Alright, just played through a new game on 1.03 for a little ways, and I'll post my impressions thus far:
- The button prompts have not diminished from what I can tell. This is my third playthrough of the game, and they are appearing with exactly the same frequency as before. This might change later on in the game, but so far I think that this was falsely reported.
- Good news: the camera acceleration curve has definitely been tweaked to feel much more responsive. It accelerates and decelerates faster, so it doesn't have that floaty/delayed feeling to it like it did prior to 1.03. I have zero doubt that this was actually changed and not some kind of placebo. It's immediately noticeable if you have been used to playing the game pre-patch. So while it loses some of that Team Ico dreamlike feel with this update, it gains fluidity and responsiveness that I think most people will prefer. Basically, it feels more like a traditional third-person camera now.
- While I can't speak conclusively on this one (due to lack of framerate measurement methods available to me), I think I can say with some level of confidence that 1.03 has introduced some slight performance improvements. I took this playthrough through several stress areas in the game that consistently resulted in low-20's fps prior to 1.03, and I felt a slight increase in framerate in these sections.
That's not to say that the game is hitting 30fps all the time on the standard PS4 now, but when it dips it doesn't dip as low or stay low for as long. The overall feeling is that frametimes are more consistent, so even when the fps might be dipping a bit you don't get the same amount of visible and palpable choppiness as before in certain areas that tax the hardware. This is a good thing, and I look forward to testing 1.03 in some of the later areas in the game when certain setpieces dipped to what felt like sub-20fps before.
I'd love for someone with the ability to capture framerate measurements on the PS4 to prove me right here. It's not a night/day improvement, but it's an appreciated improvement nonetheless.
- Lastly, I think that maybe this slight performance uptick has been achieved by some slight tweaks to the engine, perhaps. My eyes could be deceiving me, but it feels like bloom and fog have been dialed back slightly in outdoor areas. Lighting in general looks a little flatter and lower contrast to my eye, but by all means this could just be me seeing something that isn't there. Take this last bullet point as food for thought rather than as a statement of fact.
Those are my impressions. I'd love to hear from someone else playing on the standard PS4 who has an eye for framerate fluctuations. Improved performance is my biggest dream for TLG. For someone like me, steep framerate dips during gameplay or setpiece moments really hampers my enjoyment because I can't keep myself from focusing on it.
FYI - I've played up until the first time Trico
, so I made sure to test out some of the more demanding early outdoor areas (
) before posting this.