"The Elder Scrolls 4: Annihilation Remake" is a poorly optimized and is known as one of the worst PC games in

2025-04-29 22:02:02|Myriagame |source：minecraft skins

Recently, a professional hardware analysis agency Digital Foundry (DF) released an optimization analysis report on the recently released Unreal 5 engine remake of the "Elderly Scrolls 4".DF uses the current top flagship, the RTX 5090, to run the game at full-high image quality at 4K resolution, and is called "one of the worst PC games ever tested."

DF review video:

The optimization performance of "The Elder Scrolls 4: Annihilation Remake" is a disaster, and the main problems include:

Severe CPU bottlenecks lead to frequent lags, and top hardware is useless

Excessive resource demand forces players to reduce image quality and sacrifice visual effects

Limited optimization options make it difficult for players to balance performance and picture quality

The host version is slightly better but the problem remains, and the patch improvement is limited.Although the game has been visually modernized (benefited from Unreal Engine 5's Lumen, Nanite and other technologies), performance issues seriously damage the experience.DF pointed out that this level of optimization is not like the game in 2025, and the development team needs to solve the problem through patches or underlying optimizations.Compared to successful remake cases (such as Wanda and the Colossus), "The Elder Scrolls 4: Annihilation Remake" is more like the failed case of "GTA Trilogy: Ultimate", failing to fully realize the potential of modern technology.

Key points of the report:

The remake was developed in collaboration with Bethesda, which retains the original Gamebryo engine logic and uses Unreal Engine 5 as the rendering layer.Although Unreal Engine 5 brings modern effects such as Nanite virtual geometry and Lumen global lighting, it failed to optimize the loading mechanism of the original engine, resulting in the continued lag problem.

The remake inherits the stuttering problem of the original game in 2006, especially when moving in the open world, which causes obvious stuttering every time a new world grid is loaded or unloaded.This problem exists in the original version, but the remake has not been effectively solved, but has been exacerbated by higher resource demand.

Even on top hardware such as the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RTX 5090, the lag remains severe, destroying the exploration-centric gaming experience.The article points out that this lag makes it difficult for players to enjoy smooth movement and affects the core gameplay.

"Stuttering is usually a CPU-related problem, which can usually be alleviated by improving picture quality, reducing frame rates, and reducing CPU-induced stuttering through buffering. In fact, you are masking CPU issues with FPS caps and using extra processing time to improve visual fidelity. I tried using ultra-high resolution and limiting frame rates, but even the most powerful gaming CPU at the moment, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D - can't solve the stuttering problem of this game. This is a core problem, because one of the key gameplay of the game is to wander and explore the environment, and I can't find any way to achieve smooth movement, which fundamentally affects the gaming experience."

The game's use of hardware resources is very exaggerated, not only has extremely high CPU requirements, but also has a great burden on the GPU.The article calls it "one of the weirdest resource-intensive games ever tested."Even on high-end hardware, players still need to significantly reduce the image quality settings to maintain an acceptable average frame rate.

On mainstream or slightly older CPUs like the Ryzen 5 3600, frame time is extended by 2 to 2.5 times, resulting in a catastrophic decline in performance.Even on a more powerful mid-range CPU, the experience is still bad.

"The problem is that most people have not strong CPU performance, which makes the game lag even worse. In mainstream configuration, lag performance is much worse than high-end configurations. For example, when running games with Ryzen 5 3600, the frame time is 2 to 2.5 times longer than the already bad performance on 9800X3D, and the performance is simply disaster. Although the Ryzen 5 3600 is a bit outdated now, many players may have upgraded to more mainstream configurations, but even in the intermediate configuration between the two, the experience is still very bad."

The RTX 5090 is paired with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor. With 1080P resolution and DLSS performance mode, the frame count exceeds 60FPS, but it will frequently stutter. Even if options such as Lumen global lighting are lowered, the improvement effect is very limited.

The console version (Xbox Series X/S and PS5) also has performance issues, although the latest patch (April 25, 2025) has improved the frame rate of Xbox Series X (up to 16fps in some scenarios).However, the lag problem still exists, especially when traveling through the world, where the patch fails to fundamentally solve the problem.

Discussions on Reddit show that the host version has a slightly lighter lag problem than the PC, but it is still obvious.For example, PS5 players reported short-term mobile lags, and the Xbox Series X performed well in early games, but could deteriorate as the save became larger.

"The Elder Scrolls 4" 2025 modern remake and 2006 original picture comparison video:

Optimization suggestions:

Disabling hardware-based Lumen global lighting (switching to software Lumen) is the only setting that significantly improves performance, with an average frame rate of about 35%.However, this can lead to a degradation of image quality, including significant deterioration in water surface reflections, ambient shadows and lighting effects, sacrificing the visual experience.

The performance improvements brought by reducing other image quality settings (such as resolution, texture quality, etc.) are insignificant (only 10% on average), but the quality loss is huge.At the lowest settings, the game may not even be as good as the original version in 2006, losing the meaning of the remake."Usually, if we want to increase the average frame rate, we recommend optimization settings, but this time the problem is that there is only one setting that can work: turn off Lumen global lighting based on hardware RT. If you switch to the software version of Lumen (the one used on the host), the average performance can be improved by about 35%. In the case of CPU bottlenecks, this is a good improvement in theory, but the picture quality will drop a lot. The water surface reflection becomes significantly worse, and the ambient shadow and lighting effects are also greatly reduced, which means there is no free price. Worse, even with this method, the duration of game lag has not improved.

The effect of reducing other settings is minimal, but the picture quality is greatly reduced.By setting all settings to the lowest level, the performance under the CPU bottleneck is only improved by about 10% on average, and the lag problem is only slightly alleviated, but the picture quality is terrible.The so-called "optimized settings" can theoretically bring a smoother experience, but the current state of this game is simply impossible.I really don't understand why the CPU performance is so poor and why tuning settings is almost useless.At the lowest quality, the game is completely unattractive, and some places are even worse than the original version in 2006.This is really bad.

Of course, some fans of "The Elder Scrolls" may not care about these lags and want to improve GPU performance. After all, this game also has high requirements for graphics cards.I have a few suggestions:

First of all, stick to using hardware Lumen because it has much better lighting effects on vegetation, and software Lumen looks more like screen space effects, which is much worse.

Next, turn the hardware lighting mode to low.This setting uses surface cache to process reflected light instead of direct light, so the reflected objects lose highlights and light-tracking shadows.But when the screen is full of reflections, this setting can improve performance by about 16% over other options.For mid-range GPUs, this is worth it.However, low-end graphics cards may still have to use the software Lumen high settings, although there are many disadvantages.

Other settings basically follow the standards of the Unreal Engine 5 default menu.Simply put, the high setting runs much better than the Lamman epic preset, with very little loss in picture quality.From epic to high, my performance improvements were up to 38% in my tests, and there was almost no quality loss when using hardware Lumen, so this is definitely the preferred solution.”

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