Last year’s Titanfall 2 was an intriguing title to analyze from a technical perspective. Prioritizing frame rate over pixels ensured that the game ran at an almost flawless 60 frames per second across all platforms. However as expected this came at a cost. Titanfall 2 had to employ a dynamic resolution to hit the 60fps target consistently which meant that the game never actually ran at a stable 1080p resolution on both the PS4 and Xbox One. In fact, the rendering resolution even dropped to sub-HD levels on the base Xbox One but what we got in return was a smooth 60fps experience.
Titanfall 2 also ran quite well on the PS4 Pro reaching a rendering resolution of 1440p. Once again, the game’s engine never rendered any scene below 60fps. This makes the Xbox One X an intriguing prospect, specially given how the developer claimed to reach 6K resolution on Microsoft’s latest machine. But is this really the case? Well, yes, the game does indeed render resolutions even higher than 4K and given that the Xbox One X supersamples the games by default, what we get is an extremely pretty looking game on a 4K TV. However, this kind of higher resolution rendering is only limited to scenes which don’t have a lot going on. For the most part, the game runs at a dynamic resolution, reaching native 4K whilst maintaining its trademark frame rate performance from last year.
The Xbox One X also benefits from a couple of enhancements such as more in-depth object geometry, better texture detail and texture filtering. These improvements may seem subtle but the the game’s support for a dynamic 4K resolution buffer (more than native 4K in some cases) and a locked 60 frames per second performance makes Xbox One X the ideal place to play Titanfall 2. The gulf in resolution compared to the PS4 Pro is quite apparent and it’s something that is easily noticable when one compares the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X versions side by side.
As we stated last year, Titanfall 2 is a benchmark title for all platforms. It showcased each platforms’ strengths and weaknesses whilst prioritizing frame rate over everything else. If these are the kind of results that players can expect to see so early on the Xbox One X, we cannot wait to see what developers can do with it in the next couple of years.