Baldur's Gate 3 - Xbox Series X|S + PS5 Patched Performance - DF Tech Review

balers Gate 3 is one of the most critically acclaimed games of the year it's like an electronic version of a good DND campaign with an incredible amount of flexibility and an engaging player-driven story this kind of game doesn't always translate well to consoles but its PS5 outing from September worked quite well absent some quibbles with the gam pad controls and occasional performance issues as the year draws to a close we're finally seeing Boulders Gates Xbox iteration coming to both Xbox series s and X so how does the series X code measure up against PS5 have the game's frame rate tumbles been resolved and can the series s still deliver an effective rendition of this turn-based RPG before we delve into the Xbox series machines I wanted to provide a quick refresher on the PS5 it's been 3 months since we last looked at the PS5 code and the game has seen a dozen updates since then initial Impressions suggest limited visual changes comparing the launch and current versions side by side the most obvious tweak is that Shadows from some objects now appear slightly more diffuse as of the most recent patch I think this is a byproduct of a change to Shadow filtering as the Shadows don't exhibit obvious signs of lower resolution rendering it gives the Shadows a more realistic appearance in general i' say I also noticed that the blood decals in this scene appeared higher resolution in the updated game the water also looks quite a bit different with more prominent specular at a distance it also doesn't have the hazy appearance that we saw in the launch games water image Clarity is a pretty close match between the two patches with a 1440p like image across all patches and modes the performance modes appear to use FSR 2 to hit that 1440p final image output and both versions exhibit some ghosting and breakup with the leaves and fire here though in typical play these aren't really noticeable the actual resolutions though are a little different the launch game used fixed resolutions 1440p in quality mode and about 960p in performance mode but according to developer laran Studios the game as of recent updates uses Dynamic resolutions on Console quality Mode still came in at 1440p for me across the shots I examined but the performance mode now comes in at 1080p internally using FSR 2 to upscale to 1440p I imagine both modes especially the performance mode could potentially drop resolution but if so it's not very common frame rates however are much improved both modes at launch generally stuck to their frame rate Targets in typical play but they suffered from very poor CPU bound performance in act 3 specifically in this busy town area we saw frame rates in the low 20s and upper teens here in both visual modes with the density of NPCs apparently causing performance issues on the PS5 zen2 based CPU as of the latest update the game performs much better in the performance mode balers gate generally hovers in the low 30s when we pass under the most taxing area in this run the game still suffers from constant screen tearing when it drops frames but we do see a big performance uplift relative to the low toid 20s readout that was common before the quality mode sees a similar uplift generally it sticks to 30 FPS here with relatively minor dips Below in the most Troublesome spot where the launch version was in the low 20s the updated code clocks in at or very close to 30 FPS a pretty substantial upgrade that you can really feel I couldn't spot any obvious settings downgrades here either so this comes without clear visual compromises so I do think that the new PS5 code fares much better than its launch counterpart when CPU bound it exhibit substantially more stable performance than the earlier code which was the number one issue with balers Gate 3 at launch the PS5 and series X tend to be quite evenly matched in multiplatform software so how do they St back up in balers Gate 3 visually there's not a lot to separate them but there are a few curious differences the ground surface appears slightly higher on the series X in my testing across many of the game's environments if you look closely at character feat I think the ground on the series machine is a closer match in many instances for foot placement the actual ground geometry appears similar though across both machines I also noticed a decrease in anisotropic filtering quality on series X the PS5 equips itself pretty well here while the series X takes a noticeable hit to Clarity when the camera runs perpendicular to the scene the difference can be quite significant though in gameplay from isometric or overhead camera perspectives it's a lot less noticeable I also spotted some differences in the water with the Xbox version retaining some of the hazy looking water at a distance which I think is an attempt to give the water an impression of more natural Sky reflection ction at close range the water looks identical though outside of those changes in general visual settings the two consoles are a close match that applies equally across both modes on both consoles because the performance and quality modes have matching settings outside of resolution the series X's visual changes carry over to both modes in about the same manner in terms of image quality both systems deliver a reasonably good-look image on a 4K television set albeit a slightly soft one on series X I did notice a couple of curious things though like visibly lower resolution HUD elements but when I went to pixel count the image it came in at very similar figures to the PS5 build a straight 1440p in quality mode and 1080p in the performance mode performance-wise the quality mode targets a 30fps update and does a very good job of hitting that Target in general Play It's essentially a locked 30 during combat cut scenes and open world exploration but the town of balers gate in act 3 poses some issues just like the PS5 release interestingly though the series X seems to struggle a fair bit more in hitting its frame time targets here with deeper and longer bouts of sub30 FPS performance the performance mode again hits its 60fps frame rate target without issue generally speaking in typical play you might spot a oneoff dropped frame for from time to time or a brief stutter very occasionally we see significantly degraded performance in town areas sometimes hitting the upper 20s balers Gate 3 also lets the game Tear in a small area near the top of the screen in its performance mode to prioritize image response when the game is underload this is less obtrusive than the tearing on PS5 which lets the game Tear on both the top and bottom margins of the screen for a slow paced game like this I would probably prefer a perfectly vsync presentation but it doesn't matter that much and of course with vrr enabled you won't see any tearing artifacts there's also a co-op mode which ran consistently at 30 FPS in my testing the resolution here comes in at 1440p just like the quality mode a slow paced game like balers Gate 3 makes for a bit of an unconventional couch Co-op experience but it seems to work pretty well if you feel so inclined Microsoft's pint-sized current gen console typically takes some substantial cutbacks and current gen software so what's the score with balers Gate 3 on Series S there are a few points of differentiation Shadow quality for instance is clearly lower resolution than on series X the shadow maps have more visible breakup and resolve less fine detail than the premium machine though they still look decent enough I'd say level of detail gets a bit of a simplification at a distance as well with cruder rock formations in this shot I'm comparing against the series X quality mode here because I think that it more closely resembles the series s build than its performance mode outside of those tweaks I didn't spot any especially noticeable visual changes relative to series X visual settings differences in balers Gate 3 on PC tend to be very subtle though so I imagine the game could be dropping a broader range of settings but in either case any downgrades aren't visually obvious on screen resolution expectedly takes a hit clocking in at 1080p in every shot I tested this doesn't appear to come with any FSR 2 treatment as characteristic FSR 2 artifacts like the ghosting trails that follow the falling leaves in this shot don't make an appearance the final image output looks noticeably softer on Series S and comes saddled with visibly more aliasing HUD elements also exhibit obvious stair stepping but I'd say the game looks fine enough with a less obvious visual downgrade than we see in the typical Series S title The Game's singular Series S Mode targets 30 FPS which feels fine by and large in general play the frame rate is locked to that Target as expected with a consistent beat of 33 millisecond frames in our act three stress test the game per performs almost identically to the series X in its quality mode holding 30fps more often than not but struggling somewhat in the most demanding spot I'd love to take a crack at the game Split Screen Co-op functionality on Series S as well but the feature has been omitted entirely from the launch release according to larion this mode presented substantial development difficulties and the requirement to keep feature parody on the two machines as per Microsoft's technical requirements was delaying development with an exemption granted from Microsoft the final game completely lacks split screen on the weaker console the series s's restricted Ram allotment probably makes this kind of feature especially challenging to implement here balers Gate 3 on Xbox consoles comes in more or less as expected relative to the PS5 release there are some slightly odd visual differences and a small performance delpit in favor of PS5 but overall it's a very similar experience to the existing console release that means you're getting a goodlooking very playable interpretation of balers Gate 3 albe it with a control and UI setup that feels a little clunky relative to mouse and keyboard play on a PC the game continues to have some configuration Oddities as well for example the graphical modes on PS5 and series X look nearly identical to each other primarily separated by different frame rate targets instead of a meaningful difference in visual features or image Clarity I think using FSR 2 to hit a higher final resolution perhaps a full 4K would better suit the quality modes at the moment there's not much reason to go with the quality modes on either console the Xbox versions also currently suffer from an issue that can make saved games disappear I didn't encounter this issue myself and the problem seems to be related to the Xbox Cloud save system on Microsoft's end but prospective players may want to hold off until there's a definitive fix so overall i' consider the balers Gate 3 Xbox series ports to be a qualified success there are still some issues here but this is a perfectly playable and reasonably performant version of Lan's acclaimed RPG if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe and press the bell for YouTube notifications check out the patreon at digital founder. net for exclusive and Early Access content and to get in touch use social media thanks for watching

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 147,547

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Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 16 2023