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Face-Off: Darksiders 2 Deathinitive Edition - Digital Foundry

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Kralamoonard

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Frame Rate Test

Darksiders 2 Deathinitive Edition: PS4 vs Xbox One vs Xbox 360 Frame-Rate Test

Graphical Comparisons And Technical Analysis

Darksiders 2 Deathinitive Edition: PS4/Xbox One/PC Graphics Comparison

Read The Full Article For More Info

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-darksiders-2-deathinitive-edition

...but to summarise:

"Image quality is certainly improved on the PS4 and Xbox. Both consoles render natively in 1080p, while the developer's previous use of an edge-detect and blur solution to tackle aliasing is replaced with a more refined post-process anti-aliasing technique. Jaggies were never a major issue in the original PC game, and Gunfire Games' new implementation works well in providing a clean image with few artefacts, though we do see some mild texture blurring in play.

In terms of the remastering effort, environment details are further fleshed out. For example, rock faces feature increased geometric complexity, while additional trees and foliage are spread across the landscape. While many areas of the game feel a little barren - such as plains of Charred Pass - these changes help to better fill out the sparser locations throughout the game. Draw distances are also improved over the original PC version of Darksiders 2, with shadows and LOD transitions occurring less aggressively than before. That said, pop-in is still an issue at times when the engine is streaming in data as the player rides through different locations, with shadows and grass the most noticeable culprits.

The other major change to the familiar world in the Deathinitive Edition is a complete reworking of the lighting model. Light sources are repositioned across many scenes and extra lights are added, casting additional shadows across the environment and characters. Ambient lighting is also more prominent, adding to the level of depth in dimly-lit areas. The use of physically-based rendering also enhances the level of three-dimensionality in the presentation, while materials such as stone, leather, cloth and metal look more realistic, without compromising the stylised look of the core artwork too much.

These upgrades bring the core visual standard more into line with current generation titles and add a layer of realism to the stylised artwork not seen in the standard Darksiders 2 release. However, the overall look of the game isn't a complete match on PS4 and Xbox One, with some substantial differences.

Take the lighting model for example. While both versions feature similarly placed light sources and use of physically-based rendering, lighting is much brighter on Xbox One and frequently too dark on PS4, despite gamma settings matching up nicely between the two versions. Right now it's not immediately clear which version features the 'correct' lighting set-up intended by Gunfire Games, but PS4 seems to feature a closer tonal match to the original game.

Elsewhere, we also see the occasional missing shadow on the PS4 game, along with a reduced level of snow in the opening stage of the game, both of which are likely oversights as opposed to actual downgrades, though the situation is a little odd. That said, both consoles are a match in many areas with texture resolution, filtering and the use of alpha effects appearing identical. The PS4 also gains an advantage through the use of higher resolution shadows, with these elements appearing visibly rougher on Xbox One.

However, what's clear is that while the Xbox One version of the Deathinitive Edition seems to possess fewer visual anomalies than its PS4 counterpart, it's the Sony console that takes point on delivering on its 30fps target. Frame drops are more commonplace on Xbox One in busier areas,and in this sense, its overall performance profile is more in line with the original Xbox 360 game - albeit with substantially reduced levels of screen-tear..."
Click to expand...


TL:DR

  • PS4 and Xbox One both run a native 1080p display, with a low texture filtering implementation of 2x AF.
  • Both target 30fps with dips being more prominent on Xbox One.
  • A reworked lighting model is seen through the shifting to a PBR system.
  • Xbox One's presentation/lighting seems "brighter" compared to PS4, where the latter is closer to the original PC release at ultra.
  • PC is still the best place to play the game due to the 60fps providing a more fluid presentation and lower latency controls.

Screenshots Comparing The Graphics

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Personal Thoughts

I commend the effort into reworking many assets and implementing a PBR system, however I am disappointed with the frame rate target of 30 rather than 60. I guess the developers just didn't want to go through the extra time and money (on top of what they had already done to rework the lighting system) in order to hit a 60fps target. Consequently, I do then think that the priorities were in the wrong place as I believe remasters should target 60fps by default, even if it means compromises elsewhere since the gameplay will be most affected by this (as opposed to 30fps with higher latency and a less fluid presentation).

Even then, I don't see why a 60fps target cannot exist with this reworked lighting system, and am even more surprised to see the consoles dip from 30fps. This is because far better looking remasters (such as Metro Redux, The Last of Us Remastered and Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection, God of War III Remastered) are all better looking AND run at a stable 1080p 60fps. Even MGSV, which is not a remaster, has one of the most impressive PBR systems this gen AND is open world, yet it also runs at a locked 1080p 60fps. Hell, as a final example, Borderlands The Handsome Collection has a similar, non-realistic art style, is open world and runs at 1080p 60fps (of course I'm talking about PS4 in this case, although I do think Xbox One could run this easily too at 900p 60fps).

I think it firstly shows that it's the constraint of time and the existing engine that makes it difficult to hit the 60fps. I mean the main reason why I don't think it's the hardware's fault is because take Uncharted 4 as an example, the game runs at the same frame rate and obviously looks much better, mainly because it's been built from the ground up for that platform (and other reasons such as budget/number of staff/optimized for just one hardware etc). Of course with a port, you have to work within the limitations of the old hardware and engine. Couple that with only so much time/money and you have a less ambitious 30fps target. Having said that, if they had targeted 60fps to begin with and improved IQ, I think that could have gone a long way, though I do applaud the effort into reworking the lighting system, as that is no easy feat.

I guess it's just a matter of giving up and calling it a day rather than going through much more effort and using up more money to implement the 60fps on top of the work they had already done to begin with with regarding the PBR/lighting system rework. I understand since it is a mid-tier publishers, even if I am a tad disappointed.
 
Shameful. A definitive edition that runs at 30fps with dips? I said good day Sir!
 
I've got the PS4 version and it looks very clean and smooth. A great HD port.
 
St3v3 said:
Shameful. A definitive edition that runs at 30fps with dips? I said good day Sir!
Click to expand...

OrbitalBeard said:
Wait....this only runs at 30fps?!?

WHY

Yeah, they give their theories in the article, but still....WHY
Click to expand...

I guess their priorities were in the wrong place and went with reworking many assets and implementing the PBR pipeline. But even then, there's no reason why the consoles shouldn't be able to run this game at 60fps since it doesn't look graphically demanding at all, particularly with the art style.

I mean there are far more better looking and technically complex games that have pushed the consoles to 60fps (look at Metro Redux, TLoU:R, Uncharted NDC for examples).
 
OrbitalBeard said:
Wait....this only runs at 30fps?!?

WHY

Yeah, they give their theories in the article, but still....WHY
Click to expand...

Pbr slays modern consoles. That plus the lighting + it all being hacked into an already existing game made for other hardware by a developer that doesn't exist anymore = big performance hit.

What you're seeing is that they prioritized pretty new stuff over high frame rate. As someone who owns a console, I have utterly no idea why this is surprising you.
 
pa22word said:
Pbr slays modern consoles. That plus the lighting + it all being hacked into an already existing game made for other hardware by a developer that doesn't exist anymore = big performance hit.

What you're seeing is that they prioritized pretty new stuff over high frame rate. As someone who owns a console, I have utterly no idea why this is surprising you.
Click to expand...

MGSV uses a PBR system and still hits 60fps target AND is OPEN world AND is better looking. It's just a matter of where they "gave up" and decided not to go through the extra costs and time to hit the 60fps target. Games on current gen systems look far better and hit a locked 30fps/60fps. It's silly and is surprising because of this.
 
Not being 60fps is hilarious in itself... but a game like this failing to maintain even 30fps locked is just...
 
Looks like an amazing port. Darksiders 3 will surely be announced at any moment.

Why does Darksiders have to die like this?
 
OrbitalBeard said:
Wait....this only runs at 30fps?!?

WHY

Yeah, they give their theories in the article, but still....WHY
Click to expand...

Yea it's a real shame. I wish they had made 60fps the primary goal. I skipped out on the Dishonored remaster for the same reason.

I own the originals on PC and they run great on there, but I need to upgrade my hardware (video card at least) as my PC at this point doesn't run games reliably anymore. I was really hoping more of these remasters would run smoother so I could put that off longer.
 
pa22word said:
Pbr slays modern consoles. That plus the lighting + it all being hacked into an already existing game made for other hardware by a developer that doesn't exist anymore = big performance hit.

What you're seeing is that they prioritized pretty new stuff over high frame rate. As someone who owns a console, I have utterly no idea why this is surprising you.
Click to expand...

Ok, even if I shouldn't be surprised.....it apparently can't even maintain 30 fps.

Come on!
 
Kralamoonard said:
MGSV uses a PBR system and still hits 60fps target. It's just a matter of where they "gave up" and decided not to go through the extra costs and time to hit the 60fps target. Games on current gen systems look far better and hit a locked 30fps/60fps. It's silly and is surprising because of this.
Click to expand...

Mgsv and its engine were built from the ground up with those features, and had a massively larger budget. You cant really compare that to a hackjob to an existing game and engine ported to different hardware all financed by a midtier publisher.

When push comes to shove, pretty shit is going to get automatic priority over performance on consoles. Every time.
 
I for one don't buy so called remaster running in 30 fps. It's jarring to see such old games performing like their last gen counterparts in terms of gameplay. Such low efforts shouldn't be rewarded. Metro, Uncharted, TLoU, Borderlands and many more show that actual work has been put in the optimization of these titles.
 
Taker34 said:
I for one don't buy so called remaster running in 30 fps. It's jarring to see such old games performing like their last gen counterparts in terms of gameplay. Such low efforts shouldn't be rewarded. Metro, Uncharted, TLoU, Borderlands and many more show that actual work has been put in the optimization of these titles.
Click to expand...

I agree in general that there are some weird priorities going on, but it says something that you cannot just dump a game on these consoles and just have 60fps by default. The CPUs...
GhostTrick said:
Exactly. Nothing to do with this. The game isn't CPU limited and goes up to 152 fps minimum even on an old i3 2xxx.
Click to expand...

This release may have decidedly more draw calls depending upon how they did their materials, how many more shadows it has, how many more world objects it has. It is hard to do a 1:1 comparison. It could easily have 2x the amount of drawcalls.
 
Dictator93 said:
I agree in general that there are some weird priorities going on, but it says something that you cannot just dump a game on these consoles and just have 60fps by default. The CPUs...


This release may have decidedly more draw calls depending upon how they did their materials, how many more shadows it has, how many more world objects it has. It is hard to do a 1:1 comparison. It could easily have 2x the amount of drawcalls.
Click to expand...


Even then, I fail to see how it would explain the 30FPS thing.
I mean, these consoles should be able to bruteforce that to 60FPS considering how the original release ran. You get an average of 120FPS on a HD7850 and the game isn't CPU limited even on a i3 2xxx (which was a low range 2011 CPU).
 
Dictator93 said:
I agree in general that there are some weird priorities going on, but it says something that you cannot just dump a game on these consoles and just have 60fps by default. The CPUs...


This release may have decidedly more draw calls depending upon how they did their materials, how many more shadows it has, how many more world objects it has. It is hard to do a 1:1 comparison. It could easily have 2x the amount of drawcalls.
Click to expand...
I'm not want to sound moronic but the same thing has been said for Borderlands remaster ... the console CPU, the draw call of UE3 . And after 6 months they fixed the 60 fps with a patch. I highly doubt a game like this couldn't hit 60 fps even with new graphic stuff. I suspect it's more a budget/time limit here.
 
omonimo said:
I'm not want to sound moronic but the same thing has been said for Borderlands remaster ... the console CPU, the draw call of UE3 . And after 6 months they fixed the 60 fps with a patch. I highly doubt a game like this couldn't hit 60 fps even with new graphic stuff. I suspect it's more a budget/time limit here.
Click to expand...

Well I would definitely not contend it is impossible. It is just that this is not 1:1 with the original release, unlike borderlands. So saying that it should be 60 is harder.
 
fuck, can't even lock it to 30 on X1

when are devs gonna start dialing back useless visual effects to get a decent framerate in

I'm not even gonna touch that this should have been 60 fps
 
It would be nice if they did more horizontally panning shots, instead of just going into the screen in most of their videos. Shows off the framerate difference even better and when playing you'll be moving the camera horizontally all the time.
 
Kezen said:
It's coming to PC as well, should be easy to run at 60fps.
Click to expand...
Heh, I wonder if it will still require the use of something like RTSS? Darksiders 2 was actually the game that revealed the glory of RTSS back when it was just called "Afterburner On Screen Display". Darksiders 2 had severe frame pacing issues on the PC when it launched. No matter what you tried, it did not run smoothly unless you utilized RTSS with the cap set to your monitor refresh rate. No other limiter program could pull that off.
 
Dictator93 said:
BTW, it may be a good idea to have less images and text in the op so that DF gets the clicks it deserves.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advise...I just thought it'd be pretty cool to put in some effort into the article and layout it in a neat fashion lol, but I guess I never thought about the repercussions of people not visiting the site. I do put their links first, and I will add an edit indicating to read the full article for more information. I understand your point though, I hope I don't cause any harm by doing this!
 
dark10x said:
Heh, I wonder if it will still require the use of something like RTSS? Darksiders 2 was actually the game that revealed the glory of RTSS back when it was just called "Afterburner On Screen Display". Darksiders 2 had severe frame pacing issues on the PC when it launched. No matter what you tried, it did not run smoothly unless you utilized RTSS with the cap set to your monitor refresh rate. No other limiter program could pull that off.
Click to expand...

Does that affect gsync setups?
 
Kralamoonard said:
Thanks for the advise...I just thought it'd be pretty cool to put in some effort into the article and layout it in a neat fashion lol, but I guess I never thought about the repercussions of people not visiting the site. I do put their links first, and I will add an edit indicating to read the full article for more information. I understand your point though, I hope I don't cause any harm by doing this!
Click to expand...

Not a big deal, just a suggestion. I like your formatting and commentary though. :D
 
Lonely1 said:
Does that affect gsync setups?
Click to expand...
No idea since I don't have a G-sync display (since, when I purchased my monitor, there were no monitors with G-sync at the larger size and resolution I demanded).

That said, G-sync obviously didn't exist when Darksiders 2 was released so it didn't matter then.
 
had to use RadeonPro to make the original PC version run well (at least for me) so I'll see how this new version runs tomorrow...getting it for free is nice (but I completely understand why others are pissed with the way they are handling the whole discount vs free thing)
 
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