With Baldur’s Gate 3 having just launched on PS5 after being available to PC players for about a month now, one big question prospective punters have had is whether or not the console version of the game lives up to its PC siblings’ striking graphical featureset and whether or not it similarly suffers the same performance pitfalls in some key instances.
It’s especially pertinent when consider the fact that one major reason an Xbox version hasn’t (yet) materialised is that developer Larian Studios couldn’t reliably get the game running in split-screen coop on the Xbox Series S.
We managed to get a bit of time in on the PS5 version of the game before its early access period started and well before launch, and although you can read a bit more about it in the very quick-and-dirty impressions that I added to Harry’s excellent review of the PC version, the gist is that my experience of the game on PlayStation so far has been pretty good.
I’m far from an expert on breaking down the technical side of the game’s visual presentation, and having not played it on PC myself a point of comparison proved difficult, but to my eyes it looked for all intents and purposes just as good – if maybe a touch softer overall.
Now feels like a good time to say even better performance improvements are on the horizon ? the engineers working on this really had an impossible task, and I’m thrilled people think they nailed it https://t.co/nJyQ23OxNz
— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) September 8, 2023
Thanks to the fine folks at Digital Foundry though, who are paid to understand and notice these kinds of things, we now know that Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS5 is essentially running with the same visual features as its highest “Ultra” preset on PC. Which feels like something of a feat, I reckon. It achieves this in both its Quality mode with a 1440p resolution and 30FPS target as well as a Performance option that uses AMD’s FSR2 upscaling to hit that same output resolution while targeting 60FPS, and also offers split-screen coop at native 1440p and 30FPS.
DF’s findings paint a pretty good picture, confirming the game goes toe-to-toe with the PC’s Ultra preset while keeping a fairly firm 30FPS in Quality, and a less-stable but still respectable 60PFS target. Well, most of the time, as the team also confirms what many of us already know – that performance takes a bit of a dive in the game’s visually-busy third act, whether you’re playing in the Performance or Quality modes. It’s nothing new to the game, as PC players have had to suffer just the same, but given that Larian’s managed to squeeze the game’s highest-quality PC settings onto the PS5 it hopefully means they’ve got plenty of headroom to better optimise things down the track.
You can read the full Digital Foundry report here if you want all of the gory detail, or watch their video version below:
