The next installment in Bethesda and MachineGames re-imagined and critically acclaimed Wolfenstein series, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, is due for release on July 26. The title which is set many years after the events of the excellent Wolfenstein II sees players take on the role of B.J. Blazkowicz' daughters in a new Nazi-shooting action romp set in an alternate 1980s Paris.

One that for the first time will allow the entire campaign to be played in two-player co-op. In a new announcement we've word that the game will support ray-tracing effects at launch. In addition to the RTX specific NVIDIA Adaptive Shading tech that when turned on in Wolfenstein II saw massive performance gains across multiple RTX cards. Ray-tracing, which presents a glimpse at the future of lighting can often lead to stunning results.

“Wolfenstein: Youngblood is an innovative take on the original franchise, which has a rich history of using forward-looking technologies to set its games apart,” said Matt Wuebbling, head of GeForce marketing at NVIDIA. “Bethesda’s use of ray tracing will dramatically enhance the image quality, while NVIDIA Adaptive Shading will boost performance.”

No word yet on specifically what ray-tracing effects the game will use, but if we're to assume that it's running on the same id Tech engine as the most previous release we're in for a treat. According to the announcement Wolfenstein: Youngblood will be using the NVIDIA VKRay extension for the Vulkan API for ray-tracing which could very well lead to the best performing ray-traced title so far.



“With Wolfenstein: Youngblood, a whole new generation of gamers could be getting their first exposure to the Wolfenstein franchise, and we want to make sure it blows them away,” added Jim Kjellin, chief technology officer at MachineGames. “With NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX GPUs, we have access to technologies that deliver spectacular images and still maintain the performance necessary for flawless gameplay.”

As per the 4K trailer above the game will be bundled with select GeForce RTX 20-Series graphics cards (including desktops and laptops) from now until August 6. This news is also great because odds are we'll get to see a similar implementation of ray-tracing and NVIDIA Adaptive Shading in the highly anticipated DOOM Eternal.