Testing BioWare’s latest on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles.
And how have the game’s ray tracing tweaks been adapted for console play?
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a great-looking game.
There are some really beautiful environments here, with abundant foliage and attractive lighting.
One element that highlights the experience is the game’s strand-based hair system.
The rounded-off, exaggerated features ensure the characters don’t dip into the uncanny valley.
In practice, I think this works fairly well.
RT reflections are frequently applied to water, and sometimes make an appearance on glossy materials like metals.
BioWare uses them when the performance overhead is there to accommodate them gracefully.
Still, the overall delta in lighting quality between the performance and fidelity modes isn’t that great.
Level of detail tweaks also appear more refined in that 30fps mode.
Outside of those tweaks, there’s not much to separate the two modes visually outside of resolution.
Performance-wise, the story is pretty simple.
The fidelity mode is pretty much a locked 30fps, at least in my experience.
There’s no frame-pacing weirdness here, and the game does a good job landing a consistent 30.
The performance mode is mostly a 60fps experience.
But it does struggle slightly with periodic frame-rate drops, which tend to occur in certain cutscenes and environments.
Demanding combat moments can also cause a brief dip here and there.
Xbox Series S is a little more interesting.
There are the same visual toggles as the other consoles - a performance and a fidelity mode.
Series S unsurprisingly drops RT entirely, with no ray tracing visible in the fidelity mode.
Other prefs look similar to the other consoles' performance modes.
Series S delivers a solid 30fps refresh in fidelity mode, again roughly matching the other consoles.
Overall, I’m quite pleased with Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Plus, VRR helps iron out any dips if you have an appropriate display, and eliminates tearing.
On Series S, I think the choice is less clear.
BioWare’s latest RPG looks great and plays well, delivering a solid technical experience on current-gen console hardware.
