- The first proper look at Crimson desert running on PS5 Pro has been shared
- Digital Foundry got hands-on with the console version and praises its ray tracing technology across all three graphics modes
- Performance mode “broadly” meets its 60fps target with an odd drop in populated areas
Crimson desert launches next week for PC and consoles, and the first proper look at PlayStation 5 Pro footage has finally been revealed.
Pearl Abyss’ open-world action-adventure game is scheduled to launch on March 19. Still, the only promotional footage we’ve gotten a proper look at this month has been on PC, although the game is also coming to PlayStation and Xbox.
Finally, after months of waiting and some skepticism from fans about the game’s console performance, Digital Foundry got exclusive access to Crimson desert running on the PlayStation 5 Pro and it looks seriously impressive.
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“Their [Pearl Abyss’s] The BlackSpace engine delivers results that are nothing short of remarkable,” said DF’s John Linneman, and while there is some “jak” to be satisfied with, “the overall impression is striking.”
“From the performance to the crowd behavior, the animation, the freedom, the foliage, the lights, everything. It’s a great game,” adds Linneman. “And on the PS5 Pro here, you actually don’t lose that much.”
Across PC, PS5, PS5 Pro and Xbox Series X, the game offers three graphics modes: Performance, Balanced and Quality, and according to DF, the ray-tracing technology is fully present and represented on the PS5 Pro.
The ray-traced diffuse global lighting featured in DF’s PC preview, per-pixel solution, is also enabled on the console, offering a fully dynamic ray-traced lighting system, and the footage looks stunning.
Performance mode offers 60fps, and Linneman said it “puts up a good fight” and “by and large” meets its goal, adding: “I was surprised at how good it was overall.”
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DF also notes that the framerate drops in areas with larger crowds and locations involving lots of non-playable characters (NPCs), and also dropped “significantly” during an early game match in the 30fps region.
A similar issue can also be triggered in large cities, but Linneman said this is “not at all the norm” for the game. The game’s quality mode in 30fps and Balanced option in 40fps also seem stable, with 60fps being more “challenging”.
Crimson desert‘s Performance, Balanced and Quality modes also aim for 1080p, 1440p and 4K respectively, with the first two using PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) to upscale to a 4K output. But DF said that this is not the latest upgraded version of Sony’s technology that is expected to be added to the game that we saw with Resident Evil Requiemso the results should be improved.
Linneman adds that he prefers playing in balanced mode, “but if the new PSSR is as effective as we think it is, base 1080p from the optimal mode can still deliver an impressive experience at higher frame rates.”
“In terms of GPU scalability, the game works. Yes, the optimal and balanced modes use upscaling, but the base resolution is high enough that even the original PSSR looks fine overall, minus some artifacts that we should expect to see go away with the upgraded PSSR,” said Linneman.
“In terms of CPU, it was a more pressing concern – today’s mid-range PC CPUs are significantly more capable than consoles. Here the limitations are more noticeable, but never enough to feel like the game is ‘poorly optimized’.”
It’s important to note that we haven’t seen proper PS5 and Xbox Series X|S footage yet, but DF said “The characters look good.”
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