A former Xbox One exclusive looks to be one of the most impressive showpieces of what the PlayStation 4 Pro can do. Crystal Dynamics’ action-adventure title will support three different visual modes when played on PS4 Pro, with each focusing on a different area. There’s an option for everyone, whether a player wants to focus on a better frame rate, 4K support, or just want the game to be as pretty as possible.
Crystal Dynamics’ Scott Amos explained the three modes in an interview with VG247:
You can go for a high frame rate – so if you’re going at 1080p on a PS4 Pro you can run with an unlocked frame rate. So instead of being just at 30 you can run north of 45 frames or better. It’s one of those things that, when you start playing it, it’s great for those speed runners and those hardcore gamers who are just like ‘I want to get through this as quick as I can, I want seamless controls’.
Then you’re like… this is a beautiful area, I want to take a closer look, you can slide over a notch and now we have enhanced visuals. That’s actually 1080p locked at 30 frames but we throw everything in that we can – lighting, multi-pass rendering, texture shading, reflections, density of pixels, density of particle effects… everything we can turn on. It’s just this beautiful-looking experience at a locked 1080p, 30 frames.
Then you go to 4K. Suddenly there’s things in the world that with this ratchet up in crispness and clarity that you just couldn’t see before. Something on the horizon that used to be a blob of kind of grey shadow on the hillside is now a very crisp outline of a ruin with a cross on top of it. It has some sunlight poking through a hole and trees way off in the distance, and you honestly couldn’t have seen that before, it would’ve just faded off and dropped to a low resolution – but now you can see it. That does have this ratcheting effect on the immersion and on the ‘oh my god, I’m actually there’ experience.
Amos goes into a lot more detail in the full interview, so make sure you check it out. It’s really a must-read if you’re interested in the PS4 Pro, and what developers will be able to use that extra power for. He also does a fantastic job of explaining why players without a 4K television will want to upgrade, as well.
Rise of the Tomb Raider releases October 11 on PlayStation 4. Almost one year after it debuted on Xbox One. The 20 Year Celebration edition on PS4 will include a brand new DLC mission called Blood Ties, which will be playable with PlayStation VR.
(Source: VG247)
