Dragon Age, Indiana Jones, and Avowed are the Next Games to get Full Ray Tracing on PC

Two of the biggest games recently released, Black Myth: Wukong and Star Wars Outlaws, look incredible on PC thanks to high-end visuals that include ‘full ray tracing’ modes. Full or path tracing is the next evolution of ray tracing because it uses realistic and accurate lighting across various in-game effects - reflections, shadows, global illumination, ambient occlusion, and more. If there’s something light-related, it’s probably ray-traced.

Real-time path tracing in games was introduced with the GeForce RTX 40 Series and the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 and seen in visually impressive titles like Cyberpunk 2077 (using the game’s new RT Overdrive mode), and NVIDIA’s impressive Portal with RTX remaster. 

The following Star Wars Outlaws trailer from Ubisoft and NVIDIA is a great primer on what full ray-tracing brings to the digital table. 

Just like enabling a single ray-tracing effect on the PlayStation 5 console, full ray tracing is hardware intensive to the point that it’s only possible on modern GeForce RTX 40 Series hardware, thanks to RTX technologies like DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation, Ray Reconstruction, and Reflex - a suite of AI and intelligent rendering tools that improve performance and visual fidelity while lowering system latency. 

Even though you need a high-end PC with GeForce RTX GPU to play games with ray-tracing or full ray-tracing, more and more titles are dipping into this cutting-edge technology in 2024. At Gamescom 2024, NVIDIA and the GeForce team announced three new partnerships: PC games on the horizon that will ship with full ray-tracing modes. 

The first is BioWare’s long-awaited Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which will run on everything from a Steam Deck to a moderately-powered gaming laptop to an Xbox Series S. Paired with a GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU, though, and the visuals hit a new level of fidelity. And DLSS 3, as seen in the trailer, will push performance into triple-digit territory.

Next up is Avowed from Obsidian, a new RPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe to launch in February 2024. As you can see in the following RTX trailer, the game’s ray-tracing will be a game changer for the visuals on PC, transforming cave systems and lush environments to make them look more like scenes from a CGI film.

Finally, there’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - one of the year's most anticipated game releases. Developed by Machine Games, the team behind the brilliant modern Wolfenstein games, this globe-trotting adventure blends cinematic thrills with first-person exploration, puzzle solving, and Nazi punching. 

Although we have yet to get an RTX-specific trailer for this one, NVIDIA and Bethesda have confirmed that on PC, the game is set to debut with a full ray-tracing mode to ramp up the cinematic immersion. As the game runs on the latest version of id Software’s id Tech engine (which runs incredibly well on PC), expect this to be a ray-tracing showcase when it debuts.

Indiana Jones + GeForce RTX. Yeah, we can't wait for this one.