- The first proper look at Crimson Desert running on the PS5 Pro has been shared
- Digital Foundry got hands-on with the console version and praises its ray tracing tech across all three graphics modes
- Performance mode, “by and large,” meets its 60fps target with the 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’s open-world action-adventure game is scheduled to launch on March 19. Still, the only promotional footage we’ve had a decent look at over the month has been on PC, even though 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 was given exclusive access to Crimson Desert running on the PlayStation 5 Pro, and it looks seriously impressive.
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“Their [Pearl Abyss’s] BlackSpace engine delivers results that are nothing short of remarkable,” said DF’s John Linneman, and although there is some “jank” to content with, “the overall impression is striking.”
“From performance to crowd behaviour, animation, freedom, foliage, lighting, everything. It is a stunning game,” Linneman adds. “And on 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, ray tracing technology is fully present and accounted for on PS5 Pro.
The ray-traced diffuse global illumination that was highlighted in DF’s PC preview, the per-pixel solution, is also enabled on the console, offering a fully dynamic ray-traced-driven lighting system, and the footage looks gorgeous.
Performance mode offers 60fps, and Linneman said it “puts up a good fight” and “by and large” meets its target, adding, “I was surprised by how good it was overall.”
DF also notes that frame rate does dip in areas with larger crowds and places involving lots of non-playable characters (NPCs), and also dropped “significantly” during an early game battle into the 30fps region.
A similar issue can be triggered in large cities, too, but Linneman said that this is “not the norm at all” for the game. The game’s Quality mode in 30fps and Balanced option in 40fps also appear 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 this isn’t the latest upgraded version of Sony’s tech that is expected to be added to the game, as we saw with Resident Evil Requiem, so 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, the base 1080p from the optimal mode may still deliver an impressive experience with 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 artefacts that we should expect to see gone with the upgraded PSSR,” Linneman said.
“In terms of CPU, that was a more pressing concern – today’s mid-range PC CPUs are considerably more capable than the consoles. Here, the limitations can be more felt, but never enough to feel that the game is ‘poorly optimised’.”
It’s important to note that we’ve yet to see proper PS5 and Xbox Series X|S footage, but DF said “The signs are looking good.”
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