So I just finished Ryse. Definitely the kind of game that I like, because it's relatively easy to play since I don't really have much time to play games. Anyway, In the very fist scene/stage where you're just outside of the emperor castle where your men made a barricade, I played with some of the graphic setting. At 50% res (1080p native, game at 540p), I can actually turn on all of the graphic to high except of motion blur. I don't know if it is because of the blur or the fps actually drop, but it did felt slow with it on. One of the annoying thing with motion blur is that the dev seems to like motion blur, thus every time you change the shading quality, it turns the motion blur on! for example, I choose high, then it automatically turn on the motion blur even if it was off before. Then I change shading to low and it also turn on the motion blur! WTF!
FPS definitely took a noticeable hit if I upped the resolution, so I stay with the lowest game rendering res (540p) and turn up all of the graphic options (except motion blur), since you might as well turn it up because the hit wasn't really noticeable. The AA definitely helps. When I play the game on TV (not monitor), since there are some distance between my TV and my couch, with AA on, it felt like watching a good SD movie (almost no aliasing).
Hopefully every devs decouple rendering with GUI, because that is probably one of the most important thing that helps the experience running the game at 540p a lot more tolerable. Actually I don't mind running the games at 360p as long as it looked smooth (no aliasing!) and the GUI stays at 1080p. I do notice that when I played the game from regular PC monitor distance, the resolution is probably not adequate (personally I don't mind it, but it is definitely will bother a lot of people.