There have been other games with DRS that have hit 720p. Hardly a surprise, quarter res of whatever the big boys are doing is the expected result. The XSS is best used on a modestly sized 1080p monitor/TV, 720p is still an okay res in that scenario (still native res on a lot of 32" sets). I just started the Avengers campaign and chose to play in 60fps mode (which is said to drop to 720p in combat) and on a 24" screen she's still a looker.
On topic, this game looks like the type of game I can be hilariously bad at and still have a good time. I'll be sure to give it a look when it is on sale.
720p is not okay with a 1080p monitor. don't make comments until you experienced it yourself. even native 1080p does not look crisp anymore on a 1080p screen and needs supersampling for better IQ, please stop spreading FUD
stop normalizing the 720p target for series s. instead ask for better optimization. there are no justifications for 720p modes in 2021. even 900p looks horrible with a 1080p screen, let alone 720p. a slight %10 resolution dip usually is enough to butcher image quality in majority of games at 1080p. 1080p is not a mythical baseline resolution like 2160p where slight dips like 1600p-1900p looks okay. its native or bust at such low resolutions
here's what you're missing out if you with series s instead of series x even at a 1080p screen.
as I said, native 1080p does not look like actual 1080p anymore due to the emergence of Temporal Anti Aliasing. TAA particularly looks bad at native 1080p and below, and supersampling greatly improves the IQ, hence why I would suggest SX to 1080p users even if they don't plan to get a 1440p/4K screen unless they're severely constrained by their budget
if you can't see the difference, or deem the difference unworthy for 200 dollars more, feel free to get a Series S, all is fine! its still fine if you want to save money. but don't think SX would not enhance your image quality for the additional price. it will, greatly. as evidenced by the above comparison. having higher resolution input is highly beneficial for Temporal Anti Aliasing.
Relevant article;
"Motion in the scene may disrupt a well-designed sample pattern by displacing samples accumulated over frames. With a short recurrent sequence, certain motion speed may cause sample locations from multiple frames to cluster in world space, leading to biased results (blurry or aliased).
This is one of the causes of TAA quality degradation under motion (the others are discussed in Sec. 6)"
"Since the history is reprojected in every frame, the filtering error accumulates and quickly result in an objectionable, blurry look"
Relevant GDC source;