Resident Evil 2 uses sharpening at all times even without AA enabled. Giving a false impression of just how much the TAA aggresively filters the image compared to without AA. (Making it seem like you are losing more information than you actually are) The sharpening is no doubt intended only to be used when TAA is enabled but it is not disabled with AA disabled.

The sharpening can be disabled via a hex edit or a small patch from someone on the WSGF linked at the bottom. But I wouldn't recommend disabling it if you are going to use TAA.

Anti Aliasing recommendation
I would recommend using a light sharpening pass on top of the in game sharpening with TAA+FXAA with Reshade for the least performance heavy option to improve IQ to bring high frequency levels similar to without AA (And sharpening disabled) without going overboard.


If you have the option and extra headroom I would also recommend you also use downsampling on top. DSR/VSR have a much better resolve filter than the in game resolution scaling (probably a basic linear resolve). But the in game resolution scale is a lot sharper than DSR by default. And with sharpening on top it will look just that much sharper.

I can't stress enough how much downsampling on top makes a difference in this engine with the TAA, much like RE7. If your GPU can handle it 150% resolution scale in game or 2.25x DSR (Which is equivalent to 150% in game as 2.25x is 1.5 of each axis. Resulting in an actual 225% difference in resolution) is a good middle ground for performance and image quality (whether you want 60FPS or only have a card capable of a stable 30 at this resolution)

(In some examples below I use Reshade FXAA with tuned settings over the TAA+FXAA option in game as that FXAA doesn't do as good of a job cleaning up the edge quality for what the TAA misses. I would only use this if you are downsampling using DSR or VSR and not the in game resolution scale.
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/127961)

Options to disable or lower to improve IQ and or performance so you can use some Downsampling or Resolution scaling.

• Screen Space Reflections - SSR in the RE engine is some of the worst out there, with low quality noisy output filtered with an even poorer reconstruction filter that causes smearing and ghosting artifacts. It sucks up performance for making image quality worse (Except for with full bodies of water). RE2:R should have an option for "Reflections:Water Only" similar to the Variable setting in RE7. But it doesn't.
  
  Example comparison http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/127625
  Example of ghosting/smearing effect http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/re220190115205043888.png (Look at the surface of the walls near the doors. They are a smeared mess because of SSR)
  
  
• Volumetric Lighting and Shadow resolution - turn these down one notch (Possibly 2 for Shadow res) if you are hurting for performance. In RE7 at 1620p on a GTX 980 (1060 equivalent) this made 1620p at a stable 60FPS possible along with disabling SSAO.
  
  
• Lens distortion - it makes the image blurrier for no reason other than to make the image FoV slightly more camera like. Especially the Chromatic Aberration.
  http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/127626
  
  
• Ambient Occlusion - Turning this off completely if you absolutely need to will help out with performance a lot in your quest for better image quality. Similar example, turning SSAO off helps achieve a solid 60FPS in Re7 at 1620p on a 980/1060.

Image quality comparisons

We want the No AA image without the built in sharpening as our baseline of how the game should look. (As it should be disabled without TAA enabled. But it isn't)

• No AA (No sharpening in game) http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/NoAASharpeningdisabl.jpg
  
• No AA (Sharpening enabled) http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/NoAAwithsharpening.png
  
• TAA without sharpening in game http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/TAAwithoutsharpening.jpg
  
• TAA with sharpening in game http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/TAAwithsharpeninging.jpg
  
• TAA with sharpening in game + lumasharp http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/ccbTAAwithsharpeninging.jpg
  
• 150% res scale + in game sharpening +TAA-FXAA (No external sharp) http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/678150resscaleingamesha.jpg
  
• 150% res scale + in game sharpening +TAA-FXAA +Lumasharp at 1080p output http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/150resscaleingamesha.jpg
  
• 2.25x DSR TAA sharpen in game + Reshade FXAA +Luma Sharpen at 1620p http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/225xDSRTAAsharpening.jpg
  
• 2.25x DSR TAA sharpen in game + Reshade FXAA+High Pass sharp at 1620p http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/d69225xDSRTAAsharpening.jpg

And a couple interactive comparisons
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/127959
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/127960
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/127956
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/127957
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/127958

As you can see, the in game sharpening is highly aggressive in order to compensate for the equally aggressive TAA. But when it's still enabled without AA enabled, it causes a false impression that the final TAA option in the game is much blurrier than it is actually intended to be .
As the sharpening+No AA causes a hugely disproportionate impression of how the game actually looks without AA.

In regards to interlacing

I've tried the interlaced rendering mode all the way up to about 2376p and honestly it just doesn't look that good. The TAA can't really effectively cleanup what looks to be maybe half vertical resolution or something there abouts (it's not real field rendering). This leads to increased moire and specular and vertical shimmering. 2.25xSSAA+TAA/FXAA/Sharpening looks better in motion than 4.84xSSAA+TAA/FXAA+Interlaced rendering while taking up similar levels of GPU power on an RTX 2080.

• http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/128057 (225% Normal vs 494% Interlaced)
  
• http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/128056 (Native comparison TAA normal vs interlaced)
  
• Interlaced with horizontal movement (notice looks overall ok but vertical edges are twice as big. https://abload.de/img/2376pinterlacedhorizozejkr.jpg https://abload.de/img/2376pinterlacedvertic5nkc4.jpg
  
• Interlaced with vertical movement (notice the majority of the edges are doubled)

Without AA enabled and downsampling it looks almost as bad as no AA.

However, if you have a lower end GPU using downsampling as high as possible plus TAA+Interlaced will still produce a better looking image that is much sharper (Especially using resolution scale rather than DSR) than running at native resolution with only TAA. So if sharpness is something you love. This may be a better option for you.

Use this as a springboard for your own ideas.

Don't bother trying to force AA from your GPU control panel, as with Nvidia GPUs this is impossible under DX11. Anything you see is a placebo. The functionality doesn't exist. MSAA will not work, MFAA will not work (requires MSAA in game). FXAA will, but that's redundant.

If you hate the TAA that much and want to use just SMAA or FXAA. Disable the in game sharpening first via this from the WSGF http://www.wsgf.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=174169#p174169 It will look much nicer. Though be wary that this game has an insane amount of aliasing from every possible source in the engine and basic Post Process Edge AA will not do much in motion. Even with downsampling on top , significant temporal aliasing issues persist greatly.