Vávra Defends DLSS 5 in KCD2 - and the 'AI Slop' Fight Gets Loud

Daniel Vávra has never met a controversy he'd tiptoe around, and DLSS 5 was not going to be the exception. The Kingdom Come: Deliverance director jumped into the ugliest tech argument of the season this week, posting a before-and-after comparison from KCD2 and telling critics of Nvidia's latest upscaling stack that people have gone crazy for calling it AI slop.

His argument, as reported by PC Gamer: DLSS 5 doesn't touch the geometry of the models or the look of the characters. What it does, in his telling, is lift limitations the team couldn't get around - the engine's lighting system couldn't render shadows, skin and fine normal-map detail the way Warhorse intended, and the processed image lands closer to that original vision. His words: "I am the creative director of the game. This is our original artistic vision."

Then he fired a "your human slop bores me" meme back at the critics, because Vávra is going to Vávra.

The "artistic vision" card is stronger than people admit

Here's the thing the mob doesn't want to hear: if the person who directed the game says the DLSS 5 output matches what they were trying to build all along, then "slop" is the wrong word by definition. Slop is what happens when nobody chose the result. This was chosen, by the guy with final say over the art. You're allowed to hate the look - I have opinions about aggressive post-processing too - but "the author signed off on it" beats "the internet decided it's a filter" every single time.

And let's be honest about the other side of that coin. DLSS 5 earned its skeptics. The early showcases had that over-processed sheen people latched onto, and once "beauty filter" becomes the meme, no comparison screenshot digs you out of it.

Screenshots are not evidence. Motion is.

This is where I get off both trains. Static before-and-after shots - Vávra's included - tell you almost nothing about how an upscaler actually behaves. Every DLSS generation has looked great in stills and then revealed its trade-offs in motion, in fine detail, in the stuff launch slides conveniently skip. If you play competitive anything, clarity in motion and latency are the whole conversation; a prettier screenshot that smears a moving target is a downgrade, full stop.

So here's my boring, data-driven position: stop arguing with memes. Toggle it on your own panel, A/B it in the scenes you actually play, and watch it move. If KCD2 with DLSS 5 looks the way Warhorse wanted it to look and holds up at speed, great - that's the tech doing its job. If it doesn't, no amount of "original artistic vision" will make your eyes wrong. Vávra gets to define the intent. Your monitor gets the final vote.

Image: FreeMediaKid! / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nvidia_GeForce_RTX_5060_Ti_16GB,_PNY_Overclocked_Dual_Fan,_front.jpg