Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PC Specs Are Out – First DirectStorage 1.2 Game with GPU Decompression, No SSD Req

Today, Nixxes and Insomniac have announced the official PC specifications of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. In a post that has now been taken down, they also confirmed that this will be the first DirectStorage 1.2 game with support for GPU decompression.

Senior Lead Programmer Richard van der Laan said:

DirectStorage ensures quick loading times and GPU decompression is used at high graphics settings to stream assets in the background while playing. Traditionally, this decompression is handled by the CPU, but at a certain point there is an advantage to letting the GPU handle this, as this enables a higher bandwidth for streaming assets from storage to the graphics card. We use this to quickly load high-quality textures and environments with a high level of detail.

Principal Programmer Alex Bartholomeus added:

For Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC, we added adaptive streaming based on live measurement of the available hardware bandwidth. This allows us to tailor the texture streaming strategy for the best possible texture streaming on any configuration.

Other than that, the biggest surprise from the specs is that the game doesn’t actually require an SSD, despite Sony and the developers making a big noise about its key importance with the PlayStation 5 version of the game. On June 20th, 2020, Creative Director Marcus Smith explained in an interview:

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a game that utilizes dimensions and dimensional rifts. That would not have been possible without the solid-state drive of the PlayStation 5. The SSD is screamingly fast. It allows us to build worlds and project players from one place to another in near instantaneous speeds. It is an unbelievable game-changer in terms of we can now do gameplay where you’re in one world and the next moment you’re in another.

We’re loading up levels and that happens so quickly and in the action that you don’t even imagine that this is something we couldn’t do before, because it feels so natural. Long gone are loading screens. Now it’s all about bringing exciting new adventures.

Of course, it’s neither the first nor, in all likelihood, the last time a new console’s features are hyped beyond their actual benefits. Having said all that, the requirements for the PC version of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart are relatively tame.

The developers do note that it is recommended to use upscalers when enabling ray tracing. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart will support ray traced reflections, ambient occlusion, and shadows on PC, whereas the PS5 version only supports reflections. As for the upscalers, the excellent PC port powerhouse already confirmed the presence of all of them, from NVIDIA DLSS 2 and 3 to AMD FSR 2 and Intel XeSS.

The first game in the franchise to land on PC, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart received a 9.5 out of 10 score in Chris’s PS5 review.

You’ll soon be able to read my conclusion; it appears at the bottom of this review next to my score, so let me finish by saying one simple thing: it may not be cool to love a game, but I love Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. I’m well known as a cynical curmudgeon. I want to like games, but the industry manages to grind the optimism out of me by releasing grey rubbish (in a literal and metaphorical sense), often packed with predatory tactics. This is the sort of title that reminds me games are still worth believing in. If Returnal didn’t already do it for you, the PlayStation 5 finally has a brand new game that makes it worth owning, and it’s a must-play.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is out on PC from July 26th.