Tired of DLSS 4.5? Nvidia said DLSS 5 is on the way, and it’s bringing real-time slop-ification to PC gaming. The best I can say is if you love uncanny and overly manicured AI images of people, you’ll love what Nvidia hopes to do to your favorite game.
Nvidia announced at GTC 2026 that DLSS 5 brings forth a new “real-time rendering model” that is supposed to make in-game lighting effects look even more realistic bouncing off characters’ skin. Actually, it does much more than that. Nvidia said that AI takes each game’s color and motion vector and “infuses” the scene with new materials. Like many generative AI video apps, the AI is supposed to be able to keep the images consistent from frame to frame. And just like an AI video, the characters in-game look like homunculi drafted from the bargain bin of internet supermodel stock images.
Resident Evil Requiem running with DLSS 5 (left) and without DLSS 5 (right). © Nvidia
A lifetime of being betrayed by CGI-rendered and otherwise touched-up game trailers has taught me to wait until I see a game’s graphics firsthand before having any knee-jerk reactions. However, since first witnessing the next update to Nvidia’s DLSS and its impact on games like Resident Evil Requiem, I can’t peel away the rictus grimace off my face.
These slop-ified characters look horrific
Nvidia’s blog post showcasing DLSS 5’s effects on games is full of character models that appear like horrible AI-generated mockups of what we’ve seen in-game. While Resident Evil Requiem’s characters may bear a slight plastic, Barbie-doll appearance without the refined shadows, the DLSS 5 characters look like pure slop. A wizened old witch in Hogwarts Legacy appears with far more facial wrinkles than a healthy crone should thanks to DLSS 5. Thanks to the next-gen upscale, Bethesda’s bland-faced characters in Starfield sport pronounced eyebrows and cheekbones that stretch perilously close to the uncanny valley.
DLSS 5 will support resolutions up to 4K and should become available with existing titles like Assassin’s Creed Shadows and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and many more besides. Nvidia quotes Bethesda studio head Todd Howard saying “it was amazing” how it brought Starfield “to life.”
That sense of “realism” will inevitably impact some games with more stylized characters. Digital Foundry showcased video of DLSS 5 running on the Oblivion remake. Its odd-looking character models on the remaster were updated to resemble the Xbox 360-era title’s alien-looking townsfolk. With DLSS 5, those same models appear more like a craggy skin texture adhered to a beaten pineapple.
Grace Ashcroft, one of Requiem’s dual protagonists, appears more like AI’s demented imagination of a supermodel stapled over the FBI analyst’s face. The game running with DLSS 5 displays how Resident Evil series’ golden boy, Leon Kennedy, would look if you put the prompt “grizzled horror series protagonist with a boy band haircut” into ChatGPT.
Nvidia needs to expand AI
Nvidia’s next DLSS update won’t be around until fall when it’s fine-tuned its model. Then again, the entire point of this update is to showcase what happens when you combine real-time graphics rendering with AI. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in the announcement post that DLSS 5 blends “hand-crafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression.”
The existing DLSS 4.5 squeezes out competition like AMD’s FSR Redstone and Intel’s XeSS as one of the best upscalers available right now. It manages to preserve details like individual tree leaves and grass better than the competition. In 2026, DLSS 4.5 is one of the main reasons to get a GPU like Nvidia’s RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080 compared to a cheaper and more widely available AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT. Good luck finding a 4K-ready Nvidia GPU for any price below $1,000.
Nvidia has been refocusing its entire business to promote AI, and that seems to be infiltrating its gaming business more and more. The next big update to DLSS will offer more AI-generated frames with upgrades to 6x frame generation that can push frame rates to match a monitor’s refresh rate. PC gamers already have a hard time coming to terms with frame interpolation technology, designating them as “fake frames.” The gaming crowd won’t likely accept slop-ified characters anytime soon.
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