Resolution, fidelity and animation take a hit - but the performance upgrade is solid.
Or, at 40fps if you happened to initiate the game with a 120Hz display connected.
Enter patch 1.5 then, and Asobo finally has a response.
But there is a catch for the two premium consoles as well.
There is a trade-off.
All of this saves hugely on CPU performance.
The most obvious example of Asobo’s reduced animation trick is in Requiem’s dark crypt areas.
The good news is, this doesn’t represent most of gameplay.
Thankfully, this only affects NPCs around big cities.
Human enemies in the field always update at 60fps - and even across huge distances they stay at 60.
Other trade-offs are also made for get the frame-rate up to 60, starting with the resolution.
On both PS5 and Series X, this 1080p image tends to blur details towards the far distance.
A few other tweaks bear mention on the performance mode.
Again, all this applies on PS5 as well.
For complex areas - like towns - the cutbacks go even further to get to hold 60fps.
For a start, on performance mode entire chunks of grass are stripped outright from the scene.
And the second point?
And, as we’ll get to, they both run at a flat 60fps this way too.
In performance testing it’s a huge success all round for Asobo’s optimisation push for 60fps.
After locking the rats to 30fps, the actual gameplay does genuinely run at fluid 60fps.
The benefit in playability is palpable as well.
For targeting with the slingshot, for the general smoothness of panning the camera it flows beautifully.
Even the town marketplace, and the open areas with enemy NPCs and rats show no issue.
Into just how wide, or narrow, the clearance is above the 60fps line when running at 60Hz.
It’s also worth touching on the state of the 1440p resolution mode.
Asobo Studio has answered the call for 60 frames per second gameplay.
However each of these points is tellingly pared back to make 60fps possible here.
