higher)
• Storage: 75GB SSD space

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Ultimate Ray Tracing PC specs (4K / 60fps)

• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080
• CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K / AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
• RAM: 32GB
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit (version 1909 or higher)
• Storage: 75GB SSD space

Those who also follow console gaming news might recall how Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart acted as an advert for the PS5’s SSD, with developers Insomniac Games suggesting that the game’s instantaneous dimension-hopping mechanics were only possible with the data crunching speed of an NVMe drive. The lack of a hard SSD requirement in these specs indicates that may have been marketing puffery, though I’ll be interested to see if there’s more of a stretched-out transition when making those interreality jumps on a slower HDD. Then again, DirectStorage 1.2 works on mechanical drives as well as SSDs, so maybe that will help.

I do think all of this stuff is encouraging: DirectStorage’s loading time cuts and texture streaming improvements show that PC tweaks aren’t just about purely aesthetic, shiny-shiny ray tracing baubles. And while I haven’t seen it in action yet, XeGTAO could be a welcome addition for those on lower-end systems. Some of Sony’s previous PlayStation ports haven’t gone well – The Last of Us Part 1 took months of post-release patches to get in order – but I have a good feeling about Rift Apart.

...Nobody quote that in the comments if it’s terrible.