- Leverages UE5 features with minimal issues and solid performance
- Open world game with a smaller scope. Each area has a lot to see and do
- DF were genuinely surprised with the games beauty and aesthetic
- The game is, however, not perfect and bugs can crop up, albeit much lesser than previous Obsidian games.
- Nanite is used extensively. Geometry feels consistent regardless of your distance.
- However small object pop-in like grass can still be observed.
- Uses combo of Unreal's virtual shadow maps with screen space shadows. Hybrid approach looks pretty good but can have flaws.
- Lumen GI and Reflections are used and help with the game's dynamic time of day
- Combining all UE5 features 'You get something that really feels impressive, more beautiful than expected'
- Xbox:
- Series X has 30/40/60hz options with additional unlock FPS toggle
- Series S has 30/40hz options
- Quality(30)/Balanced(40) feature full Lumen with Quality having more vegetation
- Performance (60) uses Lumen GI only and omits Reflections, opting to use SSR. Also reduces geometry detail and shadow quality
- DF noted one bug where shadow denoiser seems to stop working, no other instance of this noted
- SS Quality similar to SX Balanced and SS Balanced is similar to SX Performance with similar cutbacks
Resolution:
- SX Quality: 1440p, Performance 1080p, Balance: 1440p with a little bit more variance
- SS Quality: 1080p, SS Balanced: 720p, DF does not recommend SS Balanced due to IQ loss
Performance:
- Quality mode sticks to 30FPS with only minor hiccups on both
- Balanced mode was locked in DF testing, John noted that another streamer had some issues in some areas where DF did not, so there's a chance it might drop.
- Performance: More prone to drops, first big town was almost always in mid 50's
- DF's recommendation: Balanced on Series X and Quality on Series S
PC Corner:
- Additional features over console, chiefly hardware Lumen
- Hardware can make reflections look significantly better, unlike the recent Ninja Gaiden Black 2 where it kind of breaks
- Hardware Lumen also benefits GI over Software Lumen with improved coverage
- DLSS, FSR3, TSR upscaling also present
- Excellent experience on John's 5090 (lol)
- Alex thinks this is a better experience than the vast majority of UE5 games
- 4 minute long shader comp at the start, but it can still cause some minor shader stutter
- Lower end CPU's can have bigger shader spikes.
- DF encountered some freezing during the shader comp, which the developers have said the first patch will fix
- VRAM is not an issue, even with 8GB cards
- IQ can be questionable at lower quality GPU's (shown using 4060)
- Some more DLSS injecting transformer model talk.
- PC version also has traversal stutter that was not noted in the console segment
- Ryzen 5 3060 is recommended to use a 30fps cap but it might still see spikes
- Higher end CPU with 3D caches will have a 'world of a better experience'
- Even for higher end CPU's, Alex recommended capping frame rate to avoid stutters. 60hz cap seems to completely eliminate stutters in Alex's segment
Conclusion:
- PC's heavyness can explain why Xbox isn't reaching locked 60fps at all times
- DF thinks the character rendering can be weak due to stilted animations
- Compare the first character as something out of Concord
- They praise the actual writing and storytelling
- HDR derives system-level toggles, doesn't have a lot of variances in the game itself
- John encountered a couple of crashes during his testing
- 'Ultimately though, Avowed really impressed me'
- Technical performance relative to previous Obsidian games at launch praised.
