Digital Foundry: The Outer Worlds 2 - DF Review - Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PS5 Pro - Impressive on Xbox, PS5 Needs Work
- Thread starter adamsapple
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Gameplay Gods Bless
Member
You shouldn't be surprised. Obsidian already achieved that earlier this year with Avowed. The PC version of Avowed even has hardware lumen.before watching, I already expect the worst.
UE5, Lumen...
edit: well, I am pleasantly surprised by the SX version at least. seems ok enough for a UE5 game. very low resolution of course, but at least not sub 1080p.
but it's a sad state of affairs when you're happy a game is running above 1080p in 2025...
Gameplay Gods Bless
Member
Right?! It looks so stuttery. Hopefully the PC version has a setting to massively crank up the distance you can be before it pops in, looks terrible otherwise.
Gameplay Gods Bless
Member
The characters have some ugly ass faces. The art has that "made in big city California" look.Graphically, technically, and in terms of performance, it's a generation ahead of Outer World 1... and that's already a credit to the Studio. Especially since it's a UE5 game and maintains a very good IQ ("4K sh" say DF)
Then, the art is a matter of taste. I've seen other areas that are more to my liking. The vegetation areas in UE5, with that art style, always remind me of Fortnite (and Fortnite reminds me of me)
Gameplay Gods Bless
Member
Switch 2 is very very possible if they remove lumen, nanite and virtual shadow maps. If they keep them it'll be way harder so hard no game has achieved it yet.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
So Quality mode on Series X. Cool.
Fess
Member
So 30fps. Not cool.
Weren't you considering building a PC? You really should do that. The cost is a kick in the balls but the move from Xbox is so smooth now, and Gamepass is there, and you get Sony's games, it's great. Can keep Series X for the rare games that don't have a PC version.
Going by Avowed there is hope that this could be another one of the rare UE5 games with good performance, I'll have a look soon.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
30fps has never bothered me. It didn't bother me when playing the best games of all time, and it doesn't in 2025.
kevboard
Member
Avowed wasn't all that amazing looking. it did have a bunch of weird graphical quirks that are just odd. like how every time a reflection is on screen, your weapon will have those weird artifacts around it. and it had severe traversal stutters
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Balanced Mode has the IQ but sadly it seems like it uses some visual settings from the Performance mode.
Makes it a bit harder for it to be the de-facto version in this case.
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FoxMcChief
Gold Member
I tried to warn folks.
Radical_3d
Member
That'd be PC, actually.
Negotiator101
Member
Looks less garish than the first one which was too much colour popping everywhere.
Fess
Member
ShadyAcshuns
Member
Series X digital version it is then.
PSSR was a mistake...
Now it's really annoys me that how half baked and shitty this upscaler is.
These constant strobing effects and upscale artifacts are so distracting to me they ruins the games for me. And instead of fucking Sony finally fixing it there are more and more developer uses it in their games. It reached to the point that I have cancelled all my purchases that has "PS5 pro enchanted" label on it....
Sorry but for a "pro" console it just pathetic when I thinking that maybe I should play a game on my old PS5 instead of my pro. Crazy how incopetent Sony are.
Now it's really annoys me that how half baked and shitty this upscaler is.
These constant strobing effects and upscale artifacts are so distracting to me they ruins the games for me. And instead of fucking Sony finally fixing it there are more and more developer uses it in their games. It reached to the point that I have cancelled all my purchases that has "PS5 pro enchanted" label on it....
Sorry but for a "pro" console it just pathetic when I thinking that maybe I should play a game on my old PS5 instead of my pro. Crazy how incopetent Sony are.
winjer
Member
In some games, it does look good enough.
But yes, it's very lacking. So no wonder Sony is ditching it and using FSR4 Int8 instead.
GymWolf
Member
And some people thought this shit was supposed to go toe to toe against dlss
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GymWolf
Member
Are you new to df clickbait titles?
thatJohann
Member
I wish ps5 pro would let us select the base PS5 version of games.
PSSR was such a mistake.
PSSR was such a mistake.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
And some people thought this shit was supposed to go toe to toe against dlss
Not toe to toe, 'Provide Better Image Reconstruction'
Whoever said that must have been dada, chief.
SuperC
Member
It's a MS published game, You should expect that from the usual suspects
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
But the best game of all time is 60fps, so I don't understand you there.
CentralScrutinizer
Member
I don't really know whats worse. Them dropping the ball with this release, or no one at all asking for a sequel to Outer Worlds yet they still made one and dropped the ball with it.
Diego Brasil
Member
You're analyzing a game made by Microsoft, where they'll prioritize their own games on the Xbox. That's pretty obvious. Even a child would know that.
Taking only third-party games into account, your statement is far from reality.
Of the 17 games analyzed by Digital Foundry in 2025 (third-party games), only 6 are better on the Xbox (less than half).
Three are better on the PS5, and 8 are identical.
Consider identical games a victory for the PS5, as it has 10 teraflops and the Xbox Series has 12 (a less powerful console with the same performance).
We're talking about 2025.
By your logic, these 17 third-party games evaluated by Digital Foundry should have been mostly better on the Xbox, but that's not the case.
Let's analyze the 2025 games (eliminating competitive games, for example, Microsoft games making PS5 or Sony for Xbox) as this could be seen as the competing company benefiting from their game on your device
Identical: 6
Better on Xbox: 5
Better on PS5: 3
Undefined, as each has an advantage: 2
As a result, of the 16 games analyzed, only 5 are better on Xbox.I consider the similar games a victory for PS5, as it has 10 teraflops and Xbox Series has 12. (less powerful console having the same performance)
Battlefield 6 virtually identical
slightly better frame rate on xbox
That was the difference, 95fps versus 93fps
Dying Light: The Beast
This is tricky to measure performance because the X series doesn't have full SSR coverage.And this affects performance.
xbox has an advantage in performance and ps5 in ssr
Borderlands 4
Here we have a positive point for the Xbox and another for the PS5.The resolution on the Xbox is a little higher... but in most scenes the difference is very small.On the other hand, the Xbox SX suffers from screen tearing, while the PS5 doesn't.
virtually equal have a small advantage
Cronos: The New Dawn
Here, the series has better performance and some scenes have slightly higher resolution.
We have an advantage over the Series X.
Assassin's Creed Shadows
identical
Metal Gear Solid Delta
Both have performance issues here, a horrible experience for both.
But the Series X has a slight performance advantage.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers
Virtually identical, sometimes the PS5 is ahead in performance, sometimes the Xbox Series.The average of both is the same.
Mafia: The Old Country
better performance on the x series, very significant difference
MindsEye
Here it seems that the Xbox has an advantage in frame rate, but both are horrible (PS5 drops to 18fps and Series X to 24fps)
Elden Ring Nightreign
slightly better frame rate on ps5
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
identical
Atomfall
identical
Split Fiction
identical
Monster Hunter Wilds
ps5 has slightly better performance
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
here ps5 has better performance
Sniper Elite: Resistance
identical
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hououinkyouma00
Member
I don't even think this is what it actually is because Microsoft obviously doesn't care about trying to have some sort of leg up on the competition anymore unless this is some sort of spite thing which would be the biggest fuck you to their own devs imaginable and I would hope that even Microsoft would be above that.
I think it's just a combination of (brace yourselves Obsidian cuckolds) mediocre devs, late porting (it's obvious that the game was originally meant to be a XB/PC exclusive), and mediocre software implementation on Sony's part (PSSR in particular because let's be honest. This isn't the first game to have fucked up PSSR support and it won't be the last). Obsidian is not that great of a developer and everybody just started dick riding after they managed to make a better Fallout game then BGS themselves (which isn't hard in itself) and act like they are some sort of god tier studio when they are pretty mid.
Could be worse. It could have happened to a game in a series that is/was actualkly good.
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roosnam1980
Member
cold shader cache vs warm shader cache..............
omegasc
Member
This shader compilation situation is so bad. "but it happens only on the first time!"... are we supposed to replay every cutscene/stage after it is sorted?
edit: the hardware RT noise in this... is it a PSSR issue?
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roosnam1980
Member
people laugh at PSSR but the flickering and noise with hardware RT here is nuts
I think in the smaller areas the first one could really shine sometimes. I think the manor at the beginning of the first DLC for example had some incredible atmosphere (too bad the zone is mostly empty). It's the bigger environments where they have trouble.
People forget, there is no second chance for a first impression.This shader compilation situation is so bad. "but it happens only on the first time!"... are we supposed to replay every cutscene/stage after it is sorted?
edit: the hardware RT noise in this... is it a PSSR issue?
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Joel Was Right
Member
A lot of the Xbox ports to PS5 have been lazy and minimal.
T4keD0wN
Member
Lumen (developer) issue, as is the usual i pressume.edit: the hardware RT noise in this... is it a PSSR issue?
Cant understand why anyone still goes with lumen at this point, it wreaks havoc on image quality, could spend more time and use true RT, but no. Gonna try to mod in ray reconstruction to see if it improves enough.
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BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
It's absurd that devs won't just let you run the base ps5 version on a pro if you want to. PSSR stinks.
omegasc
Member
It has been done before with no issues, right? Fortnite uses HW lumen, doesn't it?
Zathalus
Member
Yes, it is clearly a bug. The shadows seem to have no denoising applied. Regular denoising would clear it up. Even better would be ray reconstruction.
roosnam1980
Member
series-x is the choice for this game imo
kevboard
Member
it uses a modified version of hardware lumen. if you compare it to PC you can see weird differences.
for example, skinned objects seem to update only like every 5 or 6 frames or so. meaning you will see characters in reflections teleport around if they move too fast.
like, Hardware Lumen looks like shit on PC too, but it looks pretty broken on Console.
T4keD0wN
Member
Havent tried Fortnite, but most games ive played that use lumen suffer in many ways for it, i am sure poor antialiasing and denoising are complicit in that too, so its not like its just lumen to blame, you can dump the cvars to see (and its possible to tweak some values) to make lumen look less bad, the true problem is most devs just ship with unambitious (low quality) or default lumen configs.
I dont think ive been happy with HW/SW lumen and/or denoising in any UE5 game as of yet, good thing that UE5 is quite configurable. The effects in UE5 games just look low quality compared to just about anyone who uses their own proprietary RT, since developing their own ways requires intent and knowledge of what youre doing. Even console devs like Insomniac have amazing RT effects (at least on PC) relative to UE5 games.
I do understand that some devs dont really have a lot of luxury and lumen makes things possible so its kind of a great tool, but wish studios fortunate with resources were more ambitious in this aspect.
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kevboard
Member
lol, just watched the PC video from DF.
the hardware lumen setting has RT shadows that look completely broken...
and people still claim developers aren't using Lumen as a crutch.
you can absolutely tell that Lumen is used 99% of the time not to make a game more visually impressive, but to take shortcuts and avoid needing to hand-adjust lighting.
having a lighting setting that completely breaks local shadows is so telling. noone working on the game gave half a shit about how it looks. just slap it on, and ship the game... that's the Unreal Engine 5 way. why care if you can automate it?
Lumen Slop.
same with the clearly incomplete shader precomp that gives glaring graphics issues and destroys CPU performance.
why care if the first time playing is awful? just ship it! the UE5 way of game development!
the hardware lumen setting has RT shadows that look completely broken...
and people still claim developers aren't using Lumen as a crutch.
you can absolutely tell that Lumen is used 99% of the time not to make a game more visually impressive, but to take shortcuts and avoid needing to hand-adjust lighting.
having a lighting setting that completely breaks local shadows is so telling. noone working on the game gave half a shit about how it looks. just slap it on, and ship the game... that's the Unreal Engine 5 way. why care if you can automate it?
Lumen Slop.
same with the clearly incomplete shader precomp that gives glaring graphics issues and destroys CPU performance.
why care if the first time playing is awful? just ship it! the UE5 way of game development!
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