Surviving the brutal penal colony of Khorinis in Alkimia Interactive’s reimagining of the 2001 classic requires more than just managing your ore economy or mastering the unforgiving combat mechanics. For many PC players, the greatest enemy isn’t an Orc Warrior or a Shadowbeast—it is the game’s highly demanding Unreal Engine 5 rendering pipeline.
Despite launching a few months ago and receiving multiple updates, the PC version of the game continues to struggle with severe hardware utilization problems. As we move into September 2026, the community and hardware benchmarking outlets have raised the alarm regarding two distinct, highly frustrating technical anomalies. First, Nvidia’s absolute top-tier GeForce RTX 5090 is reportedly experiencing massive frame rate drops when utilizing DLSS 5. Second, players are reporting a persistent, nauseating visual blur during continuous camera movement that refuses to go away even when traditional post-processing effects are disabled.
Here is a detailed breakdown of what is currently happening with the game’s PC performance, why these issues might be occurring under the hood, and what you can do to preserve your frame rates while exploring the colony.
The RTX 5090 Conundrum: When DLSS Reduces Performance
If you look at the official system requirements, the specifications demanded by the Gothic 1 Remake are steep, but arguably expected for a modern Unreal Engine 5 open-world title featuring advanced Lumen global illumination and Nanite geometry. Players upgrading to the latest hardware, specifically the GeForce RTX 5090, rightly expect to push max settings at 4K resolution and maintain a rock-solid 60 FPS or higher.
However, recent benchmarking data from GameGPU reveals a shocking regression. When running the game on an RTX 5090, the native rendering frame rate hovered around a modest 43 FPS in heavy scenes. Normally, this is the exact scenario where you would activate Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) to achieve a comfortable, playable frame rate. Bizarrely, activating DLSS 5 in the Gothic 1 Remake resulted in the frame rate plummeting from 43 FPS down to 31 FPS.
This type of negative scaling is extremely rare. The fundamental purpose of upscaling technologies like DLSS is to render the game internally at a lower resolution (thereby easing the load on the GPU) and use AI hardware to reconstruct the image to your native display resolution. When an upscaler actively hurts performance, it usually points to a severe engine-level bottleneck or a flawed integration of the upscaling SDK.
We have seen the developers address DLSS frame generation previously, attempting to smooth out CPU bottlenecks caused by the game’s complex NPC routines and camp schedules. However, this new RTX 5090 data suggests that there is a massive VRAM overhead or a frame-pacing synchronization bug occurring when the AI reconstruction pass communicates with the Unreal Engine 5 pipeline. Until Alkimia Interactive patches this specific hardware interaction, players with ultra-high-end rigs might ironically find themselves getting better performance by brute-forcing native resolution rather than relying on modern AI upscaling.
The “Can’t Focus” Motion Blur Anomaly
While the RTX 5090 issue affects the absolute highest echelon of PC gamers, a different, equally disruptive problem is plaguing a wider segment of the community. Over on the r/MotionClarity subreddit, users have documented a bizarre visual phenomenon that occurs specifically during continuous camera movement.
The symptom is described as a “can’t focus” effect. When the player stands completely still, the image is incredibly sharp. You can see the fine details on the weapons and armor and the individual stones of the Old Camp’s castle walls. Furthermore, if you record the gameplay and pause the video, every individual frame looks pristine.
However, the moment you begin panning the camera to look around, the entire image loses focus, creating a temporal smearing effect that makes the game look inherently unstable. Naturally, the first instinct of any seasoned PC gamer is to dive into the settings menu and turn off Motion Blur and Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA). Surprisingly, players report that completely disabling motion blur via the in-game menus—and even editing the configuration .ini files to forcefully disable TAA and other post-processing blur effects—does absolutely nothing to resolve the issue.
This community-reported anomaly is not entirely unique to the Gothic 1 Remake; it has been observed in other heavy Unreal Engine 5 titles recently. But why is it happening here?
The Unreal Engine 5 Temporal Dependency
To understand why turning off TAA doesn’t fix the camera blur, we have to look at how Unreal Engine 5 renders its most striking visual features. Systems like Lumen (for dynamic global illumination) and Virtual Shadow Maps do not render a complete, perfect image in a single frame. Doing so would instantly crash even an RTX 5090. Instead, they rely on temporal accumulation—gathering light and shadow data across multiple consecutive frames and blending them together to create the final image.
When you move the camera, the engine has to discard old data and calculate new data. If the temporal algorithms are poorly tuned, or if the game’s internal frame pacing stutters even slightly, this blending process breaks down. The result is “ghosting” or a general loss of high-frequency detail during motion.
When a player forcefully disables TAA in the .ini files, they might actually be breaking the engine’s ability to properly resolve this temporal data. UE5 is fundamentally designed around temporal upsampling (TSR) or TAA. Ripping it out often leaves the game’s lighting and shadow systems in an unresolved, noisy state, which the eye perceives as a blurry, unstable mess during motion.
How This Impacts Gameplay in the Colony
In a fast-paced shooter, camera blur is an annoyance. In a hardcore RPG like the Gothic 1 Remake, it directly impacts your ability to survive. The combat mechanics in this game are notoriously deliberate and punishing. If you are facing down a pack of Snappers or trying to time a block against an aggressive Ore Baron, you need clear visual feedback to read their animation telegraphs.
When the camera smears during lateral movement, your spatial awareness takes a massive hit. This is particularly devastating for Dexterity-focused builds that rely on precise spacing with bows and acrobatic dodging. It also makes exploring visually dense areas—like the misty pathways of the Swamp Camp or the dark, claustrophobic tunnels of the Free Mine—straining on the eyes. We have already covered the brutal PC requirements in the past, but raw hardware power means very little if the image quality degrades the moment you touch the right analog stick or move your mouse.
Current Workarounds for PC Players
If you are currently suffering from these performance and visual issues, you are largely at the mercy of the developers for a permanent fix. However, there are a few temporary workarounds that the community is currently testing.
First, if you are running an RTX 4090 or RTX 5090 and experiencing unexpected frame rate drops, try disabling DLSS entirely. While it sounds counterintuitive, running the game at native resolution with standard TAA might yield a higher and more stable frame rate than suffering the overhead penalty of a bugged DLSS 5 integration.
Second, regarding the camera blur, do not force TAA off in the configuration files. Because UE5 heavily relies on temporal data for Lumen, disabling TAA completely will likely make the image look worse in motion. Instead, ensure that your frame rate is absolutely stable. The “can’t focus” effect is drastically exacerbated by micro-stutters and uneven frame pacing. Use a tool like RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS) to cap your frame rate to a number your PC can maintain 99% of the time—even if that means locking it to 60 FPS or 30 FPS. A perfectly flat frame time graph allows the engine’s temporal accumulation to work much more effectively, significantly reducing the blurring effect during camera pans.
Finally, keep an eye on your monitor’s pixel response times. Some players have found that adjusting the overdrive settings on their gaming monitors can slightly mitigate the perceived smearing, though this will not fix the underlying engine-level ghosting.
Waiting for Patch 1.0.6
Alkimia Interactive and THQ Nordic have a track record of actively patching the game, having recently addressed softlocks and balancing issues across the three camps. Given the severity of the RTX 5090 performance regression and the widespread reports of motion clarity issues, it is highly likely that these technical hurdles are currently on the studio’s internal tracker.
Until the next major optimization patch drops, PC players will have to rely on careful settings management, frame rate capping, and a healthy dose of patience. The colony is harsh, and right now, the engine rendering it is proving to be just as unforgiving.