Update 4/20/23: Capcom has announced that Resident Evil 2 and 3’s ray tracing options, as well as the similarly missing 3D audio, have been added back to the games. I popped into RE2 myself to double check and lo and behold: traced rays back where they belong. It’s still unclear what sort of error led to their brief departure in the first place, but all’s well that ends well, and Racoon City is back to looking all spiffy and next gen.

Update 04/18/23: Capcom has posted from the official Resident Evil account and says this was a mistake. “We’re aware of an ongoing issue with the raytracing option not appearing in the graphics menu and presets,” reads the notice. “We’ll have this addressed in a future update and apologize for any inconvenience!”

Original story: First noted by user pmc64 on Reddit, Capcom has moved ray tracing graphics options from Resident Evils 2 and 3. The next-gen lighting features were added to these games, as well as Resident Evil 7, in a free update last summer that transitioned them to DirectX 12 and also added other graphical features like AMD’s FSR.

I loaded into RE2 myself and, sure enough, no ray tracing. AMD FSR is still there, and running the game in its older DirectX 11 configuration (which does not have these options) is an opt-in choice via a Steam beta branch. The change seems to correspond to an update on April 14, documented here by SteamDB. 

I’m unable to confirm the status of the other games boosted by last year’s next-gen update as I do not own them, but commenters on Reddit say RE3 is also affected, and that game was also updated on the 14th. Wccftech also suggests that Resident Evil 7 has lost its ray tracing options, but was unable to confirm, and that game does not have a corresponding update on April 14. I checked the Resident Evil 4 remake just to be thorough, and that game’s ray tracing remains accessible.

I own a sub-four figure graphics card, so I’m a ray tracing hater⁠—I’ve never found it worth the performance hit. Still, this change is perplexing and certainly a source of some good old fashioned consumer rage: “You gave me ray tracing! No takesies backsies!” I’ve reached out to Capcom and will update this story if we receive a response, but my gut tells me that this is a temporary change, possibly in error, and that traced rays will soon return to Racoon City.