Guide: Optimize Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus for the best experience

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is one of the demanding games you can get today. That automatically qualifies it as a premium AAA title for many gamers.

However, this game is also the proof an expensive production and beefed up graphics is not what makes a game ‘good’. At least that’s what players have been saying.

I’m not going to argue here whether the game is ‘good’ or not. I’ll leave that job to more relevant reviewers. As always, I’ll go all technical.

People who have already played Wolfenstein 2 would agree that the game is not so well-optimized, to say the least. You’ll have to work your way around it, if you want to get the best out of this title. And in this article, we’ll talk about just that.

I’ve found some handy tips that will make your life in Wolfenstein 2 easier. So, if you want the game to stop being annoying, I recommend checking these.

How to optimize Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

Install Game Ready drivers

First of all, don’t even bother installing this game without the latest Game Ready drivers. Around half of the reported issues in Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus have been fixed with the hotfixes. For both AMD and NVidia GPUs.

AMD and NVidia released Game Ready drivers just a few days after the Wolfenstein 2 release. Before that, Steam forums were flooded with various error and crash reports. So, installing the latest drivers is highly recommended!

You can download drivers from these links:

• AMD Driver
• NVidia Driver

Set your primary GPU

If your computer has multiple GPUs, you have to ensure your drivers are selecting the ‘right’ one for playing Wolfenstein 2. Of course, that’s not your integrated GPU.

Although this doesn’t happen too often, it’s possible. And you’ll know when your system is using the integrated GPU, as, well, you probably won’t be able to launch the game at all.

To change these settings, go the NVIDIA Control Panel/AMD Catalyst Control Panel and make that Wolfenstein II: The New Colossusx64.exe is using your primary GPU.

More instructions:

• AMD
• NVidia

Change your power plan

If you’re playing this game on a laptop, congratulations! You own a beast! All jokes aside, you power plan can have the impact on your in-game performance. So, make sure your power plan is set to High Performance. And of course, plug in your power cable. 

If you don’t know how to change your power settings, just follow these instructions:

1. Click the battery icon in the taskbar
2. Select More power options… > Show additional plans 
3. Select High performance

Install the latest version of DirectX

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus requires the latest version of DirectX, the DirectX 12. If you don’t already have it installed on your computer, you can download it from this link.

Change in-game graphics settings

Of course, if your GPU is not strong enough for running the game at max settings, you should change some in-game graphics change. Here are the settings you should look for:

• Lower the Resolution.
• Change the Anti-Aliasing settings
• Decrease texture level
• Decrease level of shadow details

Of course, you’ll be sacrificing looks for performance here. So, if you have a ‘stronger’ GPU, changing these settings is unnecessary.

That’s about it, I certainly hope these settings will help you get the best out of this game. To wrap it up, once again, the most important thing here is to install the Game Ready drivers! So, don’t forget that.

In case you have any comments, questions, or maybe suggestions, let us know in the comments below.