Other upgrades are more subtle, but still appreciated. Depth of field no longer has a squashed and fuzzy look, and that also means that there are no longer any low resolution outlines around geometry that intersects with it. Similarly, post-processing is no longer affected by checkerboarding, so all post-processing effects such as motion blur, screen-space shadows and more look much better, without striated aliasing artefacts. With more horsepower now available on mid-range gaming PCs, users can go native instead, meaning additional clarity overall and no checkerboard artefacts on elements such as hair. This is perhaps inevitable: Bend Studio leaned into checkerboarding to allow a 4.2TF Radeon GPU to produce a good-looking presentation designed for 4K displays.
It doesn't seem to align with any of the presets, honestly presenting as lower than PC's lowest texture streaming option.īeyond global illumination and texture quality, the last majorly visible upgrade over the PS4 Pro version comes from resolution. In terms of where the existing console version compares in terms of PC's quality settings, it's difficult to say. In side-by-side comparisons, the improvement via higher quality assets is pretty easy to see and affects nearly every texture you can find in the game, definitely improving the overall look.
The second largest upgrade that the PC version of Days Gone gets over the console versions comes from texture quality. The old SSAO is still there though for that authentic console look - it's now simply the 'high' setting for the in-game lighting.
If this sounds familiar, The Coalition made a similar upgrade to the Xbox Series and PC versions of Gears 5, again by dipping into more recent UE4 engine updates and adding it to their existing codebase. If light hits a red surface, for example, some measure of that 'redness' will illuminate the surroundings where appropriate. Essentially, the appearance of light bouncing around a game scene is emulated in screen-space, delivering a richer presentation with more realistic lighting and better, more realistic shadows. The game is based on Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and I was happy to see that Bend Studio had updated the PC version to include a more recent UE4 innovation - software-based screen-space ray traced global illumination - available as an upgrade over the standard ambient occlusion tech deployed on the console versions. While we're not getting the ultimate package here - there's no ray tracing and disappointingly, no DLSS - there's no doubt that this is a solid, impressive port.īooting up the PC version of Days Gone, it's immediately apparent that this isn't just a basic PS4 Pro conversion.
In fact, there are one or two touches here and there included in this game that really hope to see other developers bring to their own titles, especially when it comes to configurability.
The upgrades are strategically chosen but effective - and performance is solid on both Nvidia and AMD hardware. Sony promised us more PC conversions of their stellar first party development output and while Horizon Zero Dawn illustrated that this is far from a simple process, Days Gone is on another level.