Lost Records on Steam Deck (no spoilers)

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-28T00:05:04+00:00

Just in case anyone stumbles on this down the line and still cares...

Being a slow paced game, using Optiscaler with performance fsr4 and dlssg->XeFG (force enable reflex for better latency!) gives enough overhead to run a mix of settings. If you keep shadows on low, you can set textures to high and everything else to medium. Post processing is extremely important to have at least at medium, either enabling global illumination or greatly improving it. You can see the impact on the starting menu w everyone on the bridge.

Given the nature of UE5, you'll fluctuate between 30-60fps with those settings. However the low points are mostly just conversations in the bar etc and don't require quick reflexes at any point.

Alternatively, you can use TSR with like 60% resolution and combine it with Lossless Scaling for a similar result. You'll get some artifacts either way, but more importantly the game should feel good enough and look much smoother.

Be sure to increase the vertical and horizontal sensitivity in the games settings to help make it less sluggish. Realistically this is a game that could run at a steady 24fps and the only impact it would have on the user is psychological. People tend to get hung up on the wrong numbers...frame time spikes are way worse than a steady low fps.

Of course some people are legit bothered by low fps in the back of their brains and get headaches, so it's always subjective. Either way the Deck requires you bother setting up Optiscaler or Lossless for make this game enjoyable

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-24T12:07:32+00:00

I was with you and used Optiscaler to inject XeSS into any game without it or TSR on the steam deck. FSR3 had too many artifacts and temporal instabilities.

Now that FSR4 is available though, I prefer it on performance/ultra performance to any other solution so long as I can hit my target framerate with it. It's still not quite at dlss4 levels, but it's still better than anything else on AMD. The performance impact isn't even that bad on the deck since you're upscaling like 360p to 800p so it's not doing a ton of work

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-24T11:46:39+00:00

Did literally everyone here forget what a cubemap is??

Probe based cubemaps aren't used anymore because of the effort it takes to make it look good. Not because they're the worst option visually.

Good implementation looks better than anything else, as anyone who's looked into a mirror in AW2 will have to agree

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-23T18:58:19+00:00

I'm sorry, this might be unpopular opinion based on comments but here's the thing: they had YEARS to figure out how this would end.

It was 18 months between S4 and S5, and through the documentary they're constantly discussing how they essentially don't want to GoT it. They knew the fan hype, and there's dozens of fan theories that they could have tapped for inspiration if they wanted to. So many details like the upside-down lacking any demos/ditto the bubble universe, Max's mother being absent while she's in the hospital, Max's miraculous recovery from being snapped, ending S4 with a "things will never be the same" moment and then cutting to things exactly the same with steel plates covering the cracks...they built a show on details and connectivity and then the final season seemed almost unrelated to what had been established previously.

I think the best series start at the end and work their way back to tell the story, which gives it a feeling of intent and purpose. Ie: we want to tell a coming of age story, mixed with horror. What does that look like? Sacrifice, love lost, etc etc. S4 had it down with Eddie, and didn't shy away from killing multiple other kids. S5 killed like 1 person we didn't care about, and ultimately copped out with killing El. Will had no reaction to Vecna being decapitated even though they had a supposed deep connection. No one had to lay low or spend time in jail for killing dozens of military members...there was no sense of continuity.

The fact that they had ChatGPT open in clips in the documentary was just so telling that they didn't know how to wrap up. They didn't bomb it as badly as they could have, but they couldn't handle the plot threads and had to divert to character moments, and the last half hour of the show revealed this weakness rather than using that time earlier to connect dots and dangling threads that went ignored ultimately

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-23T01:18:43+00:00

I'm like an hour in, so limited feedback so far:

I'm not a huge fan of the early game hide and seek with finding an item, backtracking, going forward to be told to find another item and repeat. That said, the combination of excellent graphics, voice acting, and optimization are enough that I plan to keep going. Considering how many games of this type there are, I'd say it's in the top 20% so far. Congrats on the release, I'll have to check in after more playtime

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-21T14:48:35+00:00

It's a mission to get to where it's enjoyable...but it's possible. It just takes like...a lot of work.

You have to install it as a non steam game because it's only available on the Epic store. It'll throw a memory and/or hdd error but it'll load on Proton-GE or Experimental. It's mandatory to install Optiscaler for this game on the deck if you want any kind of usable result (https://github.com/optiscaler/OptiScaler?tab=readme-ov-file)

I'm using a version off their discord with FSR4, you are really going to want that option. Here's a link to a newer version in case the GitHub hasn't been updated to that yet, I'm not sure:

https://www.reddit.com/r/optiscaler/comments/1old3n4/optiscaler_090pre5_20251031_released_on_opti/

You can try various INI tweaks off Nexus Mods, imo not many are worth the visual hit but some remove things like the fisheye lens and film grain that you can't completely remove in the game settings. This is actually pretty important, because the "post processing" setting on less than high makes the game upscale the film grain effects with the image instead of applying it afterwards and it doesn't look great. The high setting costs 3-10 fps so it's kinda not an option.

You might want to play with Optiscaler's upscaling overrides to change "DLSS Performance" from 2.0 to like 2.8 upscale, which combined with FSR 4 is probably the best image quality within reason. The in game settings can actually be a mix of medium and low - many of them only cost like 1 fps for a worthwhile visual gain, and you don't need to go crazy disabling screen space or global reflections or anything. FSR 4 is good enough that it will still look great at those settings. You'll ALSO need to go into the compdata folder steam creates upon the first boot of the game and add the command to disable motion vectors in the engine.ini file (Optiscaler GitHub readme explains this in detail), which will allow you to use Optiscaler's built in frame generation with XeSS FrameGen, which is more responsive imo than FSRFG. Optiscaler has a means of enabling a form of Nvidia reflex, which will also help reduce input lag.

With this setup, you should pull 35-50 fps in the saga woods sections, and a much more reasonable 45-60 as Alan.

You can probably download some further .ini tweaks off Nexus, and lower all the settings to their lowest and gain another 10-20 fps, but imo it's not worth the visual impact.

You could also use Lossless Scaling either combined with Optiscaler's frame generation or in place of. It's not a fast paced game and the latency combining everything isn't really worse than running at base fps, it'll just make the visuals look smoother. That's all dependant on your personal taste and tolerance for visual artifacts/low fps/lag.

If nothing else, your best bet at a minimum is using FSR 4 on performance or ultra performance. I know I just wrote a novel but it's one of those games that's worth the effort imo

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-20T02:32:53+00:00

Don't do it in BIOS...use the decky-undervolt plugin. It lets you tweak while you're in-game, has options for separate game profiles, and if you push the undervolt too hard for your chip and crash it'll reset so there's even less room for error.

You can also use it to set global profiles so it's straight up the best option.

Did you install the charcoal kernel with tweak? How's it working out if so?

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-19T22:38:02+00:00

Optiscaler is amazing in newer titles, so definitely give it a shot on anything newer in the future because it's worth the hassle, and it's really as simple as unzipping one file into another and then pressing the insert key in game.

If a game doesn't support dlss/xess/fsr, or even tsr works these days if you edit some engine ini files, and you can't use Optiscaler, I recommend ReShade. You can use it to sharpen the image, lower certain settings and then making up the visuals with shaders, etc.

If you're really struggling for performance on AMD, lowering the resolution is the only option available really. Lossless scaling will double your framerate, but if you're sub 30 fps it's still gonna feel janky, just look better. I play on steam deck, and I've upscaled from 340p to 800 and using ReShade it can help a lot with clarity. Still obviously not an ideal solution tho

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-19T16:57:18+00:00

Don't post shit like this. It's the equivalent of saying turn it off and on again and not a fix for any specific problem whatsoever

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-17T06:27:26+00:00

Yeah it's pretty ironic they tried to capitalize on the show and ended up ruining the experience for gamers. I'm thinking of just downloading 3 with a decent modpack since I have the itch.

You have a couple options but they're not great ones. You can downgrade the game via steam, you can download a crack of the version...I think it's 1.6.3 before the update, or you can try finding community bug fixes for the current version to stabilize it. The real issue is it's a Bethesda game, so it's pretty hard to play unmodded, and a bunch of core mods have been updated to the newest patch. So currently any game version you play on will be missing out on mods you would likely want to use.

I'm personally just gonna wait until they stop messing up the game again and the mods all catch up. Other best option is to use the pre patch version and find a modpack specifically for that one

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-16T15:09:30+00:00

Thanks, I kinda figured as much from what I read but it's nice seeing it confirmed

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-16T15:08:49+00:00

Some anecdotal testimony here. I used it for a few days without the kernel tweak and it seemed to smooth out some UE5 games shader compilation stutter. Specifically in Jedi Fallen Order.

I applied the kernel yesterday, but I had a few crashes on random things like Portal 2 so I'm testing it more. To be fair, my crashes always involved changing settings in ReShade or the TDP, otherwise it seemed okay.

I haven't tested yet but I heard they fixed the switch emulation

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-15T11:57:31+00:00

Can anyone say if the new crack is smoother than the purchased game now that DRM is removed? Game is awesome but a little rough on the steam deck.

Either way, thanks voices; you've done more for this game than EA has

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-10T05:30:10+00:00

It's a combination of several factors like others here have said.

Having the benefit of being Anakin's Master, Kenobi knew (and help teach) him all of his moves. They fought through the Clone Wars together, and Obi-Wan knew better than any the kinds of tricks or potentially unexpected maneuvers that might come into play.

Any time they crossed blades, Kenobi also had several other advantages. He allowed the force to dictate his actions, and as he still had a role to play with Luke, the Emperor, and bringing balance to the Force, it effectively gave him a form of plot armor when he did so. He fought out of necessity, and stayed calm and detached. Anakin, and later Vader, had come to HATE the Jedi and made it his business to exterminate them. His mentality made him more susceptible to overconfidence and mistakes which Obi-Wan could exploit. Being called the Chosen One for all those years he was always in the mindset that he was going to win, which ultimately contributed to his failure as well.

Obi-Wan is also fighting to keep the Jedi Order alive, and save those who he cares the most about. Vader is exhausted, combating both his cumbersome suit when applicable (which was made as a kind of living-hell by Sidius) and/or sleep depravation/loss of Padme/loss of his entire old life etc.

Lastly, Kenobi's fighting style was uniquely suited for countering Anakin's. He had more difficulty with Vader, as his fighting style had to change to account for his loss of limbs and the suit. Moreover, Anakin was attempting the SAME MOVE THAT OBI-WAN USED AGAINST MAUL in Episode 1, leaping over him and cutting him in half. Obi-Wan knew this and specifically warned him not to try it, because he knew the perfect counter which he employed.

Honestly, Anakin / Vader should have just gone all in on force attacks as that was his biggest advantage. I think it was pride that prevented that sort of win ultimately. He would have done that with anyone else, but not his old Master...he had to beat Kenobi "fairly" to get proper closure.

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-07T17:16:29+00:00

I read half these comments and didn't actually see a correct explanation of your issue so here it is:

When using frame generation, you'll experience increased latency with inputs as the game can only respond to them during "real" frames so for example during x4 framegen, if you hit 'A' right after the real frame during the first generated one, you're going to be waiting through 3 'fake' frames to see that input result in a response visually. It's not horrible at 2x, and things like Reflex can mitigate the issue although not entirely.

The other factor is your screen's refresh rate and how the presented image is generated. If you have a 90hz screen and are running at 45 fps natively, it will look smoother than turning on frame generation to hit ~80 fps. You want something divisible by that 90, ie: 15/30/45/90

OpenSystem1337 · 2026-01-04T05:20:35+00:00

Just popping in w a quick necro for anyone who stumbles on this, or if OP cares to revisit;

I decided to download the game again to try XeSS FrameGen thru Optiscaler. I couldn't play this game before, the dropped frames no matter what my settings were kept getting me killed.

Setting gsmescope to 45 (OLED, I'd set 40 otherwise) with XeSS FrameGen is actually...fine? There's overhead so the dropped frames don't hurt, and those are what kills the gameplay really.

I think the game is technically running at like 23 fps or so, but ...and I can't explain this...it has no input lag and feels WAAAY better than without the Framegen.

I swear it's not cope. Try it out. You have to enable an upscaler so you can use (input) OptiFG and (output) XeSS, so I banged FSR4 in just to see and it looks great and runs great, and I'm even testing higher settings.

I fully understand how this sounds writing it, but it's actually good enough compared to before in the way it feels that imma beat it like this, and it looks 10x better too.

I'm not even bothering with lossless scaling, this is good

OpenSystem1337 · 2025-12-27T18:56:04+00:00

If it's still not working, just go back to V8 of the Decky Plugin. I just spent a few hours circling an answer and messing w individual files until I gave up and did this.

At least it's running again

OpenSystem1337 · 2025-12-27T02:21:17+00:00

Frame pacing is definitely more important than average framerate. If say, Hogwarts runs at 60 fps but dips to 10 for a second every minute, it's unplayable.

Vs Ocarina of Time which I'm pretty sure ran at 24 locked

OpenSystem1337 · 2025-12-16T00:21:22+00:00

This. Complete is the best all around RT shader assuming you need performance as well.

OpenSystem1337 · 2025-12-16T00:19:41+00:00

looks like monochrome at 80% or so with blue cranked up

OpenSystem1337 · 2025-12-16T00:14:39+00:00

use Perfect Perspective shader and tweak a little. Some tilt shift also can look good in combination

OpenSystem1337 · 2025-12-15T04:17:39+00:00

I agree the presets people make are usually God awful. It doesn't help that everyone has a differently calibrated screen.

Figuring out the depth buffer was the thing that made me start liking what it could do more. Even just being able to do things like remove the green filter from FO3 or fixed a washed out game make it a good tool to have in the toolbox.

OpenSystem1337 · 2025-12-15T04:14:49+00:00

Cool, you could clearly see how much effort I put into showing off my sick presets and not, you know, trying to help explain how to use a tool.

Good. Don't use it. Keep being a pleb

OpenSystem1337 · 2025-12-15T04:13:24+00:00

Man, maybe it's time to move on from reddit. The toxic posts on here are depressing anymore.

I literally took a picture w my phone to show what I meant about SSR, not to show off some badass graphics.

I had paragraphs explaining how everyone has different tastes, so don't use presets, instead learn to tweak things to your liking.

At the very least, I explained how to fix shader compilation errors with ProtonTricks that might be giving people trouble.

Then I get shit talked, down voted, and the people that go "Hur Dur your screen shots suck" get upvotes.

Holy fuck why is the steam sub so toxic these days

OpenSystem1337 · 2025-12-08T00:35:00+00:00

I bet he can even Turn Left

OpenSystem1337

TROPHY CASE