That’s exactly what we’re here to talk about, so let’s dive right in, beginning with…

Our Setup And Performance

Let’s start with our testing rig so you can better match what we’re about to tell you to your own setup and think about what settings you can adjust to ensure you get the most out of the game when you play it. We ran Crimson Desert on an AMD Ryzen 5950x processor, a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU, and 32 GB of RAM, making this build sit somewhere in between the High and Ultra recommendations from the developer.

Most of the testing was conducted during daytime in-game, as nighttime generally delivers better performance and is less demanding on system resources. Playing at night was an almost invariable boost to performance thanks to fewer NPCs and, by extension, lesser activity in the open world. We had DLSS 4.5 on while we had to turn off Ray Reconstruction as we found it tanked performance. Everything else was switched to Cinematic, which is the game’s maximum graphical setting.

On that setup, we found that Quality mode gave us anything between 35-42 fps, and Balanced churned out about 40-45 fps. Performance mode managed to bring that up to 48-52 fps, while Ultra Performance, which we highly recommend, gave us 64-68 fps. Obviously, it should be noted that the more aggressive the scaler we selected, the more noticeable image dithering became (although at an acceptable level.)

A Massive Open World

It was evident that Crimson Desert was going for an experience that was trying to present a fantasy adventure on an unprecedented scale from the game’s first few hours. It was evident from the moment we were let loose into the open world that this was a game that aimed for a blend of realistic fantasy with stylized spectacle thrown in at moments where it would have the most impact. We’re happy to say that the game’s look is quite unique, carried by both its art direction and effective use of modern rendering technologies to make the entire experience feel cohesive. Its systems work together quite well to present Pywell as a living, breathing world that’s just waiting to show you what it can do.

If we were to pick from various factors that could visually define a game such as Crimson Desert, we’d have to say that the sheer scale of the world it presents, along with its rich animations, are the stars of the show. However, that doesn’t mean that its weather, world density, and the spectacle it presents when blades are drawn are lacking. You simply uncover those facets of the experience only after you spend a little time with it.

We’re going to be honest. This one’s quite a photogenic game. The terrain quality, for instance, has every surface in the game looking so meticulously detailed that it automatically catches your eye. Individual pebbles, blades of grass, leaves, flowers, and other important parts of the world stand out well enough to make you feel like Pywel’s biomes are thriving.

Rock formations look authentic, reflecting the years of weathering that helped them form. The foliage peppering the world you move through stands out too, responding quite convincingly to the weather.

And don’t get us started on the draw distance. It’s absolutely jaw-dropping. Pywel is a sprawling world with so much to see that it almost makes you feel like discovering everything it has to offer is daunting. The sheer scope of the world you see is excellent, and dropping down from the Abyss to glide over the land below you is certainly a sight to see. Countless times, I found myself standing at the edge of a cliff, simply taking in the beauty on offer. At times, it felt almost unreal.

It’s easy to spot individual settlements and points of interest from the sky, and with so many places to visit, picking a landing spot can be surprisingly difficult. Being able to see all of it from up high never got old for us, and it probably never will.

It’s also impressive from a gameplay perspective, because gliding down is an exciting way to set off into the unknown. The draw distance and terrain quality hold up remarkably well even from afar, as you hurtle toward the ground. We often found ourselves changing direction mid-flight to investigate an interesting ruin or a camp full of enemies. Swooping down on them from above was always fun, and it also made for a great way to open combat against larger groups.

In settlements, you have a lot of crowds to make each place you visit feel like it’s lived in. NPCs had their own routines for the most part, while object clutter in such areas was always believable and implemented quite well. Unfortunately, noticeable pop-in was a frequent distraction. We observed numerous instances where objects abruptly loaded into the field of view, resulting in a jarring experience. But overall, prop quality and the general way assets respond to your inputs showcase a world that’s quite immersive for the most part.

All in all, the game’s geometry works really well and is even quite woven into gameplay elements like puzzles, where you use your powers to reassemble crumbled objectives to achieve your objectives. It works well with the environmental detail to sell Crimson Desert’s fantasy setting quite strongly. The sheer scale of the world makes this feel like a true next-gen title, but it’s what you discover within it that really draws you into the adventure across its vast lands.

Lighting Up The World

Speaking to our decision to stick to the daylight for a bigger part of our testing, we must admit that it was a pleasure. But there is an important factor about the game’s implementation of nighttime environments that we must discuss.

Going chronologically, the game’s lighting during the day is excellent. It’s almost as if the land and its people are soaking in the sun, basking in its warm glow even as they go about their daily lives, Kliff included. The sun’s rays bounce gently off of every surface you see, the game’s path tracing working very well to ensure that even indirect light feels quite authentic.

Enter a building and the game adapts quite well on the fly, ensuring that its lighting systems make that transition along with you. Dusk, for instance, bathes the world in a soft glow as the sun sets, while your shadows deepen appropriately, growing darker and more defined.

Your shadows, and those of people and objects around you, constantly react to rays of light in a way that feels very real. At night, the world’s colors get suitably muted, and while you might find it a tad too dark in certain locations, it’s quite immersive for the most part.

The glow from torches and lanterns becomes more pronounced as the darkness creeps up, but we didn’t feel the need to whip out Kliff’s lantern unless we were at some of the darkest locations possible, like a dungeon, for instance. The lighting is dynamic on all fronts, working well to bring the scenes it’s illuminating to life.

Most importantly, the lighting works in tandem with the game’s environmental detail to truly make this one feel like a next-gen open-world title. The best in the genre often rely on how well their various systems come together, and Crimson Desert has done very well to remember that.

An Immersive Atmosphere

Working in tandem with the lighting and detailing are the game’s volumetrics, atmosphere, and weather systems. The fog quality is quite good in the places you encounter it, while mists in valleys and forests almost feel like you could reach out and touch them. They work very well to set a gloomy mood in places where you find them.

But in bright, sunny weather, the clouds above are rendered quite well, and move very believably as you tear across the ground. A gentle breeze is almost always throwing up leaves and dust as you make your way through the game’s various biomes, and it picks up quite well in the event of rain or storms, gaining an appropriate boost to its velocity.

The rain is highly visible as it falls, and when combined with the wind and the way bad weather transforms the world’s atmosphere, it creates an effect that’s easy to appreciate. That becomes even more apparent in story cutscenes, where shifts in the weather can instantly set the mood and enhance the impact of a scene.

It also does the same for when you’re travelling around the world, working to present a strong contrast with the bright and cheery scenes where the game’s lighting systems are playing to their strengths. These atmospheric systems highlight the game’s impressive low-light rendering, sometimes even more effectively than a clear night sky.

Flowing Rivers and Streams

The water physics in Crimson Desert are quite impressive. We didn’t see a water body that felt static, with rivers, shorelines, puddles, and waterfalls all reacting to what was happening around them, be it in their terrain interactions or environmental simulations. The waterfalls, in particular, were spellbinding and are great places to take a minute and process all that you’ve encountered since you last left camp.

Still waters are equally enthralling, reflecting the world around them while gentle ripples from the breeze move those reflections around so well they could become a very welcome distraction. Waves come in very believably before crashing onto the shore, the sea breeze making Klyff’s cape flow very dynamically in the direction it chooses.

Your footsteps on puddles and still ponds create realistic splashes, and your footprints on damp grounds are also a highlight when you get to see it all in action. In all of it, the water is a part of the simulation that works very well to make Pywell a land that’s equally suited for quiet, contemplative moments as well as one in which your emotions run high.

It’s a good thing, then, that the character models are as good as they are.

Character Models

Kliff stands out as the game’s protagonist thanks to the developers’ strong attention to detail when it comes to his character, and it seems that the rest of Pywell’s people are also quite pleasing to the eye. Irrespective of whether the person you’re looking at is a friend or a foe, the character models are a very immersive part of Crimson Desert’s fantasy setting.

The quality of faces in cutscenes is passable, with emotions coming across effectively enough to have you invested in the events unfolding in front of you. The impressive material rendering of the armor will frequently motivate you to equip Kliff and your Greymane companions with gear that is both effective and visually stunning.

Cloth simulation is excellent, with capes behaving very realistically and interacting with any gear slotted onto your back very well. The hair movement on both your characters and NPCs is done really well, which is especially pronounced thanks to the fantasy setting where long, impressive beards on warriors give them a distinct identity.

The lip-sync and general flow of animations in conversations are acceptable for the most part, although a few NPCs could stand to show a little more expression. It felt they were a tad too slow to put some emotion on their faces, and it’s something that stood out enough for us to notice.

As far as combat animations are concerned, the character models do a great job of reinforcing a clear visual distinction whenever you switch between playable characters, though the game is at its best when a boss is on screen. We loved the variety of bosses throughout our time with the game, especially the quality of their visual rendering, whether in the detailed armor of human foes or the fur of monstrous enemies. Each one feels visually impressive and distinct, with attacks that flow naturally from one move to the next, while your own animations carry a satisfying sense of weight in response.

Motion blur is implemented quite well, helping with the cinematic side of things along with screen shake and excellent destruction cues that make each fight intense and even daunting at times. Boss introductions are handled well, and give them an imposing flavor before we even draw our blades. When they’re in action, the game does well to communicate elemental attacks well enough to give you the right amount of time to respond, another factor that helps the game sustain a smooth flow of combat. It’s a strong part of the experience, and it certainly helps that the fights themselves are just as enjoyable.

The Spectacle of Great Combat

Kliff’s moves are a sight to behold, with each new one you unlock coming with particle effects that add a very realistic touch of fantasy to the experience. There are cool effects and animations that accompany them that make for fights that are very nice to look at. That’s also in operation when you glide around, but it’s combat where they truly shine, considering just how much is happening on-screen.

Use a move that’s supposed to slam the ground, and you see stone crumble at the weight of your attack, and it’s likewise for enemies. Debris flies up from such destruction, and the world reacts quite well to your actions to make things stand out even in the heat of battle. That holds for other moves whose effects interact with the world around you, or enemies.

There are a few animations with effects that can prove distracting enough to break the flow of combat, but it’s quite easy to get back into a rhythm once you start to anticipate them and react accordingly. It’s still worth mentioning and is an area where the graphics could work against you, at least in the game’s early hours.

It’s a factor in our opinion that the game favors cinematic chaos a tad too much at the cost of gameplay readability, although it’s not imbalanced enough to be a problem. Aside from combat, we think that the game’s ray-tracing systems deserve some attention.

Reflections And Rays

Crimson Desert’s ray tracing and reflections are quite impressive for the most part, which made it all the more frustrating that we had to disable ray reconstruction because of its impact on performance.

Even with that setting turned off, though, ray tracing still added a noticeable layer of polish to the world as a whole. As we’ve already noted, shadows are highly dynamic, while light interacting with water produces convincing, accurate reflections. Metallic surfaces are handled just as well, and overall, ray tracing does make the game world feel more believable.

That said, on our system at least, the visual boost didn’t quite justify the performance cost. Your experience may vary depending on the hardware you’re running, so this is one of those settings that’s worth experimenting with to find the right balance. Given how quickly the game can become demanding, maintaining stable performance should be a priority. Fortunately, even when things get hectic, image quality remains consistently solid.

A Clean, Stable Image Quality

This one’s always a major talking point for PC players, and we’re glad to say that the game’s image quality holds up quite well across the various upscaling modes we tested. The anti-aliasing worked well in both gameplay and cutscenes to make it feel polished; although noticeable dithering was present, it wasn’t very aggressive.

A stable image quality was maintained, irrespective of whether we were riding, sprinting, or gliding. There wasn’t any input latency either, and things were largely stable across the board.

For a game that’s as big as this one, that’s definitely a compliment. But that doesn’t mean that things were all perfect, an impossibility thanks to that very size.

A Few Shortcomings To Consider

We did encounter a bit of stutter on rare occasions, along with instances of low-res textures. The former ironed themselves out but lingered long enough to catch our eye. We were also annoyed to find a few glitches where our character got stuck while he was out and about, but we appreciate the in-game system that helped resolve the problem fairly easily. The loading times were too long for our liking.

Conclusion

As an open-world experience clearly aiming to stand alongside the best the genre has to offer, Crimson Desert puts up an impressive fight. Its world is strikingly ambitious in both size and scope, and in some respects feels comparable to something like Horizon Forbidden West, particularly in terms of its visual style and lighting.

Its physics and animations also come close to matching some of the genre’s heavy hitters, including Elden Ring, though they are not quite as precise, likely in service of making combat more accessible to a wider audience.

When it comes to the world itself and the way it reacts to the player while continuing to function independently, Red Dead Redemption 2 still remains the benchmark, but Crimson Desert makes a remarkably strong case for itself.

Ultimately, Crimson Desert feels like a hugely ambitious project that aimed incredibly high and came close enough to fully realizing that vision to earn a place among our favorite open worlds. Much of that comes down to how well its various systems intersect, creating a world that feels reactive, dynamic, and constantly ready to respond in ways that are both believable and visually impressive.

It’s a world we don’t see ourselves leaving anytime soon, and that’s perhaps the best compliment you can pay to a game with ambitions this grand.

Still, imagine sitting at the foot of that hill – complex, as yet unmade tools and a colossal open world to scale. In-house game engines are rare in modern AAA development due to cost and complexity. But in creating their own platform, the developer has been able to tailor technology around their vision which might not have been possible if they were using Decima, Unity, Unreal Engine, or another.

Crimson Desert’s specific goal appears to be a large, medieval-fantasy world where physics, animations, lighting, weather systems, and more coalesce to reshape the look, feel, and atmosphere of any given scene. From realistic water and volumetric fog, to raytraced lighting and motion capture animation, the breadth of technology that their proprietary BlackSpace engine is capable of is impressive. But, what’s also interesting here isn’t just its graphical horsepower, but in how its systems combine to transform the mood, tone, and physicality of a space beyond presenting it in fine detail.

Individually, are these systems revolutionary? No. Will Crimson Desert’s realism be unparalleled? Depends on your definition. Is it a prime example of how technology and ambition can combine to fully realise artistic vision? Almost certainly, yes.

This feature will unpack what’s beneath BlackSpace’s hood but we’ll keep the tech jargon light. Don’t worry if you don’t know your shaders from your GPUs. This is a game to feel as much as it is to see, after all.

So, custom-building an engine, principally, has given the developer the opportunity to create a large-scale open world with seamless exploration. Pywel’s numerous biomes, from cobbled cities to dense forests, chilling mountain passes, and scorched desert landscapes each render without noticeable interruptions. The game feels fully-loaded from the get go, with consistent high fidelity on distant objects at framerates purported to be smooth and reliable.

On a related note, Digital Foundry was provided with footage which was captured on a high-end PC with a Ryzen 9 7900X3D and Radeon RX 7900 XTX, graphics set to ultra, running at native 4K resolution targeting 60fps. We’ll get to why this is worth pointing out in a moment. First, one small caveat: these recordings were provided by the developer themselves. On one hand, it demonstrates the studio’s confidence in the performance of their game. On the other hand, they’re only going to show what they want to be seen.

We wanted to highlight the hardware though, because the GPU used isn’t current generation, and ultra settings aren’t the most powerful the game offers. However, take this footage at face value and what you’ll see is a game that is optimised for strong performance. This is one of the self-developed engine’s major advantages: it gives ample opportunity to coordinate development with the myriad gameplay systems. If the game needs a specific feature – a physical interaction, destructible item, or weather behaviour, for instance – then the engine team can build a solution right into the software to feed back to the designers.

This streamlining may be how the developer has crafted a world which appears unusually reactive. Lighting, for instance, is one of Crimson Desert’s most notable highlights. The game uses raytraced global illumination for exterior and inside space alike, with the game engine calculating how light reflects, bounces, and scatters to produce indirect natural shading and contrast.

Stoneclad interiors look especially impressive, where marble floors reflect both light and architecture while firelit rooms gain deeper shadows and warmer tones, transforming their emotional resonance. And this is the unexpected takeaway: enabling raytracing doesn’t just introduce more natural-looking light, but renovates these rooms – especially the dark, candlelit ones – into contemplative, intimate, atmospheric spaces.

Likewise, Pywel’s climate goes beyond simulating rain or shine. The BlackSpace engine is able to calculate lighting in real-time to produce weather patterns, volumetric fog, and other atmospherics that shift dynamically throughout the day. In a three-day timelapse demonstration shared by the developer, we see morning mist clinging to the valley floor, only for it to burn away under afternoon sunlight. Bright sunlight communicates the vastness of the landscape, exuding heat not through visual haze but in the real-time effect it has.

Similarly, volumetric fog is capable of communicating a distinct mood. It folds, wraps, and reacts to your movements with precision. Dispersible yet totally enveloping, fog and its fluid simulation feels eerie and mysterious, showing that Crimson Desert’s atmospheric conditions can be vital for worldbuilding.

Water rendering is another technical focus, with the BlackSpace engine using FFT Ocean and Shallow Water Simulation to model surface behaviours more realistically. In practice, this means naturally flowing rivers, cascading waves, and rippling shorelines. The developer demonstrate themselves the effect FFT has on aquatic settings; without the simulation engaged, water looks flat and calm. It’s nice, tranquil almost, but not especially interesting. With FFT simulation enabled, whitewater forms, currents appear lively, and the ocean undulates. Suddenly the water looks less inviting to swimmers. Raytraced water reflections appear here too, most notably on standing pools and lakes, underpinning water’s role in Crimson Desert as a core pillar of the landscape, not simple, static setdressing.

BlackSpace also places heavy emphasis on physical interactions between weather conditions and objects present in the environment, both scattered items and your player-character. Trees and grass sway in the wind and hanging cloth flutters naturally, while hair and clothing react to the breeze and your movements alike.

Clothing, body parts, environmental detritus, and more, each reacts in isolation due to volumetric masking which has allowed the developers to distinguish environmental effects to the minutiae. It’s the same technique which ensures only your horse’s hooves get wet, and stay noticeably wet for a set duration afterward, when you wade across a river on horseback.

When combined with extensive motion capture, the developer has created character and animal models which not only react according to atmospheric conditions but move realistically through the scene too. The studio has invested heavily in performance capture, with reportedly hundreds of high-performance cameras recording actor movements with sixteen megapixel precision, capturing everything from full body motion to subtle finger gestures. And, because capture data was linked to the game engine during recording, developers and actors could immediately see how the performance translates to in-game characters and make real-time adjustments for the next take.

The studio also used a large 3D scanning facility to convert real-world objects into digital assets. Again, hundreds of cameras supported this process, this time arranged in a cylindrical fashion to capture armour, weapons, props, even natural objects like rocks and branches, from multiple angles, turning them into high resolution data that can be quickly placed in-world.

Facial scans capture minute expressions too, with lip tremors, eyelines, and muscle movements bringing detail and tension to characters. Whilst there seems no limit to the developer’s attention to detail, and some of their effort will undoubtedly go unnoticed during regular playthroughs, their intention was to push Crimson Desert’s presentation close to film-level realism. Put simply, they had the vision, and access to the tools to realise that vision.

BlackSpace’s technology impresses on a visual level, yes, but the combination of all its technological features and micro-adjustment potential has given Crimson Desert an open world which feels alive. And, crucially, the manner of that life is shown to constantly shift, both physically and dynamically through something as changeable as the sun setting to the current’s flow around a pile of riverstones. What’s more, the developer’s in-house engine is pledging smooth performance throughout thanks to a streamlined process for optimisation.

Arguably, performance is the most crucial thing. If the developer can deliver this level of fidelity while maintaining strong performance across all platforms then Crimson Desert’s technical ambition might just prove revolutionary after all.

But aside from the people behind great titles like Monster Hunter Wilds, Resident Evil Requiem, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and so many more, there’s an unsung hero that has worked behind the scenes to ensure that each game has brought the vision behind it to life with both substance and style. And it’s managed to do that across varying design philosophies, achieving differing goals each time without requiring a rebuild of the studio’s pipeline with each one.

How has it managed to do so? That’s what we’re here to explore, as we dive into how it has powered some of modern gaming’s best titles in ways that matter.

The Beating Heart Of Some of the Best Titles

It’s a good idea to define the engine itself at this point, and the best way to do that is to look at it as more than just a graphics filter that produces incredible visuals (although it’s gotten quite good at that over the years). It’s a production ecosystem that brings shared tools, talents, and better iteration of key gameplay elements across different teams.

When you look at it as a toolset that builds assets, materials, lighting, animations, and physics while handling streaming all of those elements in real-time as you play any game it powers, you begin to see its potential, and why it deserves its time in the spotlight. What’s more, it scales those systems according to very different performance targets, with each game that it powers bringing different design pillars to the table.

For instance, Resident Evil Biohazard’s focus on setting a very claustrophobic mood via tight spaces and high-fidelity graphics was quite different from the need to showcase scale and run complex systems in games like Monster Hunter Wilds and Dragon’s Dogma 2. Alternatively, Street Fighter 6 needed a more performance-focused approach thanks to the need for slick, responsive gameplay.

It can be tricky for a single engine to sustain a high level of quality across such vastly different experiences, but that’s just what the RE Engine has done, time and time again. But how has it managed to do so over the many years it’s been around?

A Story As Interesting As The Games It Has Powered

Looking at the different phases of how the RE Engine evolved over the years is an interesting look at how it managed to evolve with each title. From 2017 up to 2019, it was utilized in Biohazard, where it operated in controlled spaces with high material fidelity and worked to create lighting control in the environments we explored as Ethan. It did well, but that was simply the beginning of its evolution into what it is today.

2021’s Resident Evil Village expanded its capabilities to include wider environments and differing camera styles whilst sustaining the level of quality it had brought to Ethan’s previous outing. Simultaneously, it also got woven into 2023’s Street Fighter 6, a title in which animations and tight gameplay would become a standard part of the RE Engine’s toolkit. It was quite the level up, and the engine proved more than capable of handling the extra demands being placed on it.

And then came Dragon’s Dogma 2 (2024) and Monster Hunter Wilds (2025). While it had previously handled open environments, the engine would need to power an entire world this time around, while also handling the added load of complex systems that were constantly interacting with each other to present a more dynamic map for its players. That might have been a challenge, but the RE Engine sailed through with flying colors.

Which brings us to Resident Evil Requiem, where the results of its evolution over the years are there for all to see. It has brought a very extensive lighting system in that one, and some very fine details on its characters and environments to bring an almost ethereal layer of cinematic quality to the whole thing, making Grace and Leon’s adventure feel more real than any of the titles in the franchise’s illustrious history.

But how does it manage to achieve all of this with so much style? We’re glad you asked.

Bringing The Magic To Life

Any tool is only as good as the input you feed into it, and the RE Engine is no different. Its excellence begins with providing real-world references of the materials and environments it’s meant to reproduce, a process that involves capturing textures, programming photogrammetry, and accurately representing imperfections on surfaces. That might seem like a lot of effort, but giving the engine believable inputs helps it create similarly realistic outputs.

The next step is to create assets with a suitably high level of detail. High-poly sculpts, lots of compressing high-resolution meshes into lower polygon models with their geometry still intact, integrating UVs, and baking, which is pre-computing complex details like lighting and shadows in order to reduce the load on streaming in real-time. All of these help the engine make efficient use of available resources while sustaining the best possible level of quality across the board. There are also details like collisions and streaming splits to consider, all of which run in the background while you interact with your game. Great examples of this phase in action are the open worlds in Wilds and DD2, where long drawn distances with a lot of dynamically interacting objects make having an effective strategy toward the level of detail on display paramount. But it’s equally important in experiences like Biohazard, where there are fewer objects, but the closer camera perspective puts more scrutiny on each one.

The next step is where realism is born, as Physically Based Rendering (PBR) is done on assets to ensure that they interact with light and present a realistic simulation of how each object would behave in the real world. It’s where objects are programmed to interact with light based on physical traits such as roughness, metallic surfaces, dirt, wetness, decals, and other crucial parameters.

Look at the streets in Requiem, for instance. It’s quite easy to see how a street in normal weather looks and feels different from the same one once it’s had a bit of rain to add a layer of moisture to the environment, with light glancing off wet surfaces to present a more realistic reflection on not just roads, but cars and windows. It’s a sort of emphasis on microdetails and realistic reproductions of real-world scenarios.

Next, the environments make way for animations, with rigging, blending, and motion capture being crucial in presenting readability of player and enemy movements, camera behaviour in intense situations, and hit reactions across the board. This is a crucial step in games like SF6 and Monster Hunter Rise, where smooth framerates, frame clarity, effect discipline, and animation timing readability all play a role in giving players smooth, responsive combat systems that allow a game to feel as immersive and engaging as it can be.

Lighting and rendering are another big step, with direct and indirect light having to work in tandem to give scenes a proper mood while accurate shadows keep it grounded. There are also volumetrics and fog to consider, and they are important factors in crafting the right atmosphere for any given in-game event, while reflections via ray tracing make it all come together. A great example of this would be Village, where there were a ton of different environments, each with complex setups, similar to Requiem, where lighting paths were an important part of the experience.

Next, there are details like exposure, tone mapping, Lookup Tables (LUTs), which act as a sort of automated translator that applies color schemes to scenes, bloom, depth of field, and motion blur, which must all be woven in to give games that cinematic feel without taking things too far. Restraint is an important sentiment in this step, as overdoing it ruins all of the engine’s hard work. Village, for instance, handled this very well with varying scenarios exhibiting an excellently consistent cinematic quality.

All of these steps help the RE Engine achieve the results it managed in the titles it has powered. Its ability to optimize and scale according to a game’s needs as opposed to the game being needed to be molded to fit within its framework is a superpower of sorts, allowing it to be a versatile tool that has handled a bunch of varying requirements. It was able to handle different hardware targets in Rise, while also handling the systemic load from Wilds and the CPU-heavy world simulation in DD2.

Versatility Across Genres

This is our favorite part, as we get to see just how the RE Engine has managed to make itself a crucial part of the success its games have enjoyed, and the reason it has managed to be an engine that works across genres.

Resident Evil has been a great showcase of how it can present tight, high-fidelity environments with aplomb, with very realistic close-ups of differing materials, nuanced lighting, and very moody atmospheres that sell the fear and tension that the franchise is known for very well. Once again, looking at even a few minutes of Requiem’s gameplay or cutscenes is enough to prove its chops.

When it comes to massive worlds with a lot going on in them, the engine has once again risen to the occasion. It handles the worlds in Monster Hunter and DD2 with style, balancing a multitude of factors like streaming assets, sustaining LODs and traversal speed, simulating systems, and handling memory pressure across platforms with a fairly consistent experience across the board for all players.

In SF6, where a performance-first approach dictated the entirety of its gameplay loop, the engine maintained stable framerates while allowing for excellent animation and effect clarity, factors that were tantamount to presenting the explosive action that the game needed to stand out.

Heck, it also proved quite good for remasters, with Dead Rising Deluxe and Ghost Trick being fine examples of how it can bring older games to life. But Requiem is probably its magnum opus, with an astounding sharpness to its microdetails that stay intact even in motion-intensive situations, stable lighting responses across surfaces, excellent geometry and hair physics, and clean reflections with accurate shadows that really sell the scenes where they operate.

It can be easy to just say it’s insanely good at powering the best of what the developer offers, but that would be doing it an injustice.

What Does The RE Engine Mean For Modern Gaming?

Aside from what it manages to do in-game, it’s also what it manages to do behind the scenes that makes this one so relevant to a generation of games that are constantly getting more ambitious.

As an engine built from the ground up, its assets, tools, technical know-how, optimizations, and workflows allow for both consistency and compounding benefits to the studio with every successive release. It isn’t an engine that just puts out pretty graphics easily, but is now a benchmark in game production.

As the worlds in our games get bigger and lighting gets more ambitious, engines that scale well become the competitive edge. And the RE Engine is one that’s doing a hell of a good job on that front. We can’t wait to see where it shows up next, but you can bet that we’re going to be diving in with a smile on our faces, secure in the knowledge that this is an engine that’s capable of making great games even better.

You see it in the very first moment you have Grace walk along a busy street on the way to her objective. You see it in the first shot of Raccoon City, a gaping crater that was once a place full of activity and life. You see it in the close-ups of Leon and Grace, their expressions coming across so clearly thanks to excellent character models and facial animations.

Every frame of the game looks like it was pre-rendered in motion, lending the entire experience a level of photorealistic quality that goes beyond just looking good in an experience that comes together quite well to make your skin crawl and hair stand on end.

But before that, a quick disclaimer about the footage you’re currently seeing might be in order. There could be a bit of sharpening, some crushed blacks, and a slightly lower level of detail thanks to captured footage being compressed. But rest assured, that isn’t the case with the actual game on the PS5 Pro. Requiem scores well on several parameters like lighting, material realism, natural depth, and image stability, even in its most demanding moments.

A Sublime Lighting System

The game’s promotional materials all pointed to the excellent use of light and its crucial role in stealth sections involving Grace. But it’s more than just that. Every scenario in the game, from a busy street to a desolate corner of the Rhodes Hill Care Center are all brought to life in a way that catches the eye from the minute you load in.

There’s a frankly astounding level of detail on display, and the lighting does well to highlight it in dark spaces where your flashlight or lighter is your only source of illumination. Their beams move tangibly differently, lighting up your surroundings based on how those beams would reflect off surfaces in the real world.

A conversation between two characters with a flaming building as its backdrop has you seeing shadows that flicker with the flames, their warm glow contrasting with the harrowed expressions on the faces they light up. In darker spaces, the inky blacks that come at you almost feel suffocating, a facet of the experience that’s underlined whenever the Stalker is in play.

The light becomes all the more important when it’s in short supply, making a well-lit room feel so very safe thanks to the stark contrast it presents to the darkness you were navigating just moments ago. Light and shadows interact so well, with a believable spill of rays around corners, lamps, and candles casting dynamic shadows that move with their subjects, while your characters are reflected back at you on glass surfaces that you look at.

Raccoon City looks ridiculously detailed in its ruined state, and the lighting does so much of the mood work. With the advanced AO in play, the destruction reads as dense and tangible, but there’s also this intentionally dulled, lifeless tone over everything. Even the RPD feels sad now, like a place that’s already lost. It honestly makes me wonder what the game would feel like if the developer ever went full open-world with it.

The first-person camera is definitely our choice when it comes to admiring the game’s lighting, and it’s of such a cinematic quality that it’s genuinely hard to tell the difference between in-game moments and cutscenes. But lighting alone doesn’t make for great visuals.

Graphical Parameters That Stand Out

All the light in the world would not have helped sell the experience that Requiem is trying to present if the environments, people, and objects being lit up were not up to scratch. That’s clearly not the case in Requiem, and when you’re treated to a close-up on any character, you’re going to see why.

Individual hairs on Grace and Leon’s heads swing gently in the breeze, while beads of sweat glisten on Grace’s face and arms when she’s in a particularly bothersome situation, even as Leon’s temples remain blissfully dry, his calm demeanour being reflected in his appearance. At some point, a short swim in a vat of what suspiciously looks like blood continues to leave the character involved with a red hue on their hands as they navigate the rest of that level.

The facial animations could have you believing that there are real actors on your screen, and not animated models that have been prepared to make things look as real as they can get. Grace’s abject terror at the ordeal she’s being forced to endure shines through in almost every frame that focuses on her face, her fear being reflected in her eyes. Her concern for a new character is also quite evident, as is her anger at another point in the story. Every close-up shot or camera stare showcases emotion as well as expression, helping sell the game’s CG-like realism quite well.

Leon and Gideon are also highlights, each character’s personality being conveyed through their frowns, smirks, and a generally high quality of lip syncing that helps the voice acting match the gravitas of a grim situation. And there are a lot of those in the game thanks to a bevy of enemy designs that are absolutely horrific, as they should be.

You can see the pained expressions on the faces of zombies, a somber reminder of the people they used to be before their transformation. The Stalkers and other bigger threats are just grotesque, and the manner in which their bodies respond to your bullets or other weapons is incredibly detailed and well implemented. Chunks of flesh are ripped off their bodies in real-time, the trajectory of your bullets being reflected so well with each new shot.

Their faces contort in pain, every hit they take being conveyed back to you in excruciating detail, just as it is when you take some damage of your own. It all takes place so seamlessly that bringing up a pause menu can feel quite disconcerting in the heat of the moment, jerking you out of moments that are so engaging you forget the borders of your screen even exist.

Blood behaves so realistically, you might even find yourself diving out of the way of it in the event your character meets their death at the hands of an enemy. The death animations for both your characters and enemies are absolutely brutal, made all the more satisfying by the game’s incredible approach to its material realism.

A Tailored Approach to Visual Fidelity

It could have been easy to oversell the photorealism of it all, but Requiem cleverly avoids that trap, using its volumetrics and elements very well to present environments that feel as they should. Faraway shots of Rhodes Hill showcase a creeping fog that interacts so well with the objects around it that it looks very natural.

In another shot, Leon’s Porsche speeds down a busy street, its sleek paint reflecting the lights around it while the road looks ever so well-detailed, glistening with a slight sheen of rain on its surface. None of these details looks too overdone, but work so well to present an immersive experience that they stand out nonetheless.

It helps that the PS5 Pro is able to sustain a clear, sharp image with very few instances of jagged edges or shimmer that we could see during our time with the game. That’s as true for intense moments in the gameplay as it is for cutscenes, the console’s image upscaling capabilities doing a good job of making sure things stay as smooth as they can be.

It’s also probably good that there’s more headroom for ray tracing, and for streaming textures and sustaining a level of detail that lends Requiem its filmy quality. That’s especially true in the game’s second half, when all of its systems come together to present moments where the story fires on all cylinders.

There are views from familiar buildings, sweeping shots of locations that can have you smiling to yourself, a chase sequence that we’re still not fully recovered from, and level designs that are just outstanding with the way verticality is used to present specific moments.

You get reminded that you’re in a video game when you see an NPC walk slightly more stiffly than they would in real life, or when the occasional shimmer around a character’s hair or some volumetric noise pops up. A few texture streaming hiccups around elevators or during fast turns were also a way to remind ourselves that this was still a video game. But in one that’s as terrifying as Requiem, we’re going to say we were grateful for those reminders.

Cinematic Cohesion

Requiem’s near-cinematic level of quality comes not just from the effective use of several pillars of good CG design, but in the way they’ve all been lovingly made to work in tandem with each other, which lends the experience a layer of immersion that’s going to be the RE Engine’s best one yet.

That it’s able to blend its lighting, detail, and animations so well while also sustaining a stable image is a benchmark of what it’s capable of, made even better by the PS5 Pro’s ability to bring games such as this one to life so well.

We can’t wait for you to join us on what is a Resident Evil game that both looks and performs so well, it’s sure to bring a smile to both franchise veterans and newcomers alike.

It used to be easy to slap a fresh coat of paint on a racing franchise and call it progress. But the best racers lately have pushed forward with meaningful upgrades that elevate the experience.

Milestone is clearly taking the second route in RIDE 6, which is now very close to its early access debut ahead of its final release. It’s been promoted as the best one yet from the studio and that claim might not be too far away from the mark. RIDE 6 looks brilliant, and is going to feel just as good to play once it becomes available to its audiences.

Wondering why we think so? Join us and find out as we dive into how things are looking for a motorcycle racing simulator that’s aiming for very lofty heights in a franchise that’s already managed to achieve so much over the years.

It’s more than just the improved visuals although they’re genuinely impressive to see. RIDE 6 works well thanks to how its systems come together to render the action, the shift to Unreal Engine 5 allowing the game to blur the lines between a simulation and reality in ways that bode well for its success once it hits the shelves.

Let’s take a look at the factors the game needs to nail down in order to achieve its photorealistic quality. The game needs to account for lighting, particles on the track, surfaces, physics, weather systems, audio, crowd rendering, and streaming, all in real time. That’s definitely a lot for any racer, but RIDE 6 is clearly up to the challenge based on our time with the review build, delivering a seamless racing experience that’s quite striking from the minute you’re on the track.

From the moment you take to the track, it’s obvious that RIDE 6 is a very impressive title that’s built around a major visual and systems upgrade. The sunlight bounces gently off the ground, flooding the screen with carefully curated, ray-traced light that makes you feel like you’re actually at the track you’re looking at. It glances off surfaces, glints off the metal on your bike, and bathes your racing uniform in a warm glow.

But at night, that same light is now produced by artificial lamps that light up the track, their reach being far more limited. Pass one, and everything we’ve been talking about happens, but it’s restricted to those few moments when you’re in range of a light, the shadows taking over as soon as you pass one. You’re constantly left wondering how the game is managing to keep up considering you’re speeding along on a machine that accelerates brutally quick off the line.

The bikes themselves are another showcase of how brilliant the game’s lighting system is, and are made all the more magnificent because of it. Paint jobs showcase subtle variations with glossy finishes contrasting well with the matte ones. The rubber on the tyres does well to showcase wear and tear, your tire tracks shining through with incredible detail. On the track, you see them interacting with the road based on your braking, leaving visible marks where nearly every pebble looks distinct, giving the impression that each track you race on has been painstakingly created to reflect real-life accuracy.

The key is in the details, and Milestone has clearly paid attention. Even visors on helmets reflect the world around them, the track streaking past as riders tear corners at speed. Take a look at one of the roads in the newly introduced dirt bike races, and you see the tires throwing up a trail as they go by, their tracks a reflection of the precise lines that their riders take in their effort to get past their opponents.

On a rainy day, the conditions come across as so natural we wouldn’t blame you for trying to wipe droplets of water off of your face in your gaming room. The roads glisten with a wet sheen while the game’s physics account for wet conditions, and it’s looking like you’re going to have to pay attention if you want to stay on the track.

Turn your attention to the bikes when they’re doing what they do best, and the motion blur takes over, accurately conveying your speed when you accelerate, and tapering off remarkably smoothly when you brake. It’s quite surreal to look at and is so immersive we were tempted to forget about the race just to keep watching it in action.

The camera angles in cutscenes are suitably cinematic, and the level of detail is as astounding as it is when you’re in control. The crowds that are out to watch you race, however, feel a little too similar in our opinion.

At the moment, the crowds do look like they’re not going to stand out, with most of Milestone’s focus being on rendering the riders and tracks as realistically as possible. However, what’s on offer is definitely serviceable and does add to the impression that you’re at a racing event, a facet of the experience helped along by great audio synchronization.

The visual state of the world matches the simulation so seamlessly it’s hard to find gaps where the illusion can drop, dragging you back to the reality that you’re not really piloting a machine that’s capable of speeds you couldn’t dream of achieving out on the streets no matter how experienced or skilled with motorcycles you are.

That attention to authenticity carries over when you’re in control, the game’s physics working in real-time to handle weight transfer convincingly as you brake into corners and drive out of them. Make a mistake and you’re going to lose your racing lines, just like you would in the real world.

The collision physics work well, too, with grip loss communicated quite well as, and losing control of your vehicle looks and feels nasty. Coming into contact with a fellow racer is something we’re not going to do in a hurry. Seriously, it hurt even though it wasn’t us who crashed.

Your rider’s body language is another area where we believe RIDE 6 has done a stellar job. They aren’t static, not in the slightest, and lean into turns as you take them, immediately straightening out to account for their own weight and the role it plays in guiding their bike along. Their hands and feet interact with their pedals, and there’s even a setting to alter how your rider holds their brakes, alternating between two and four fingers.

The game’s audio is quite easy to gauge and it’s decent. Every rev of your engine comes through with a satisfying punch, and your acceleration and braking are communicated so well as you tear down tracks. It syncs up very well with the player’s actions, and along with the roar of the crowds, it’s quite immersive and really helps the simulation maintain its spell over you.

The game’s UI takes a minimalist approach when you’re on the tracks although it doesn’t hold back from giving you options to tweak the experience to your liking once you hang up your helmets for some well-earned rest and relaxation after a long day on the tracks.

Customization brings the same level of quality that the rest of the game has sold us so far. You can expect distinct looks to each paint finish and your decals to react to the curves of your chosen vehicle, along with some excellent details on your uniforms based on their materials and the like.

All in all, it looks like RIDE 6 is making the best of its tech, its visuals popping out with near-perfect accuracy to convey the mood, weather, and time of day at the track you’re on. Its physics simulations look like they’re spot-on so consistently, we were just itching to swing our leg over one of the many bikes it has to offer. From its surfaces to its weather systems, this is a game that isn’t afraid to show off a level of polish that its teams have surely worked very hard on.

Ride 6 is a showcase of what focused tech direction can achieve when lighting, materials, physics, and audio all pull in the same direction. But at this moment, RIDE 6 is definitely up there with the best simulators we’ve seen.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

But that very scrutiny has exposed a few weaknesses in the armor of an otherwise solid experience that does very well for a free-to-play experience. Look closely enough, and you see a few visual and graphical glitches that should not have been there in the global release. That’s especially true on consoles, with the game’s engine unable to keep up with its grand ambitions in busy locations.

But is what we have still worth playing, complete with its little imperfections? Join us as we take a look at this wuxia-based spectacle from a graphical perspective and comment on how it’s managed to fare when it’s under pressure to perform.

It’s worth knowing that Where Winds Meet runs on NetEase’s proprietary Messiah Engine, aimed at bringing the game to PC, consoles, and mobile phones. That’s quite ambitious, and playing on higher-end systems shows off an outstanding level of beauty to the game. Its cities are dense and full of life, while the draw distances on open plains are nothing short of insane. Combat flows smoothly and does well to present the spectacle that it is designed to make you a part of.

There’s a lot of attention to detail in the way things are presented on the visual front in Where Winds Meet. It begins with your character and any NPCs who are a part of your immediate gameplay loop, with ornate details on armor and clothing being quite prominent. Your cape or cloak sways gently in the breeze, as does your hair. It’s all quite well-implemented, a sentiment that carries over to the world at large.

Saturated colors, dramatic silhouettes, and a sense of heightened reality are great vehicles for its wuxia aesthetic. They lend a very natural sort of beauty to Qinghe’s countryside, its rolling fields, rivers, and mountains all there for you to see as you leap to the skies with a martial art that lets you travel vast distances.

Volumetric lighting and atmospheric haze do well to sustain the effects of a dynamic day/night and weather system, making each scenario suitably darker or brighter. It means more realistic – and beautiful – sunsets, snow, rain, clouds, and other such effects that transform the landscape they are meant to affect in ways that make every inch of the game’s massive world very immersive and visually pleasing.

Indoors, the light from candles, lanterns, or your own Wuxia abilities glistens off your armor, or from moisture on the walls, while shadows shift according to your movements so realistically that it’s almost hard to believe that this is a game that’s free to play. That feeling continues to be an undercurrent even as we continue playing today, especially when you enter a settlement or city, Kaifeng being a great example.

In Kaifeng, the bustling crowds and grand architecture of it all give the impression of a city that you might not fully get to see, despite the freedom you have to explore every nook and cranny of it. It’s a sense of grandeur achieved through presenting the scale of it all as cleverly as possible to the player.

The object density is frankly ridiculous, with an abundance of signs, banners, lanterns, stalls, and the like to make the streets look lived in. The city feels like a living metropolis thanks to an NPC count that the developers were quite proud of in the run-up to the game’s global release. It truly feels alive in a way that even AAA games could be hard-pressed to emulate.

Of course, you’re going to be getting into a lot of fights as you make your way around the world, and once again, the visuals prop up everything on offer very well. The wuxia animations are an absolute treat, while sword trails, shockwaves, elemental effects, and important visual cues are presented with such clarity that it almost feels like the game is rooting for you in every battle.

Get surrounded, and your battle against multiple enemies can feel like every move was choreographed as part of a cinematic set-piece. Boss fights come with particle effects that feel like they could belong in a CG-animated film instead of a video game, provided the frame rate manages to keep up.

And that brings us to the downside of a game that looks and plays as well as Where Winds Meet does. But how can a game that looks this good come with graphical issues and still feel as good as it does? It’s time to find out.

Simply put, Where Winds Meet pushes the bulk of its graphical prowess to what’s right in front of you. That works very well when you’re under its spell, your sense of wonder pushing you to keep exploring and taking on enemies in order to progress the story and get your character’s build going. But look beyond the excellent details and character models, and you’re going to see a few inconsistencies.

For instance, certain props and background NPCs suffer a distinct lack of the details that adorn your character and any companions, making them look last-gen if you were to position them next to your player. That carries over to a few areas, both indoors and outdoors, where there are textures that are of a noticeably lower quality than some of the game’s best locations.

In a game that’s as grand as this one, these inconsistencies are quite an annoyance. They detract from the experience once you begin noticing them, as does the occasionally aggressive LOD streaming system that doesn’t seem to be able to handle the responsibilities of working across platforms quite well. But that’s a common side effect, after all.

On the base PS5, texture pop-in and geometry loading issues have cropped up, once again taking away from the beauty of it all. It does carry over even to cutscenes, if you were thinking that these issues are relegated to traversal and could potentially slip right past you as you move forward with your adventure.

Facial animations can look stiff, and there are a few lip-syncing issues that can affect the overall quality of your experience. There’s also a stark contrast between the kinetic, fast-flowing combat and cutscenes, which can look rather stiff in comparison, thanks to how characters prefer to stay in place for important conversations, making them rigid instead of freely moving around to convey more emotion or less of it.

Yes, they do quite a good job for a free-to-play title, but for a game with such outstanding graphical quality, these issues stand out even more. And let’s not forget a UI that’s almost constantly trying to tell you something with popups that frankly ruin the excellent art direction. Those windows and menus really need to be less obtrusive.

A few bugs are also a part of the experience, although they’re likely to be patched out. NPCs can suddenly vanish or perhaps not load in at all, while clipping issues, animation glitches, and the occasional weird bit of physics on cloth are all there for eagle-eyed gamers to spot. But it’s Kaifeng that brings all of these issues to a head.

On PC, players are experiencing massive drops in frame rates even on higher-end setups, courtesy of the Messiah Engine’s cross-platform functionality getting aggressive with its LOD and asset streaming, while runtime shader compilation in DX12 can also cause a lot of stuttering. Memory usage in the city is also an issue, with massive spikes forcing page-file swapping and even hard traversal freezes.

Things aren’t better on the PS5, with Kaifeng and certain boss fights bringing the same issues to the fore. There are also invisible walls and fences, along with characters climbing in the air in places where a building should have been. Even the PS5 Pro can’t keep up, with a lot of complaints about similar issues coming up.

While Everstone is doing all it can to patch things out and make the game as perfect as it can be, the fact that they exist is a testimony to Where Winds Meet’s raw ambition and the minor blips that it has caused along the way.

Despite its problems, there isn’t quite anything like Where Winds Meet as far as wuxia-based open worlds are concerned. It does a brilliant job of bringing your experience to life and is certainly a visual benchmark when things are going well. But its engine and optimizations could definitely use some work to ensure that its ambitions are realized.

If future patches manage to smooth things out in Kaifeng and the rest of the world, this is a game that could rise to become one of the most impressive visual presentations of a massive open world, and a beacon for similar experiences in the future. The fact that it’s a free-to-play title then becomes icing on the cake.

While there are more similarities than differences between Sony’s and Microsoft’s architectures, we couldn’t help but compare the two in an effort to understand how well the experience has translated to the newer machine. To that end, we present a full graphical analysis of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on the PS5 and PS5 Pro, and compare those results with the Xbox Series X/S and PC versions.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is a rather technologically advanced game, and it’s built using an evolved version of the developer’s in-house engine which combines a rather sophisticated physics framework alongside real-time world data from Azure to create a surprisingly authentic flight experience. Even though the engine was built specifically for Xbox and PC, the game’s transition to PS5 is a rather smooth one.

The moment-to-moment experience on PS5 (and by extension, the PS5 Pro) is largely comparable to what we see on Microsoft’s console, but there are a few minor differences that one can pick out related to how the texture loading and world streaming work on the newer machine. 

To put things into context, at launch last year we tested the game on a PC with an AMD Ryzen 5950X, a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and 32 GB of RAM—hardware that’s more than capable of handling such a demanding title. We turned the resolution up to a full 4K while setting the DLSS setting to Quality Mode, and put most of the other settings to Ultra. We also set the Terrain and object level of detail to 200. We toned down certain effects, like Windshield effects, to medium quality, while the glass cockpit refresh rate is kept at High.

When it comes to the visual presentation, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is a very computationally taxing experience and it continues to push every platform to its limits. While the visuals are largely similar across both consoles, there are subtle differences in how Xbox and PS5’s texture and light quality are rendered, and how they maintain the stability of LOD transitions – but these differences are only noticeable when we look closely at the same scenario across platforms.

The PS5 and Xbox Series X both utilize mesh shaders and advanced texture streaming optimizations to handle the game’s dense geometry at a large scale, but developer Asobo seems to have optimized the Xbox pipeline to match the experience that exists on PC. The PS5 version is most likely using a translation layer to accommodate for Sony’s GPU API since the engine was never built around that hardware, but we are happy to report that the performance is mostly uncompromised.

That being said, we did observe visible pop-in artifacts when flying over densely populated areas. These instances are minor but can manifest as momentary reductions in distant object sharpness or a dip in cloud fidelity as the engine prioritizes essential data first. The Xbox Series X handles these transitions slightly more gracefully, and that’s most likely due to the absence of a translation layer that sits between the source code and the hardware which gives the machine a little more compute to work with.

The PC version – unsurprisingly –  stands out from the lot thanks to raw horsepower and the flexibility of configuration. With our RTX 3080 Ti test bench and our graphics configuration from launch, the game maintained consistently higher draw distances than what we saw on PS5 alongside cleaner volumetric cloud rendering at Ultra settings. The DLSS implementation is great; the DLSS quality mode does a great job of upscaling a lower resolution image with minimal artifacting. Even at identical nominal settings, geometric complexity and photogrammetry data loads were faster on PC simply because the platform is not bound by the same memory bandwidth constraints as the consoles. Still, Asobo’s engine is remarkably efficient, and the gap between PC and consoles here is narrower than what we see in many visually intensive titles.

Switching gears over to the rendering resolution, both PS5 and Xbox Series X target a dynamic 4K presentation with image upscaling while the PS5 Pro aims for a higher internal resolution and that results in more stable performance at higher pixel counts. Under demanding weather conditions, such as storms which trigger post-processing effects and volumetrics – the base consoles drop internal resolution slightly, but the reconstruction techniques help minimizing the visible artifacts during gameplay. The PS5 Pro, on the other hand, doesn’t shudder like this, and you can expect a more stable image output on it.

Lighting remains one of Microsoft Flight Simulator’s most striking features, and the comparison between platforms reveals a couple of noteworthy differences. The PS5 versions share the same GI implementation as the Series X, but some scenarios exhibit marginally softer shadowing on Sony’s machine which could hint at some optimization shortcomings – though it isn’t too severe. The PC version flaunts higher resolution shadow maps and superior screen-space reflections, resulting in a more grounded and realistic look, which particularly excels during sunrise and sunset.

Another key element of the rendering is the vegetation and water surfaces. While foliage density is largely identical between PS5 and Series X, the PC version can push significantly thicker tree coverage and more varied grass LOD transitions without noticeable performance hits. Water rendering is likewise more refined on PC, with more consistent reflections and wave simulations under ultra settings. That said, the PS5 Pro’s enhanced GPU headroom allows it to come surprisingly close to high-end PC settings.

The one area that remains quite consistent across all platforms is the world streaming experience, which is great since it’s one of the most important and technically challenging parts of the presentation. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has to stream massive amounts of data from Azure servers, and the quality of the user’s internet connection plays a significant role in how smoothly terrain and photogrammetry load. Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X handle streaming admirably, with efficient caching and background loading that minimize visible pop-in, and you can expect the same performance on the PS5 Pro.

Texture quality is another point of comparison, and the story of comparable results continues. On both PS5 and Series X, texture quality is impressive, but the Xbox version occasionally loads higher-resolution textures slightly faster during rapid camera movements when the PS5 version can have slightly delayed texture streams in extremely dense cities. These delays are brief and typically self-correct within seconds, but they remain one of the few visual discrepancies between the two consoles. The PS5 Pro has additional horsepower, so these occurrences are almost non-existent. PC naturally tops the comparison here with instant texture loading and sharper surface details at close range.

Loading times also saw noticeable variance between platforms. The PS5 definitely has a higher throughput on paper, but the Xbox specific optimizations help in significantly reducing the load times on Microsoft’s machine. Booting into a flight from the main menu was consistently a few seconds faster on Xbox Series X as compared to Sony’s machine, and can be attributed to great use of Microsoft’s Velocity Architecture. The PS5 Pro further improves on these load times, shaving off an additional couple of seconds thanks to improved bandwidth and better decompression throughput – but it still doesn’t match the results we see on Xbox Series X.

On the PC side, load times scale heavily with the hardware configuration. Our Ryzen 5950X and fast NVMe drive combination delivers great results that are largely comparable to that of the Xbox (we tested this over several runs). This can be attributed to both optimizations made for DirectStorage API and the sheer capacity of high-end PC hardware to brute-force data processing, especially when dealing with large terrain pools. 

Texture quality is another point of comparison, and the story of comparable results continues. On both PS5 and Series X, texture quality is impressive, but the Xbox version occasionally loads higher-resolution textures slightly faster during rapid camera movements when the PS5 version can have slightly delayed texture streams in extremely dense cities. These delays are brief and typically self-correct within seconds, but they remain one of the few visual discrepancies between the two consoles. The PS5 Pro has additional horsepower, so these occurrences are almost nonexistent. PC naturally tops the comparison here with instant texture loading and sharper surface details at close range.

Loading times also showed noticeable variance across runs, largely because the game pulls real-time data from Azure servers. Factors like internet speed and third-party services can either accelerate or slow down the process, making it difficult to produce a strictly uniform comparison across platforms.

When examining frame rate stability, both consoles target 30fps. The PS5 and Xbox Series X achieve this target with impressive consistency, though the Series X enjoys slightly fewer dips under extreme streaming conditions. These dips are minor, but they do appear more frequently on the PS5, especially in scenarios where post-processing effects or volumetric effects end up pushing the GPU to its limits. 

As mentioned earlier, the PS5 Pro targets a dynamic 4K resolution at 30fps, and it performs markedly better than the base PS5, remaining locked for the vast majority of our tests. Since it doesn’t have to reduce its internal rendering resolution as often as the PS5 or Xbox Series X, image clarity is visibly improved. Even in demanding scenes with intense volumetrics, the PS5 Pro maintains its composure, resulting in a consistently smooth experience. 

In conclusion, the PS5 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 stands tall alongside the Xbox and PC versions. It delivers a decently optimized experience that remains faithful to Asobo’s vision. Despite a few minor differences in texture loading and world streaming responsiveness, the game offers a near-identical level of fidelity – making it another successful port of a previously Xbox exclusive to Sony’s platform.

It’s been a year since the game originally came out, and it stands tall as one of the best-looking games on the market. Keeping in line with originally Xbox-exclusive releases making their way to Sony platforms, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is finally available on PS5. Naturally, that raises the question: how does it perform, and how does it stack up against its direct competitor, the Xbox Series X, as well as a decently powered PC? 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is built on Unreal Engine 5, the latest version of Epic’s widely used development tech. It has a competent rendering stack that puts together intelligent world streaming systems, ray-traced GI, robust NPC generation systems, and photogrammetry options together to create a framework that’s truly unparalleled, although many games on it have struggled on the performance front. 

Regardless, it’s a cross-platform engine at its core, so porting from one system to another (and to PC) isn’t as demanding as it would be with a platform-specific engine. As a result, there isn’t a stark difference between the different versions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, just iterative upgrades and improvements from console to PC.

On PS5, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 benefits from a robust rendering pipeline that showcases the game at its best while maintaining stable performance. The same global illumination solution seen in previous versions is used here, ensuring both direct and indirect lighting remain accurate, while additional cinematic lights are introduced during cutscenes to highlight character expressions and add depth to key moments.

Texture quality is also great, with a high average polycount found across all assets in the environment. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 also makes use of photogrammetry to great effect, so the different materials on display look quite realistic. Asset density is also appropriately high, and the visual pop-in is minimal – making the world feel a lot more surreal.

This version closely resembles that of the Xbox Series X, and we can see comparable rendering resolutions across the board. Of course, that shouldn’t come as a surprise since both machines have similar architectures and power budgets. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any differences that you can spot. 

Surprisingly, the PS5 can outperform the Xbox Series X by a small margin – and that’s evident in the environments. You can spot some increased foliage density or sharper shadows with lesser artifacting, so the asset density quality seems to be a tad bit higher on the PS5 than what Microsoft’s machine can achieve. But again, both of these versions have the same presentation in broad strokes. 

To recap, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 recommends players have at least a Ryzen 7 5800X or equivalent CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and RTX 3070 Ti. For our testing purposes, we ran the game on a system comprising an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, and 32 GB RAM which is quite a bit over what the game recommends for itself. We also installed the game on a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD to ensure storage performance wasn’t a limiting factor in our testing.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 on PC presents us with a wide range of sliders that can be used to find the perfect balance between performance and graphical fidelity. The game offers options for upscaling with support for both AMD’s FSR 3, Nvidia’s DLSS, and Intel’s XeSS alongside frame generation options. For our tests, we knocked the settings all the way to Epic at a resolution of native 4K. DLSS upscaling was turned to Quality, which puts the internal rendering scale to 66 percent.

Compared to the PS5, the PC version pulls ahead slightly, with the PS5 release essentially serving as a close approximation of the PC’s High preset. In our tests, texture quality was consistently better on PC, with noticeably sharper assets across the various environments. World streaming also performed a bit better, resulting in fewer visible LOD pop-ins and swapping artifacts than on consoles.

Another noticeable upgrade lies in the game’s volumetric effects. Fog, smoke layers, and atmospheric scattering appear richer and more detailed on PC, particularly at sunrise or during the intense electrical storms that sweep across the Zone. These effects tend to get dialed down on the PS5,, but the Epic settings on PC allow them to shine brighter – resulting in a more solid post-processing pipeline.

When it comes to performance, all three versions have quite a few differences. On the PS5, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 offers both a Quality Mode which runs on a higher native resolution with all the graphical bells and whistles and a cap of 30fps, and secondly, there’s a performance Mode, which tones down a few knobs and bumps the frame rate to 60 FPS.

The 60 FPS mode is obviously the preferred way to play since the responsiveness does help in combat, and we are happy to report that it holds up well for the majority of gameplay scenarios – only showing drops during heavy combat encounters or occasionally sprinting across open fields. Quality Mode provides a more stable image and hovers around its target frame-rate a lot more – but it just doesn’t feel right in comparison to the sheer fluidity of the performance mode.

Comparing it to the Xbox Series X, it’s almost similar, with Microsoft’s machine exhibiting a similar performance profile. However, it does maintain slightly better stability in open regions. Frame dips are less frequent on the Series X, likely due to a combination of its marginally stronger GPU and the many post-launch patches that have improved and stabilized performance.

Back at launch on the PC, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was averaging anywhere between 40fps to 60fps when we turned up the settings to Ultra with 4K resolution and DLSS upscaling, and the major culprit for tanking the frame rate continues to be the post-processing effects like volumetrics and particle effects. It’s a graphically demanding game on the PC, and using an aggressive DLSS option or adaptive VSync might help in achieving a more stable 60fps result.

When comparing load times between the two consoles, starting a new game on PS5 takes roughly 10 seconds. That might not sound especially quick at first glance, but it’s still noticeably snappier than the Xbox Series X, which takes a bit longer to load into the game. As such, the PS5 edges ahead in this regard. This highlights the strengths of Sony’s hardware and its higher SSD I/O throughput, though there’s clearly room for further optimization on the Series X side.

Conclusion

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl stands tall as a technical and artistic showcase across every platform, but each version has its own identity – making it hard to choose one over another. The PS5 and Xbox Series X deliver visually rich experiences that capture the hidden beauty of the Exclusion Zone with minimal compromises. 

When it was first released last year, we at GamingBolt absolutely loved it, awarding a superb 9/10. However, the game has been drastically improved over the last several months, with many patches fixing various balance issues, tightening up gameplay mechanics, and, most importantly, addressing A Life. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 now feels great to play regardless of which version you choose, and it easily stands as one of the best shooters of this generation. It delivers an intimidating world that makes every bit of progress feel earned. It’s hard, brutal, and challenging all at once, and that’s exactly why the gameplay loop feels so engaging—it keeps you on edge at all times and never lets up.

The PS5 edges ahead slightly in visuals and load times, and GSC Game World has also made good use of DualSense’s enhanced haptics to make the experience a lot more interactive – but performance isn’t nearly as stable as what Xbox Series X can offer. But both versions of the game remain the same in broad strokes, and are great choices nonetheless. Yet, the PC version remains the definitive way to experience the game on account of higher flexibility for adjusting the balance between fidelity and performance.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 on the PS5 is a great conversion of what is one of the best post-apocalyptic experiences of recent memory. There may still be a few rough edges here and there, but GSC Game World has done a commendable job overall, and those who didn’t get a chance to play it at launch should definitely give it a try now. It’s in a much better state today, thanks to the numerous patches released over the past year.

This partnership shouldn’t come as any surprise to someone that might be paying attention to the last several years – over a decade – of technology and how it has evolved. Sony and AMD first started working together for the PS4, which came out all the way back in 2013, and since then, the two companies have worked closely together on future tech as well, including the current-generation PS5 and PS5 Pro.

While these details have been known for some time now, the two companies have now revealed even more details about the kinds of projects that they have been working on together. In a recent video, PS5 and PS5 Pro lead architect Mark Cerny, along with AMD’s SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics Group Jack Huynh, have revealed three core new technologies that have been designed by the two companies together, which Sony will use in its future consoles, and AMD hopes to bring to all gaming platforms: Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores, and Universal Compression. And while these three technologies might still be a few years away, they will likely end up playing a major part in shaping gaming hardware moving forward, and some of the software improvements will also likely trickle down into current-gen offerings as well.

An important thing to keep in mind about these brand new technologies is the fact that they are far from being ready to show off to the world, let alone ready enough to be released in hardware. Both Sony and AMD have been designing these technologies by making use of complex simulations that allow them to gauge performance and throughout, all without having to commit fully to designing the appropriate hardware. However, results from these simulations have clearly been quite promising, since companies don’t tend to boast too often about new concepts they’ve developed that will never see the light of day.

Neural Arrays – Smarter, Scalable AI Engines

The first of the big three technologies is the concept of the Neural Array, which essentially brings about fundamental changes in how a GPU’s compute units are able to take on neural net and AI-related tasks. Traditionally, a GPU is made up of several smaller compute units. This, in turn, means that any data that has to be processed has to be broken down into smaller sets of problems that each compute unit can then work on. Neural Arrays were developed to change how this works, and in theory, allow multiple compute units to work together on larger data sets and problems together, rather than each working individually on their own problems.

While this might largely sound like technical jargon, it is worth noting that image upscaling tools like FSR and PSSR are both based on machine learning and AI. Neural Arrays would essentially allow for more powerful iterations of these image upscaling technologies, and even other features like frame generations would get a major boost not only in performance, but even image quality. Sony and AMD have already started working with Neural Array simulations to bring in improvements to their upscaling and denoising technologies. As a side-effect, Neural Arrays will also help in reducing how much processing power a GPU typically has to devote to machine learning tasks. This means that there can be more overall bandwidth available in a GPU to tackle tasks like shader code and general graphics rendering.

While this might sound great for future consoles, PS5 and PS5 Pro might also end up seeing some benefits, since Neural Arrays seemingly revolves more around software optimization and how development kits and game engines help in compiling games. Theoretically, if the technology is ready to enter the market while the PS5 and PS5 Pro are still relevant consoles, Sony could potentially push out firmware updates that bring some of these machine learning benefits to both systems while also working on integrating machine learning and neural net technologies into the PS6.

Radiance Cores – Dedicated Hardware for Ray Tracing

Ray tracing, on both consoles and gaming PCs using AMD GPUs, have traditionally been handled by compute units that are often forced to split their work load between their other tasks and doing the incredibly complicated mathematical operations typically involved in real-time ray traced lighting. To tackle this problem, Sony and AMD have been working on dedicated hardware that would allow the GPU to off-load the task of doing these complex mathematical operations, and instead focus on their actual job of rendering graphics.

Dubbed Radiance Core, this new hardware will be specially designed to handle all aspects of the maths that real-time ray tracing typically requires in a game, including path tracing and ray traversal, which tend to be the most compute-heavy aspects that GPUs have to tackle. The technology was derived from AMD’s Neural Radiance Caching, which the company had originally unveiled earlier this year.

While this might not sound revolutionary on its own, it is worth noting that the load being taken off the other compute units in a GPU will end up raising the bar exponentially for what kinds of visuals and game world are possible. Since the compute units won’t have to devote some of their precious processing cycles over to ray tracing-related operations, they will also be more capable of executing more complex shaders, while also maintaining higher frame rates. Radiance Cores might also ultimately make it possible for the PS6 to hit 4K while also maintaining high frame rates and featuring ray traced lighting.

While PS5 and PS5 Pro likely won’t see direct benefits from this owing to the fact that Radiance Core is a hardware-level innovation, we might still end up seeing some cross-generation games reap benefits, since observing how the ray tracing will look on next-gen hardware can ultimately allow developers to use the same style of lighting, albeit through “baked-in” rasterization, to still ultimately provide a visual uplift.

Universal Compression – A New Solution to Memory Bandwidth

One of the biggest bottlenecks that modern-day GPUs have to deal with regardless of the platform they’re on tends to be memory bandwidth. Essentially, a GPU can only process as much data as fast as it can if the data flowing into it is coming in at a fast enough rate. Sony deals with this problem on PS5 and PS5 Pro by making use of a technology dubbed Delta Color Compression (DCC), which allows the compute units to compress the data going through its memory bus in order to transmit more of the data. However, as its name might imply, DCC is limited in its scope of just what kind of data it can compress, largely bound to assets like texture data. Looking forward, both Sony and AMD have been working on a new technology dubbed Universal Compression.

Universal Compression is able to evaluate just about every bit of data that is headed into memory, and compress it as the data is passing through a memory bus. This means that a lot more data can then make its way into processing units across both the CPU and GPU, which in turn can then allow for the hardware to handle even larger files. While the technology might not sound all that fancy, especially when compared to something like Radiance Core, it still forms an important foundation on top of which more hardware can then be designed.

The benefits of Universal Compression are quite vast, to games generally looking better while running more smoothly thanks to more texture data being processed by the console at a quicker pace, but it can also enable new features, like gaming at 8K while still maintaining decent frame rates. Couple this with image upscaling technologies like FSR or PSSR and you can see even greater gains in compute power and efficiency, allowing for further refinements to be made to upscaled images and AI-generated frames. Since a major component of Universal Compression is likely at the software level, these enhancements could also make their way to PS5 and PS5 Pro, once again providing better visual fidelity beyond what the consoles are currently capable of.

How They Can Work Together

While each one of these new technologies can be considered a game changer, especially in the hands of experienced developer, technologies like Universal Compression and Neural Arrays working together would offer multiple-fold gains in terms of performance from compute units that are able to simultaneously work on larger blocks of data, more of which can also be transferred through an otherwise-constraining memory bus. Pair this combination with Radiance Core and you also get highly advanced ray tracing in the game without having to sacrifice much in the way of frame rates or texture quality.

In many ways, these new technologies can also be seen as forming something of a foundation on which the graphics hardware for the PS6 is being designed, since each one tackles one of the goals that Sony has with its gaming hardware. Neural Arrays and Universal Compression are able to grant major gains in efficiency and performance, while Radiance Core handles the visual fidelity side of things by offering more immersive lighting through path tracing, all without making too many sacrifices.

When it comes to hardware design, these technologies will likely also play a major hand in Sony’s future. Designing a GPU around these technologies, for example, means that less compute cores have to be used specially for things like machine learning, neural net and ray tracing. This would also lead to getting an overall more efficient console that doesn’t need as much power to run, while simultaneously also running much cooler, and thus not having problems that can arise related to thermal throttling – where a CPU or GPU has to forcefully slow itself down when it gets too hot from processing loads.

Long-Term Plans

It is worth noting that none of the three technologies is ready to hit the market just yet. Both Cerny and Huynh made it clear that they are currently still in the simulation stage of the research and development that goes into making these kinds of new technologies. However, both have noted that results from their simulations have already been quite promising. This means that, while we are unlikely to see these gains in performance and visual fidelity on currently-existing console hardware, it can be quite easy to bet that we will see them when the PS6 is eventually unveiled.

Once the technology has been developed and is finally out, however, we might also see quite a few of their benefits trickle down to older hardware and consoles. Sure, the PS5 and PS5 Pro aren’t going to be running games at 8K by any stretch. We can, however, expect to see rasterized lighting based on ray tracing models that were made for the PS6. Similarly, machine learning improvements to FSR and whatever the PS6 ends up using will also likely make their way down to PSSR, greatly improving visual fidelity.

Closing Thoughts

It’s difficult to argue against the idea that we’ve hit a plateau when it comes to the visual fidelity that can be achieved simply with raw horsepower. We last noticed this when the jump in visual quality of games from the PS4 to the PS5 weren’t as drastic as they were a couple of decades ago when we jumped from the PS2 to the PS3. However, improvements are still being made by using the horsepower we do have in smarter ways, and these three new technologies signify Sony’s and AMD’s approaches to the same concept.

Ghost of Yotei is finally here, and it has all the markings of a great sequel; everything that worked in the original has been amped up alongside new additions. You can check out more about the game in our review, but with this feature, we will be focusing on the technical aspects of Ghost of Yotei – what has changed, how it compares to the original, and so much more. With that being said, let’s begin!

Graphics Overview – How Has It Changed In Comparison To Tsushima?

Ghost of Tsushima was built using Sucker Punch’s proprietary game engine, and while it might not have been the technically strongest game from the PS4’s comprehensive first-party library, it was definitely a looker in each department. Strong art direction, solid textures, and a knack for detail ensured that Tsushima looks consistently gorgeous without relying on any extreme rendering techniques.

Ghost of Yotei doesn’t rewrite the playbook in any significant way, but what it does is refine the technical aspects of Tsushima to a higher degree, resulting in a game that looks solid through and through. Yotei makes good use of current-gen rendering techniques such as ray-tracing,  and the increase in CPU and GPU compute have enabled the team to make some key improvements in several aspects of the presentation.

By and large, the upgrades that we are seeing in Ghost of Yotei are of the iterative kind; ones that build off of what came before. Be it the improvements in the environments, better facial expressions across the board, brand new weather effects coupled with weather effects, or animations – Ghost of Yotei takes what worked in the original and builds a vast net of new ideas around that makes these additions feel fit in the grand scheme of things.

Character Models 

Talking about the character models first, Ghost of Yotei flaunts character models that are comparable in fidelity to most current-gen games. The polycounts on these models are quite high, making them look striking when put against proper lighting. The clothes they wear are made of high-quality, physically based materials that sway to the tune of the wind.

One of the biggest key improvements that we noticed in Yotei has to the upgrade in motion capture. The upgraded tech allows more minute expressions to be caught and displayed in a way that feels realistic, and Sucker Punch had already hinted at this in the trailers – and it looks really great in action. 

Environment 

Ghost of Tsushima absolutely blew it out of the park when it came to its environments. It was the highlight of the experience in Tsushima, and it stands true in the case of Yotei as well. Sucker Punch transports you to a world that feels like poetry in motion – an artistically apt representation of the Ezo period of Japan. 

Rolling hills, large flower fields, bustling villages, active volcanoes, and rivers all flow into one another in a way that feels quite natural – giving the world a distinct sense of authenticity. Textures can have some artifacting along the edges, but they do look reasonably sharp for the most part. Yotei uses a lighter colour palette than Tsushima, but it helps set the right mood and contributes to achieving the desired look. 

Environments have a lot of visual density with trees, blades of grass, and flowers growing in abundance throughout – and much like Tsushima, they accurately sway to the tune of the winds. Trees and stones have appropriate geometric complexity, and much like the clothes of these characters, the material of these environmental assets reacts appropriately to light and reflection. Coarse materials like iron or stone wouldn’t obviously reflect much light, but other materials, such as the side of a katana or a pool of water, would accurately reflect it. 

Terrain deformations are also a highlight, and walking over mud or snow leaves dynamically generated trails behind the player. These deformations are highly detailed, and can bundle over one another in certain scenarios without glitching out. It seems that Sucker Punch might have taken a page out of Decima Engine in this regard, and it can be quite a looker in action. 

Yotei also has many different renderings of water spread throughout its huge open world. You can find clear rolling water flowing through streams, semi-solid ice in frigid areas, soft snow atop mountains and much more. Reflection properties and material quality appropriately differ based on the state of water, and while there are no dynamic melting mechanisms in place – the overall rendering is pretty stunning.

We should also talk about how the world streaming works in Yotei, and this is where Sucker Punch makes great use of the PS5’s expanded CPU and GPU horsepower. Draw distances are significantly higher, and the level of detail doesn’t drop by a huge margin for assets that are further away from the camera. The level of detail swapping also happens in a smooth fashion, and load pop-in and other artifacts are minimal. 

Lighting and Reflections

And that brings us neatly over to the lighting side of things, where we get to see a ray-tracing based lighting solution, which is a vast improvement over the probe-based solution that we saw in Ghost of Tsushima. Nailing the look and feel of the world of Yotei is heavily dependent on bounce lighting and indirect lighting, so a rather simple GI implementation wouldn’t work as well as this ray-traced solution. Of course, it helps that the PS5 has hardware-accelerated ray-tracing – and performance doesn’t heavily tank as a result.

The reflections are of consistently high quality, andthe  lighting data is reasonably accurate, giving the world a rather realistic look at times. Ghost of Yotei also has dynamic day and night cycles and the possibility of weather hazards, and going the RT route makes these transitions feel quite natural and dynamic in nature.

The same RT implementation continues over to the shadow maps, where we get to see some really accurate shadows cast from a combination of direct and indirect light sources. Shadow maps are detailed and cast at a large scale from the camera, giving the world a rather uniform look around. Artifacts in shadows are largely absent, thanks to the higher processing power of the PS5. 

Animations 

As a natural extension of the advancements in motion capture, Ghost of Yotei also makes a few improvements to the animation department. The swordfighting and action are inspired by the works of Kurosawa, and it’s a mixture of Samurai Bujustu and artificially induced flair. Animations nicely blend into one another during combat, and enemy ragdolls also properly react to strikes from the player. The new stances also bring new moves and animations into the mix, enlarging the pool of available actions at your disposal. 

Animations and interactions aren’t just limited to the combat; you can also find some really cool interactions spread throughout the game. Right from how the horse moves through different terrain to snow piling up on top of trees and eventually shedding under the crumbling weight and the micro-expressions that indicate biting cold, Ghost of Yotei is filled with neat little animations that make the world feel interactive and surreal.

Particle Effects And Other Post-Processing 

Ghost of Yotei’s visual presentation is also pretty strong on the post-processing side of things, and Sucker Punch has established itself as one of the best when it comes to particle effects. Be it the power effects of Infamous or the sparks in Tsushima, Sucker Punch always has some great particle effects on show – and that stands true in the case of Yotei as well. We get to see some high-quality alpha particles during fights and explosions, and all of that is paired really well with other effects, such as a per-object motion blur that helps elevate the visual presentation to another level. 

Volumetric fog is also generously used across Yotei, be it smoke volumes that indicate points of interest or smoke bombs that feature great light diffusion or even distant fog that serves to sell the sense of scale. Smoke volumes can be dense or light depending on the requirement, and these techniques are also used in conjunction to depict environmental hazards such as typhoons and blizzards or clouds in the sky sandbox. 

Lastly, the presentation is capped off with what looks to be PSSR (PlayStation Super Resolution), which helps in smoothening off jagged edges and hides away any visible artifacts without risking a hit on the performance side of things.

Conclusion

Ghost of Yotei’s presentation is an iterative upgrade over Tsushima, and while Sucker Punch hasn’t  aggressively pushed the envelope of rendering in any department – it doesn’t mean that this isn’t a good-looking game. The beauty of this game lies in the strong art direction, the biodiversity on offer, and the striking attention to detail – and it will undoubtedly go down as a worthy successor to Ghost of Tsushima and also one of the best-looking games of this year.