God of War: Ragnarok will be released for PlayStation 5 and PS4 to be available to all fans of the series and especially the 2018 game, but Digital Foundry has described several benefits for those who will play it on Sony’s latest console.
The topic of the impact of intergenerational status on the quality of video games has long been discussed, and according to Digital Foundry, God of War: Ragnarök is a game with an incredibly polished presentation, whose character animations will surprise gamers.
With a design and structure similar to what you have in a 2018 game, the sequel has received significant improvements in lighting, one of the elements that have the greatest impact on improving visual quality, directional screen space occlusion has also been introduced to improve scenarios and blend characters with their surroundings.
God of War: Ragnarok shows several visual improvements over the previous one, but is described as a natural evolution. The scenarios shared by both games show obvious improvements thanks to lighting and shadows, but also remember how good the previous one was. The visual difference between PS5 and PS4 isn’t quite as big as in Horizon Forbidden West, but you’ll easily notice visual improvements that will make the settings even more vibrant.
However, the PS5 has several game modes, and whether it’s on a 60Hz or 120Hz screen, you’ll have the ability to improve God of War: Ragnarok’s performance.
Performance mode runs in dynamic 4K (varies between 1440p and 2160p, but spends most of its time at 1872p) and 60fps with superb image quality, while quality mode runs in native 4K and 30fps with visual enhancements. Using Temporal Anti-Aliasing with upsampling helps to mask and even the lowest resolutions seem to work at 4K and you get much better image quality than before.
Although the two modes are very similar, there are differences in how detail levels are handled, the quality mode displays more detail from a distance, but given the way and the skill with which it was done, it’s not about reducing more targets, but scenes tuned specifically for two modes are played at a nearly fixed 60 frames per second, which is the Digital Foundry recommendation. You have very consistent performance and graphical compromises are minimal.
On the 120Hz display, you can play God of War: Ragnarök at 40fps with dynamic 4K, which can drop to 1800p in quality mode and 1440p in performance mode. The 30fps and 40fps quality mode have the same graphics quality, while the 60fps and HFR modes have the same visual quality, and it is recommended that you select the 120Hz modes on a compatible display.
Quality mode on the 120Hz display takes the 60fps lock off and lets you go beyond that, spending most of your time between 80fps and 90fps. Digital Foundry recommends playing in Performance mode at 120Hz with VRR enabled on compatible displays. However, it is reinforced that you must have VRR active, otherwise it is better to play at 60fps.
Regarding the differences between PS5 and PS4, it was revealed that despite the game not showing loading screens when playing continuously, loading a save on PS5 takes 10 seconds compared to 30 seconds on PS4 Pro.
