Death Stranding 2: On The Beach - PS5/PS5 Pro - Digital Foundry Tech Review

Who gives a shit about overlay. If you have better screenshots then post them. There is not much difference to show anyway.

Screens have the same quality as 4k youtube video everyone watched. DF have way better files for people that pay them but I'm not one of them.

The overlay is a semi-tansparent linear gradient when activated, which makes it impossible to get an accurate representation of the image being shown on the video.

If you're insistent on doing this at this stage then onus is on you to provide screenshots that are viable for a comparison.
 
How can Sony screw us Pro owners THIS MUCH on a game like DS2 that many bought specifically hoping for a meaningful upgrade?

Like do you guys who got on my case for complaining about Sony and the Pro finally get it now?
 
Who gives a shit about overlay. If you have better screenshots then post them. There is not much difference to show anyway.

Screens have the same quality as 4k youtube video everyone watched. DF have way better files for people that pay them but I'm not one of them.

oprah-you-mad.gif


Game looks phenomenal and is one of the best looking games this entire generation hands down.
 
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The overlay is a semi-tansparent linear gradient when activated, which makes it impossible to get an accurate representation of the image being shown on the video.

If you're insistent on doing this at this stage then onus is on you to provide screenshots that are viable for a comparison.

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Game has fixed time of day and 95% of gameplay takes place in open fields. Not needing RTGI for good results is quite specific for this game because it's so limited. Now try that with games that have dynamic TOD and more complex environments...

There is a reason why AC Shadows have RTGI.

DS2 has dynamic TOD! Did you not watch the video or are am I misinterpreting what you are talking about? It also has a lot of real-time cinematics that take place in interior environments.

Honestly the bottom line is whatever it takes to give the desired result whilst not incurring severe performance penalties is always the right choice. I

When I see people seemingly hung up on a certain technology (often proprietary) or engine be used, it mainly indicates to me a marketing win on the part of that particular vendor... The end-result is what matters, not how many acronyms can be splatted across the product description.
 
Quality level visuals with performance mode frame rate. That's what the pro is and aside from pssr, that's what it was marketed to be.

You can't fundamentally change what the game is or the engine based on the system it's played on...
 
this is how you make a good looking game on current gen hardware! not that blurry, sub 1080p looking shit full of artifacts that they showed for the Wither 4 tech demo!
 
Jpeg?

You really can't wait 24 hours for someone to get direct feed images huh?

Are you dumb? You won't see much difference even in some .raw file. That's the point.

I can send you .png screen I have taken from the youtube video if you want, lol.
 
Are you dumb? You won't see much difference even in some .raw file. That's the point.

I can send you .png screen I have taken from the youtube video if you want, lol.

You can see the difference in png files over jpeg. What the hell are you talking about?
 
It's dynamic time of day in real time. It doesn't just transition between phases depending on where you are in the story.

That's a nice upgrade. I assumed this was the same as in DS1.

You can see the difference in png files over jpeg. What the hell are you talking about?

From the same compressed youtube video?

Those files should retain full png quality:

 
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- Geometry distance detail looks like Epic's nanite in effect
- Game uses real time dynamic light and day and night system
- Shadows are artifact free and use screen space shadows for smaller things
- No evidence of RT shadows being used
- Water shaders receive significant upgrade over the first game with SSR
- SSR issues are still present but masked effectively

- Multiple different weather effects praised
- Terrain deformation (footprints on sand) inherited from Horizon FW
- Mid-field distance effects shows some lower resolution effects / artifacts with low 'surprisingly' low resolution textures seen. Easiest to see from vantage points
- Ambient occlusion can produce blotchy effects
- Reflections can also produce noisy artifacts
- Some lighting transitions from day to night are also 'odd'

- Character improvements are surprisingly high over the first game
- Skin shading, sub surface scattering, eye and hair rendering praised
- Animation quality, skin deformation and its fidelity also praised
- "Micro details" on character models during game play also praised
- However, game play model does not get shadows on a lot of elements like cut-scenes

PS5 vs Pro
- Core experience is largely identical
- Both offer Performance and Quality mode w/ Performance supports 120hz (60fps cap)
- Apart from some 'camera issues', the frame rate seems to hold well
- PS5: Performance 1440p, Pro: Higher than 1440p with better IQ and a little less shimmering
- On Pro, Quality mode is essentially redundant but on base PS5 some users might prefer the sharper IQ of the Quality mode with its 30fps presentation.


The last bit is about sound but I have to run so can't transcribe.

Did they mention how the 30fps mode feels? I've found a lot of modern games just feel downright awful in the 30fps modes while I can still go back to previous gen's 30fps titles that feel ok.
 
Looks great!.
Decima continues being one of the absolute best modern engines at pushing great visuals without murdering the performance and IQ in the process (or needing some $1K GPU to brute force it)
 
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Game looks phenomenal and is one of the best looking games this entire generation hands down.
It's a valid complaint. I get not using PSSR because they use the Pro hardware for their own solution that's better, but the RT hardware isn't being used at all. I expect Sony's exclusives to take full advantage of the Pro. This isn't.
 
From the same compressed youtube video?

Those files should retain full png quality:


Well that's also the point I was originally making - by sharing highly compressed jpegs (imgur has some of the most aggressive compression out of any of the image sharing websites) from an already compressed youtube video, you're not exactly going to be providing anything that's worth throwing on imgsli.

By the way, if you want a decent free image host that doesn't compress pngs then lensdump is the best one.
 
Well that's also the point I was originally making - by sharing highly compressed jpegs (imgur has some of the most aggressive compression out of any of the image sharing websites) from an already compressed youtube video, you're not exactly going to be providing anything that's worth throwing on imgsli.

By the way, if you want a decent free image host that doesn't compress pngs then lensdump is the best one.

It's just the image from the video... You are focusing way too much on this, everyone can see the same thing by watching the video.

We don't have anything with better quality at the moment.
 
Dafuq? They specifically show time of day changes in the video. And this has been the case with Decima since HZD.

Not in DS1 and I didn't watch full video to not spoil myself much. DF likes to put spoilers in their long ass videos.
 
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Is ray tracing really that important? Personally having better resolution( less blurry) and a more stable frame rate is far more important to me
 

From the text article.

Overall, the PS5 Pro upgrade for Death Stranding 2 feels similar to that of Horizon: Forbidden West. It improves image quality and slightly alters detail levels, users of both machines will receive a great experience.

Based peasant amateur console race. 🙏


Did they mention how the 30fps mode feels? I've found a lot of modern games just feel downright awful in the 30fps modes while I can still go back to previous gen's 30fps titles that feel ok.

Sadly no, they just mentioned it in one sentence and that's it.
 
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I think it looks amazing for pure rasterisation. Pro doesn't seem like a huge bump but maybe they'll add some different modes later on
 
From the text article.



Based peasant amateur console race. 🙏




Sadly no, they just mentioned it in one sentence and that's it.

Guess I'll have to try it for myself in a month or two when I'll have the time to play it. Being suddenly busy as shit when a Kojima game drops SUCKS
 
It's a valid complaint. I get not using PSSR because they use the Pro hardware for their own solution that's better, but the RT hardware isn't being used at all. I expect Sony's exclusives to take full advantage of the Pro. This isn't.

RT probably would've hurt performance too much for it to be beneficial to the overall product. The ps5 pro has the same cpu as the ps5 and the biggest benefit to the pro was supposed to be resolution/pssr.
 
It's a valid complaint. I get not using PSSR because they use the Pro hardware for their own solution that's better, but the RT hardware isn't being used at all. I expect Sony's exclusives to take full advantage of the Pro. This isn't.

But both base PS5 and PRO have RT hardware, so why PRO not having RT is a problem?

I do 100% agree with you BTW, but that doesn't take this game any merit.
 
Kojima cutting no corners to make a game run well and look incredible on both base and pro.

No 720p blurry up scaling horse shit.

Based.
 
But both base PS5 and PRO have RT hardware, so why PRO not having RT is a problem?
Because the Pro's RT hardware is much faster and was highlighted as one of the key enhancements, aka three pillars, of the PS5 Pro. You'd think a AAA PlayStation-published game would fully utilize this. I'd get not having RT on the base PS5, it might be a wee-bit too much to handle.
I do 100% agree with you BTW, but that doesn't take this game any merit.
Of course, not. It's a great-looking game. I was just expecting more enhancements, especially when you have easy wins like RT reflections that could have been used to replace SSR without demolishing the fps at least on the Pro.

Still, the game runs really well and looks great. That's a stark change from the usual UE5 stuttery garbage with bad IQ we so often get these days.
 
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Kojima needs no rt and no nanite ue5 crap.
blessed kojima

edit: I will also add - RT lighting is realistic. And Kojima - an auteur might have his own vision of how the scene should be lit
 
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Lol this was supposed to be the first game for ps5 pro to see if it was worthy but it seems like the wait continue, fucking sony 🥲
 
Lol this was supposed to be the first game for ps5 pro to see if it was worthy but it seems like the wait continue, fucking sony 🥲
The pro has plenty of games to showcase it already.

Callisto protocol is easily the best one. Shit can do 8K ffs…
 
Lol this was supposed to be the first game for ps5 pro to see if it was worthy but it seems like the wait continue, fucking sony 🥲

Too soon for Sony I guess. Looks like AI wasn't that ready after all for AMD, while DLSS from Nvidia is very mature.

I reiterate my statement as at this point Sony should move on to PS6.
 
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