SILENT HILL 2: Optimized settings and fixes – Updated on October 8th

1. Under Display & Graphics, set Renderer Quality Preset to Custom to enable Advanced Quality Settings.
2. Disable SSR. Screen space reflections are ugly in this game and even without SSR, the game uses a combination of Lumen and cube maps for puddles, etc.
3. Set Shadows to Low. It could result in a staggering 35%+ fps gain compared to High. While the difference is stark before entering the city (first 10 minutes), after that, it will be mostly imperceptible in outside areas to atmospheric fog, or in inside of buildings.
4. Set Shaders to Medium for a 7% increase in fps. Keep in mind though that this may introduce white artifacts (e.g. around James’ eyes) on certain setups.
5. Leave all other options at the highest setting (and texture at what your GPU can handle), as those have a seemingly negligible impact on performance.
6. By disabling ray tracing, you can get an additional 27%+ boost to your framerate. RT is not noticeable at all in most scenarios, and it doesn’t disable and replace the bad SSR implementation either. However, it completely changes the rendering of certain sections (due to bounce lights), making some interiors go from completely black to naturally filled with light (although it can be argued it makes those parts less moody and atmospheric).
7. Use DLSS Quality at 1080p, DLSS Balanced at 1440p, and DLSS Performance at 1600p UW / 2160p for a significant boost in performance.

There are a lot of fixes for Silent Hill 2 that require adding specific commands to the Engine.ini file. For these to take effect, you need to add the “[SystemSettings]” line (without quotations) to the bottom of it, and then add any other commands/fixes below it.

Default ini file location: C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\SilentHill2\Saved\Config\Windows

Example of Engine.ini already configured with a few fixes:

Similarly to other modern third-person games with lots of post-processing effects (e.g. A Plague Tale: Requiem, Jedi: Survivor, Black Myth: Wukong), when you rotate the camera, there is a very noticeable and distracting, white halo/ghosting/fringing effect around the playable character. This can be mitigated by using the code below, but you can’t get fully rid of it, as there will still be some ghosting around James body while rotating the camera in/near foggy areas.

Reduced/no ghosting after applying the fix:

The game doesn’t have built-in frame generation support, but Unreal Engine 5 does, at least for FSR. You can enable FSR frame generation using the code below.

Keep in mind that:

1. It is suspected that the frame generation here is the older, inferior version of AMD FSR (3.0 instead of 3.1).
2. You can’t enable Nvidia Reflex (or its AMD Alternative) in the game, so you need a really high base fps to make the extra input lag added by frame generation less noticeable. Alternatively, you can add Reflex via RivaTuner Statistics Server.
3. Frame generation is only possible by using AMD’s upscaling method, which generally provides worse image quality than DLSS and XeSS.
4. Frame generation doesn’t work well with the in-game vignette, especially on wider screens than 16:9. It can lag in motion compared to the rest of the image if you turn the camera fast. You need to disable it.

Vignette lag with FSR3 Frame Gen with fast camera movements:

You can force the game to use Nvidia Reflex which will decrease input latency and make the game more responsive. This is useful for normal play and especially useful for those who want to use frame generation.

1. Download and install MSI Afterburner + RivaTuner Statistics Server[www.guru3d.com].
2. Launch MSI Afterburner (which will also launch RTSS), then inside RTSS, click on Setup, then for the Enable Framerate Limiter option, choose Nvidia Reflex, then hit OK. This will force Nvidia Reflex on globally, but you can also enable it on a game-by-game basis.

You can disable the vignette to get a clearer, more consistent image, and to get rid of potential artifacts that are caused by using FSR Frame Generation and vignette together.

If you decide to use ray tracing, you might as well use ray reconstruction for more stable reflections. Here’s a comparison with the feature turned off and on by Reddit user robbiekhan.

You can use Unreal Engine 5 Unlocker to tweak a wide variety of settings. You can increase/decrease the field of view, change the camera position like in other games’ photo modes, or even add different post-processing effects. To use UE5U, follow the steps below.

1. Download Unreal Engine 5 Unlocker[kemono.su].
2. Open the unlocker, run the game, add the executable to the app, and inject DLL.
3. If you want to use the in-game console to use commands (e.g. FOV change), hit the Tilde key to open it(or set it to a different button under the Configuration menu if you are using a European keyboard).

You can use the Silent Hill 2 fps unlocker[github.com]. made by RoseTheFlower.

Keep in mind that while the cutscenes will technically run at unlocked framerates with this mod, some animations will still be capped at 30 fps. But at least this mod will fix the inverse ghosting and flicker issue that low framerates introduce on OLED screens and certain TCL TVs while using VRR.

You can use the Silent Hill 2 widescreen mod[github.com]. made by RoseTheFlower.