We were surprised (in a negative way) to learn that The Ascent on Game Pass PC launched with broken ray tracing and missing NVIDIA DLSS support compared to the game's Steam version. Luckily, a patch was issued last Friday that fixed the broken ray tracing, at least.

　　Speaking to VG247, Neon Giant's Game Director Arcade Berg explained why that happened. He also stressed that it's 'absolutely' the developers' intention to make the two versions of The Ascent identical.

　　So they are different versions of the game and there are different processes on how to basically distribute them. But we are updating constantly, you should already have seen an update go live, I believe yesterday. So we’re working on that every single day to make sure that everything is up to snuff.

　　Berg was also asked whether The Ascent could one day receive a crossplay update between PC Steam and Xbox/PC Game Pass. Apparently, that's something the developers would like, but it's far from guaranteed to happen.

　　Want? Yes, of course! But that is quite an endeavour. It’s not something I can promise. I mean, yes, we want that. But I cannot, in good faith, say that it will happen. Because we don’t know.

　　Well, let's hope they can at least add back NVIDIA DLSS support to the Game Pass PC version of The Ascent. Without it, ray tracing becomes too much of a performance strain.