4K, ray tracing, performance and more discussed by the team.
In the wake of the surprising ‘fall’ of the Resident Evil Village ‘Maiden’ demo for PlayStation 5, the Digital Foundry team sat down to talk about their impressions of the new demo. John Linneman and Alex Battaglia are accompanied by series expert Alex Aniel, author of Itchy, Tasty: An Unofficial of Resident Evil. The result? The video embedded on this page!
Image quality is a big part of the discussion, with the PlayStation 5 delivering a full 3840×2160, with Capcom utilizing RE Engine’s excellent image image reconstruction technology to render the lower base resolution version. This is one of the more impressive implementations, which looks very, very close to the actual original version. The handling of materials and rich geometry in the demo is also impressive, as is the HDR solution. In fact, the game does not have quite the same punch seen in standard SDR – blacks are quite as black as you feel they should be, while HDR mode makes a big difference here. The only noticeable problem seems to be low-resolution textures when certain parts of the environment are considered more closely.
The Digital Foundry team presents their first thoughts on the RE Village ‘Maiden’ demo.
Interestingly, Capcom, similar to Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition, also uses the console’s ray detection hardware for RT reflections. The actual effect is very subtle and the reflections themselves are of a low resolution, but this is definitely a step above the more typical reflections of the RE Engine, which historically has not looked too good on previous RE Engine titles. The impact of ray tracing on performance is not clear, but while the focus is on 60 frames per second, the game can not quite sustain it: large open areas can cause small problems, while the frame rate drops significantly in attack ranges. It will be interesting to see how the performance performs in the vast outdoor areas – parts of the game that we have so far only seen in promotional material.
Of course, this is an early demo and not necessarily representative of the final performance, but we would definitely be interested to see how Resident Evil Village plays out – especially since it’s still a console game between generations, with PS4 and Xbox One versions . of the title taking their place along with their shiny next-generation counterparts. Regardless, first impressions are definitely favorable, and if you have the means, we recommend you visit this demo. We will make sure you follow the progress of Resident Evil Village until its launch.