• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Digital Foundry: A Plague Tale Requiem: A Stunning Tech Showcase on PS5/Xbox Series X/S - DF Tech Review

modiz

Member
There will be more 30fps games, just wait for them to come. Once cross gen is over it will be back to 30 fps. Perhaps not in the same way as last gen but it in inevitable. But on the other hand I feel we will get more options for higher frame rates, like unlocked modes, so that future consoles can brute force more performance.
 

Robb

Gold Member
Been playing this for a while now. Enjoying it a lot. Definitely looks nice, although I wouldn’t call it a tech showcase.

Animations could be a lot better, characters and environments are pretty stale/static.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I've got a 3080 and I'm rocking 100 fps easy with everything on ultra and dlss at quality mode at 1440p. It looks bonkers as per my screens in the review thread, first game I've stopped to take multiple screenshots.

I think the games great and it's doing some really impressive stuff tech wise.
 

Topher

Gold Member
a 3080. My monitor is only 1440p as well. So with a 3080 and engaging dlss I should be able to crank the eye candy and get 60fps. I just installed it last night but didn't have time to really see what my results will be.

I'm not seeing any DLSS settings in the game? Could that be because I'm on the Windows version and not Step?
 

Stuart360

Member
It's gonna be a sad gen if this thing already push the console hard other than the rats thing cpu wise.
Its actually quite cpu dremanding in areas, usually the larger areas or areas with a lot of npc's.
I have a 3700x at 4.3ghz, and the framerate would often drop into the 50's, and even 40's sometimes, with gpu usage only in the 60-70% range when it happened, a clear cpu bottleneck.

Funnily enough the rats didnt effect my PC that much. Still with the cpu's in the console running nearly 1ghz slower than my 3700x, its obvious the framertae would be all over the place on console, which is why they probably dont offer a performance mode.
 
Last edited:

twilo99

Member
You can run the game at 144p and it would still not reach 60 FPS in certain scenes. It is called being CPU bound. They could've made it so that game ran at 60 FPS and dropped frames where it is CPU bound, but I guess they settled on a consistent experience instead.

Can’t they run at 720p and upscale to 1440p with FSR 2.1 and get 60fps?
 

yamaci17

Member
Can’t they run at 720p and upscale to 1440p with FSR 2.1 and get 60fps?
In some scenes, definetely. Even 1080p should be enough. In CPU bound scenes, it would not help.

I'm at Chapter 6 so far and only one specific place has been CPU bound. All other places ran 50+ FPS at 1440p on my 3070. Even that scene did not stress GPU, it simply destroyed CPU performance.

I heard similar scenes will start to be more frequent upwards of Chapter 9. We shall see.
 

GymWolf

Member
Its actually quite cpu dremanding in areas, usually the larger areas or areas with a lot of npc's.
I have a 3700x at 4.3ghz, and the framerate would often drop into the 50's, and even 40's sometimes, with gpu usage only in the 60-70% range when it happened, a clear cpu bottleneck.

Funnily enough the rats didnt effect my PC that much. Still with the cpu's in the console running nearly 1ghz slower than my 3700x, its obvious the framertae would be all over the place on console, which is why they probably dont offer a performance mode.
When you say large area with a lot of npcs you mean like tue market area? Because it didn't looked that big or full of npcs tbh...

Like not any bigger than many market areas in any modern open world...

I'm waiting the new pc build to play this one, i'm not gonna play at 1440p30 with medium details:lollipop_grinning_sweat:
 
Last edited:

Topher

Gold Member
Really? I'm on the windows version (gamepass) and they're right there.

Seems this is a bug some like myself are having to deal with. Shocker.


I fired up Cyberpunk 2077 just to make sure it wasn't a driver issue. It was there, no problem. This game can fuck off until they get their shit straightened out, frankly.

Fixed it. I had to reinstall my drivers and DLSS finally showed up. Still....weird. First game I've had do that.

At full 4K with DLSS set to Auto I'm getting a solid 60fps. DLSS Performance and it is over 100fsp. Asobo needs to implement FSR on consoles ASAP.
 
Last edited:

squarealex

Member
Summary:

- Rat count increased from 5000 to 300,000
- All console versions run at 30 FPS on 60hz displays and 40 FPS on 120hz displays.
- Game/engine is pushing the CPU/GPU hard.

- PS5|SX run at 1440p and Series S runs at 900p. PS5|SX upscale to 2160p using a temporal solution
- Besides lowered AO quality and draw distance, Series S matches all other visual features.
- PS5 version makes use of dual sense features

- In the 30 FPS mode, SX barely shows any blips even in the biggest rat swarms but PS5 can struggle though largely solid, PS5 version is also prone to tearing (DF did not mention tearing for either Series in the video)
- Series S falls in between with performance closer to Series X.
- In the 120hz 40 FPS mode, Series X performs better but can drop close to the 30s in big rat swarms. PS5 has more drops and can drop to the 20s. Series S is also not a stable 40

- DF recommends the SX version if you have the choice.
- DRS should have been used in the game to stick to each modes respective target better on all consoles.

ElAnalistaDeBits once again, lying about Xbox Series S... is not 1080p but 900p.
 

Stuart360

Member
When you say large area with a lot of npcs you mean like tue market area? Because it didn't looked that big or full of npcs tbh...

Like not any bigger than many market areas in any modern open world...
Yeah market areas are very cpu bound, but also some of those very large areas where you can take different routes to sneak pass multiple enemies etc.

Dont get me wrong, i'd say 80% of the game actually isnt very cpu demanding at all, but again my 3700x is nearly 1ghz faster than the 3700x in the consoles, so there would probably be more areas effected on console. Like i said, the rats actually had very little effect on my cpu/gpu, but from this vid you can clearly see they have a big effect on the consoles.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
There are some very large areas in this game versus its predecessor.
Indeed, Switch over to photo mode and you'll see how much of the level is loaded and the character details are high regardless of the distance from the player
For example
4K4k3vX.jpg

2VhZSxo.jpg
 

Mr Moose

Member
He stated it was evenly frame paced at 12:19 in the video.

Drops to 116ms at times. Something very wrong with it.
 
If the XSS was holding back this game, the XSX/PS5 versions would be 60fps and like dynamic 4k, not 1440p with drops under 30fps often.

Think my dude.
Where did I say Ss was holding back this specific game, plz read before writing shit, I said in general, having to optimise for 4 platforms instead of just 2, is going hold us back no matter what u think, and Ss is the weak point as devs can’t choose not to develop for it or choose the minimum specs, like they can on pc,
 

MarkMe2525

Gold Member

Drops to 116ms at times. Something very wrong with it.
I wonder if there has been a patch since those frame times were captured. I'm not able to check at the moment.
 

Mr Moose

Member
I wonder if there has been a patch since those frame times were captured. I'm not able to check at the moment.
The versions tested were 1.2.0.0 on the Xbox Series consoles and 1.002.000 on PS5. 120hz footage was captured at 1440p on PS5 and Series X.
I'll try and find out the current version.
Edit: Seems to be the latest version?
I might be reading this wrong lol.
 
Last edited:

MarkMe2525

Gold Member
Where did I say Ss was holding back this specific game, plz read before writing shit, I said in general, having to optimise for 4 platforms instead of just 2, is going hold us back no matter what u think, and Ss is the weak point as devs can’t choose not to develop for it or choose the minimum specs, like they can on pc,
You stated this game game looks like a last gen game, and within the same sentence you state that XSS is "holding us back". So while you may not have meant to suggest the XSS was holding back this specific game, because of your sentence structure, you did.

Edit: O onnextflix5 I'm glad you find it funny. I find your tantrum, caused by your own doing, funny as well.
 
Last edited:

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
It's gonna be a sad gen if this thing already push the console hard other than the rats thing cpu wise.
price you pay for sticking with old gen paradigms. this is a UE4 game through and through even if it shipped on UE5.
 
"A Plague Tale: Requiem can be easily described as a GPU-bound title. At 1080p/Ultra, the only GPUs that were able to provide a constant 60fps experience were the RTX 3080, RTX 4090 and AMD RX 6900XT. The NVIDIA RTX2080Ti was also able to provide a smooth experience, though we did notice some drops to 57fps"

This is what I thought and explains why the PS5 is struggling compared to Series X. Make no mistake about it this is a true next generation game (current gen really ).

Jesus Christ, anything to console war, huh?

It's obvious that the optimizations on console-side were focused on Series systems. Remember, Microsoft redesigned the XDK into the GDK which features the exact same API toolset between Xbox platforms and PC due to DX12 Ultimate support.

Plague Tale: Requiem might be an UE5 game but it's also chiefly designed with DX12U, which makes sense because Flight Simulator (also from Asobo) targeted the same (which aided in the eventual Series X and Series S ports). That would mean, considering Asobo's size and what platforms they were already focusing on for the past couple of years, that their pipeline for software optimization on Xbox Series is likely more developed than their software optimization pipeline for PlayStation 5, which does not use DX12U.

Most likely the PS5 version just has less optimizations and the game itself is designed in a way where having fixed function graphics pipeline advantages (such as higher pixel fillrates and a faster GPU) is not as immediately beneficial. The game is leveraging more compute load, and the team probably focused on optimizing that to Series platforms with the DX12U API tools their pipeline is probably already quite mature.

Keep in mind a lot of earlier multiplats that had terrible Series X performance initially were patched and ended up performing better. There's literally no reason why that won't be the case when PS5 initially has the poorer showing in a multiplat. Considering the Series S version is apparently more stable than PS5 and runs closer to Series X, that should clue you in the lack of optimization in its current iteration specifically on PlayStation 5.

EDIT: Apparently this isn't an Unreal Engine game after all? OK then, never mind that part. Still though, I personally think performance issues at least on PS5 is likely due to Asobo's pipeline focused on GDK and DX12U API since they are designing their games for Xbox & PC platforms simultaneously.
 
Last edited:

Stuart360

Member
Where did I say Ss was holding back this specific game, plz read before writing shit, I said in general, having to optimise for 4 platforms instead of just 2, is going hold us back no matter what u think, and Ss is the weak point as devs can’t choose not to develop for it or choose the minimum specs, like they can on pc,
If this is next gen, I’ll wait for ps6 lol, barely looks better then then the last game, poor man’s Xbox Ss is holding us back, me thinks.
:messenger_smiling_with_eyes:
 

Mr Moose

Member
That's what I thought. I keep seeing mentions of UE4 or UE5, but I thought this studio had their own engine.
We owe a lot to our own, in-house engine, that we’ve been developing alongside our different projects, as it allows us to focus on such specific features, without having to rely on an external team.
Yup.
 
Jesus Christ, anything to console war, huh?

It's obvious that the optimizations on console-side were focused on Series systems. Remember, Microsoft redesigned the XDK into the GDK which features the exact same API toolset between Xbox platforms and PC due to DX12 Ultimate support.

Plague Tale: Requiem might be an UE5 game but it's also chiefly designed with DX12U, which makes sense because Flight Simulator (also from Asobo) targeted the same (which aided in the eventual Series X and Series S ports). That would mean, considering Asobo's size and what platforms they were already focusing on for the past couple of years, that their pipeline for software optimization on Xbox Series is likely more developed than their software optimization pipeline for PlayStation 5, which does not use DX12U.

Most likely the PS5 version just has less optimizations and the game itself is designed in a way where having fixed function graphics pipeline advantages (such as higher pixel fillrates and a faster GPU) is not as immediately beneficial. The game is leveraging more compute load, and the team probably focused on optimizing that to Series platforms with the DX12U API tools their pipeline is probably already quite mature.

Keep in mind a lot of earlier multiplats that had terrible Series X performance initially were patched and ended up performing better. There's literally no reason why that won't be the case when PS5 initially has the poorer showing in a multiplat. Considering the Series S version is apparently more stable than PS5 and runs closer to Series X, that should clue you in the lack of optimization in its current iteration specifically on PlayStation 5.
Are we now claiming that optimization on a console that has had better optimised games 90% of the time this generation is now poorly optimised after 2 years on the market? Seriously? Also the Series S is running at a far lower resolution and lower settings, are you being serious with that comparison?

I quoted a PC performance analysis which is more proof that we are simply looking at a proper next generation game running worse on a less powerful console. It's a GPU heavy game and what do you know? The console with the better GPU is performing best 🙄
 

Topher

Gold Member
That's what I thought. I keep seeing mentions of UE4 or UE5, but I thought this studio had their own engine.

Yep.

"We owe a lot to our own, in-house engine, that we’ve been developing alongside our different projects, as it allows us to focus on such specific features, without having to rely on an external team."

 

Stuart360

Member
Apparently, but that only reflects the lack of optimization for the PS5 version.

I also wonder why there isn't a PS4 version, yet a Switch version exists, but that's a different curiosity altogether.
Dont know how this is running on Switch to be honest as i cant see how even XB1/PS4 would be able to run this.
Is the Switch version cloud based?.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Last edited:
Apparently, but that only reflects the lack of optimization for the PS5 version.

I also wonder why there isn't a PS4 version, yet a Switch version exists, but that's a different curiosity altogether.
Switch version is cloud only, its a current gen only game. The amount of rats alone would bring the PS4 to its knees.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Switch version is cloud only, its a current gen only game. The amount of rats alone would bring the PS4 to its knees.

Yeah, I feel like this game, a lot more so than Gotham Knights, justifies its next-gen only tag and the performance on the new consoles.

The later areas are fucking nuts in the shit the game pulls off.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
My PS5 got really hot when playing the first one, to the point I got concerned. I wonder how taxing this game is due to increase in rats. I was also thinking of playing this on my PC with Gamepass but I think my computer will melt.
 
Top Bottom