Baldur's Gate 3 on PS5 is effectively the PC version at ultra settings
Baldur's Gate 3 is one of the most highly acclaimed games of the year, marrying the best of video games with the comple…
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Eurogamer: Baldur's Gate 3 on PS5 is effectively the PC version at ultra settings
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The early reports of poor performance made no sense. The game runs playably on Steam Deck, and excellent on any recent PC.
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From a visual perspective, the PS5 version mostly acquits itself quite well in terms of basic graphical features. It doesn't seem to really be lacking anything at first glance, and that's for good reason: it actually appears to be running at the PC's ultra settings preset, which is the highest set of options available. This isn't typical of most console games, but the performance delta on PC between the various settings options is minimal, so the high visual target does make some sense here.
That said, Alex's optimised settings offer a circa 20 percent performance win over the maximum options with very little visual difference, so it's surprising that the developers haven't opted to scale things back a touch for the performance mode. Relative to those optimised settings, the only thing that really stands out to my eyes is the depth of field, which benefits significantly from the denoise option that appears to be enabled on PS5, producing a cleaner overall image. The shadows are also improved, though that tends to be more subtle from most camera angles.
In terms of image quality, there are two options on display - a simple toggle to turn performance on or off, which effectively gives us a performance and quality mode. Both offer the same visual settings and both target 1440p according to the game, so does this hold up in practice? Pixel counts reveal that the quality mode does indeed clock in at a native 1440p. In every shot I tested I counted a straight 1440p without any signs of reconstruction or dynamic resolution. The performance mode looks a lot like the quality mode and resolves about as much detail in still shots, but it has some extra artifacting - namely, ghosting trails on foliage and some fizzing artifacts in some areas on fine detail - that suggest a certain upsampling method is in use.
FSR 2's typical visual artifacts are in play here and Larian has suggested FSR 2 integration is planned for the PC release, so it makes the most sense as an upsampling solution on PS5. I believe the game is using FSR 2 to hit a 1440p output, upsampled from roughly a 960p internal resolution, which would correspond to FSR 2's quality mode. Again, there could be some dynamic resolution in effect, but if so it's not common. In actual gameplay the quality and performance modes look very similar, minor upscaling artefacts aside. I think both hold up perfectly well on a 4K television set from a typical viewing distance, though up close you will see a bit of softness in the image.
AMD Fluid Motion Frames: Frame-Gen For ALL...
That said, Alex's optimised settings offer a circa 20 percent performance win over the maximum options with very little visual difference, so it's surprising that the developers haven't opted to scale things back a touch for the performance mode. Relative to those optimised settings, the only thing that really stands out to my eyes is the depth of field, which benefits significantly from the denoise option that appears to be enabled on PS5, producing a cleaner overall image. The shadows are also improved, though that tends to be more subtle from most camera angles.
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In terms of image quality, there are two options on display - a simple toggle to turn performance on or off, which effectively gives us a performance and quality mode. Both offer the same visual settings and both target 1440p according to the game, so does this hold up in practice? Pixel counts reveal that the quality mode does indeed clock in at a native 1440p. In every shot I tested I counted a straight 1440p without any signs of reconstruction or dynamic resolution. The performance mode looks a lot like the quality mode and resolves about as much detail in still shots, but it has some extra artifacting - namely, ghosting trails on foliage and some fizzing artifacts in some areas on fine detail - that suggest a certain upsampling method is in use.
FSR 2's typical visual artifacts are in play here and Larian has suggested FSR 2 integration is planned for the PC release, so it makes the most sense as an upsampling solution on PS5. I believe the game is using FSR 2 to hit a 1440p output, upsampled from roughly a 960p internal resolution, which would correspond to FSR 2's quality mode. Again, there could be some dynamic resolution in effect, but if so it's not common. In actual gameplay the quality and performance modes look very similar, minor upscaling artefacts aside. I think both hold up perfectly well on a 4K television set from a typical viewing distance, though up close you will see a bit of softness in the image.
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The controller interface from the PC version is - unsurprisingly - used on PS5. It works, but the set-up can get overly complex.
Baldur's Gate 3's Hotfix #5 is here with a chattier Minthara, PS5 fixes, and more
Read more on Eurogamer.net
From a visual perspective, Baldur's Gate 3 is a pretty decent experience on PS5 hardware and frame-rates are good for much of the experience. Performance mode targets 60fps and for the most part it does seem to reach that target. Interior areas and most of the game's exterior landscapes run just fine at 60fps, including combat scenes. I did notice that certain cutscenes do seem to run beneath this target, but these moments are fleeting. The grove area in the first act also sees some little dips when you walk around - it's nothing too severe, but worth noting
However, there are areas that don't fare quite as well. Inevitably, the city area from the game's third act is much, much heavier than the areas from the first act that we sampled, with performance dropping into the low twenties at worst. As far as I can tell, these issues probably shouldn't arise before this section, as the many, many hours of gameplay that precede it don't feature large, NPC-dense cities like this.
It's also worth noting the screen-tearing here. Baldur's Gate 3 has some tearing in roughly the top 20 percent of the screen during typical gameplay when the frame-rate is dropping below 60fps, on the order of a few frames every second or so. It's a little annoying to be sure, but it does preserve a bit of input response at the expense of hurting image quality. For a turn-based game I would probably have elected to just hold v-sync regardless, but this is a choice that developers sometimes make. In the heaviest scenes, there's also distracting tearing at the very bottom of the scene, which looks like a bug - as if the game is flipping in the next frame before it should be.
Baldur's Gate 3 also has a quality mode, aimed at improved consistency. The new frame-rate target here is 30fps and does an excellent job of hitting that figure. I couldn't provoke any issues in Act One at all, as the game proceeds at a locked 30fps regardless of what I throw at it. My only real complaint here is the complete lack of motion blur, which makes the 30fps update feel a bit choppier than it could.
Act Three still has issues though. In the noted trouble spots, frame-rates again drop to the mid-to-low 20s, with highly inconsistent animation. Other parts of the city also provoke drops, though not as severe. Larian has opted to retain v-sync here, unlike the performance mode, so there is no screen-tearing whatsoever even when the frame-rates are low.
Running the performance and quality mode frame-rate readouts back-to-back, I strongly suspect that the game is severely CPU-limited in the Act Three area, as Alex previously described for the PC version. There's virtually no difference in frame-rates, suggesting that there's a CPU bottleneck in both visual modes. It's interesting to note that in basically identical testing, the CPU limit of the PS5 is significantly lower than our prior tests on the PC version using a mainstream Ryzen 5 3600.
There is another way to play Baldur's Gate 3 and that's the game's split-screen gameplay mode. Here the game also renders at 1440p natively, just like in the quality mode. Technically this image is split in half vertically, giving each player an effective 1280x1440 resolution during gameplay. It does feel a bit cramped, but it mostly works fine. In terms of visual settings, split-screen does seem to come close to the ultra settings preset. I did spot noticeably reduced shadow quality in a few moments, though the difference was slight. It's possible that other settings take a hit too but if so, any cut-backs are minor.
I tried to break the split-screen mode by moving one character as far as possible from the other one while leaving the other character totally stationary, and for the most part there were no issues. I did notice that the shadows on my stationary character became progressively degraded the further I moved away as the branch details were pruned away, but everything else held up just fine.
In split-screen, the performance figures are largely the same as in the quality mode. That means a pretty stable 30fps during gameplay for the most part, outside of the somewhat calamitous city area in Act Three. In the most demanding section, we are again hovering around the low 20s. That means that split-screen players don't take any big performance compromise relative to single-player play, but I wouldn't say the game's performance is uniformly good here. I'm not sure that Baldur's Gate 3 is a particularly compelling split-screen experience, given its slow pace and single-player-oriented structure, but the PS5 does deliver a pretty decent implementation in this title, with minimal compromises relative to the standard experience.
That said, Alex's optimised settings offer a circa 20 percent performance win over the maximum options with very little visual difference, so it's surprising that the developers haven't opted to scale things back a touch for the performance mode. Relative to those optimised settings, the only thing that really stands out to my eyes is the depth of field, which benefits significantly from the denoise option that appears to be enabled on PS5, producing a cleaner overall image. The shadows are also improved, though that tends to be more subtle from most camera angles.
In terms of image quality, there are two options on display - a simple toggle to turn performance on or off, which effectively gives us a performance and quality mode. Both offer the same visual settings and both target 1440p according to the game, so does this hold up in practice? Pixel counts reveal that the quality mode does indeed clock in at a native 1440p. In every shot I tested I counted a straight 1440p without any signs of reconstruction or dynamic resolution. The performance mode looks a lot like the quality mode and resolves about as much detail in still shots, but it has some extra artifacting - namely, ghosting trails on foliage and some fizzing artifacts in some areas on fine detail - that suggest a certain upsampling method is in use.
FSR 2's typical visual artifacts are in play here and Larian has suggested FSR 2 integration is planned for the PC release, so it makes the most sense as an upsampling solution on PS5. I believe the game is using FSR 2 to hit a 1440p output, upsampled from roughly a 960p internal resolution, which would correspond to FSR 2's quality mode. Again, there could be some dynamic resolution in effect, but if so it's not common. In actual gameplay the quality and performance modes look very similar, minor upscaling artefacts aside. I think both hold up perfectly well on a 4K television set from a typical viewing distance, though up close you will see a bit of softness in the image.
AMD Fluid Motion Frames: Frame-Gen For ALL...
That said, Alex's optimised settings offer a circa 20 percent performance win over the maximum options with very little visual difference, so it's surprising that the developers haven't opted to scale things back a touch for the performance mode. Relative to those optimised settings, the only thing that really stands out to my eyes is the depth of field, which benefits significantly from the denoise option that appears to be enabled on PS5, producing a cleaner overall image. The shadows are also improved, though that tends to be more subtle from most camera angles.
Advertisement
In terms of image quality, there are two options on display - a simple toggle to turn performance on or off, which effectively gives us a performance and quality mode. Both offer the same visual settings and both target 1440p according to the game, so does this hold up in practice? Pixel counts reveal that the quality mode does indeed clock in at a native 1440p. In every shot I tested I counted a straight 1440p without any signs of reconstruction or dynamic resolution. The performance mode looks a lot like the quality mode and resolves about as much detail in still shots, but it has some extra artifacting - namely, ghosting trails on foliage and some fizzing artifacts in some areas on fine detail - that suggest a certain upsampling method is in use.
FSR 2's typical visual artifacts are in play here and Larian has suggested FSR 2 integration is planned for the PC release, so it makes the most sense as an upsampling solution on PS5. I believe the game is using FSR 2 to hit a 1440p output, upsampled from roughly a 960p internal resolution, which would correspond to FSR 2's quality mode. Again, there could be some dynamic resolution in effect, but if so it's not common. In actual gameplay the quality and performance modes look very similar, minor upscaling artefacts aside. I think both hold up perfectly well on a 4K television set from a typical viewing distance, though up close you will see a bit of softness in the image.
Advertisement
The controller interface from the PC version is - unsurprisingly - used on PS5. It works, but the set-up can get overly complex.
Baldur's Gate 3's Hotfix #5 is here with a chattier Minthara, PS5 fixes, and more
Read more on Eurogamer.net
From a visual perspective, Baldur's Gate 3 is a pretty decent experience on PS5 hardware and frame-rates are good for much of the experience. Performance mode targets 60fps and for the most part it does seem to reach that target. Interior areas and most of the game's exterior landscapes run just fine at 60fps, including combat scenes. I did notice that certain cutscenes do seem to run beneath this target, but these moments are fleeting. The grove area in the first act also sees some little dips when you walk around - it's nothing too severe, but worth noting
However, there are areas that don't fare quite as well. Inevitably, the city area from the game's third act is much, much heavier than the areas from the first act that we sampled, with performance dropping into the low twenties at worst. As far as I can tell, these issues probably shouldn't arise before this section, as the many, many hours of gameplay that precede it don't feature large, NPC-dense cities like this.
It's also worth noting the screen-tearing here. Baldur's Gate 3 has some tearing in roughly the top 20 percent of the screen during typical gameplay when the frame-rate is dropping below 60fps, on the order of a few frames every second or so. It's a little annoying to be sure, but it does preserve a bit of input response at the expense of hurting image quality. For a turn-based game I would probably have elected to just hold v-sync regardless, but this is a choice that developers sometimes make. In the heaviest scenes, there's also distracting tearing at the very bottom of the scene, which looks like a bug - as if the game is flipping in the next frame before it should be.
Baldur's Gate 3 also has a quality mode, aimed at improved consistency. The new frame-rate target here is 30fps and does an excellent job of hitting that figure. I couldn't provoke any issues in Act One at all, as the game proceeds at a locked 30fps regardless of what I throw at it. My only real complaint here is the complete lack of motion blur, which makes the 30fps update feel a bit choppier than it could.
Act Three still has issues though. In the noted trouble spots, frame-rates again drop to the mid-to-low 20s, with highly inconsistent animation. Other parts of the city also provoke drops, though not as severe. Larian has opted to retain v-sync here, unlike the performance mode, so there is no screen-tearing whatsoever even when the frame-rates are low.
Running the performance and quality mode frame-rate readouts back-to-back, I strongly suspect that the game is severely CPU-limited in the Act Three area, as Alex previously described for the PC version. There's virtually no difference in frame-rates, suggesting that there's a CPU bottleneck in both visual modes. It's interesting to note that in basically identical testing, the CPU limit of the PS5 is significantly lower than our prior tests on the PC version using a mainstream Ryzen 5 3600.
There is another way to play Baldur's Gate 3 and that's the game's split-screen gameplay mode. Here the game also renders at 1440p natively, just like in the quality mode. Technically this image is split in half vertically, giving each player an effective 1280x1440 resolution during gameplay. It does feel a bit cramped, but it mostly works fine. In terms of visual settings, split-screen does seem to come close to the ultra settings preset. I did spot noticeably reduced shadow quality in a few moments, though the difference was slight. It's possible that other settings take a hit too but if so, any cut-backs are minor.
I tried to break the split-screen mode by moving one character as far as possible from the other one while leaving the other character totally stationary, and for the most part there were no issues. I did notice that the shadows on my stationary character became progressively degraded the further I moved away as the branch details were pruned away, but everything else held up just fine.
In split-screen, the performance figures are largely the same as in the quality mode. That means a pretty stable 30fps during gameplay for the most part, outside of the somewhat calamitous city area in Act Three. In the most demanding section, we are again hovering around the low 20s. That means that split-screen players don't take any big performance compromise relative to single-player play, but I wouldn't say the game's performance is uniformly good here. I'm not sure that Baldur's Gate 3 is a particularly compelling split-screen experience, given its slow pace and single-player-oriented structure, but the PS5 does deliver a pretty decent implementation in this title, with minimal compromises relative to the standard experience.
Wow, that's so impressive... for a 400-500 dollar console!
That's why I often say console is the optimum way to get high end gaming to most people at a great value point.
Baldurs Gate 3 is gonna be their most successful game, I am absolutely sure and it is well deserved.
That's why I often say console is the optimum way to get high end gaming to most people at a great value point.
Baldurs Gate 3 is gonna be their most successful game, I am absolutely sure and it is well deserved.
Yea man.. the game really is a classic. I can only hope that many developers get a wake up call for investing more time into story and gameplay to bring back grass roots for future releases.
Yes, as you say story and gameplay are the most important pillars. I'm hopeful that more people become open to the isometric aspect from games too..
I saw that Jagged Alliance 3 will be ported too and my brother said it's really excellent... so I hope people will pick that up and we get more of these games in the future.
We need more diversity in gaming but that will only happen if more people buy the crpg's and strategy games etc consistently.
Odd decision. Should have reduced them a bit for better performance, leaving just ultra textures and filtering.
Ultra settings can be wasteful on PCs and even more on consoles,and on an isometric game they make even less of a difference.
Ultra settings can be wasteful on PCs and even more on consoles,and on an isometric game they make even less of a difference.
We reached a point where the difference in graphics between consoles and high end pcs is barely noticeable, it is there but you have to stop playing and actually look for details most of the time. The only advantage of most powerful gpus to me is frame rates.
- "Definitely a good looking game, but not a boundary pushing one"
- Controller control scheme works fine at first but becomes cumbersome as the game goes on.
- Cannot use mouse and keyboard on console.
Visuals:
- PS5 seems to be running at or close to PC Ultra equivalent settings.
- Notable visual difference noted in DoF where PC has a toggle to turn 'denoise' off which is fixed on PS5 and better shadows.
- PS5 has Performance Mode on/off toggle.
- Quality: Fixed 1440p.
- Perf: Looks 1440p but has extra artifacting and ghosting, suggesting FSR2 type up-sampling from 960p.
- DRS is likely but not noticed.
- Perf mode holds up typically very well but some softness is noticed on closeup.
Performance:
- Performance mode targets 60 FPS
- Interior and most exteriors run fine with some little dips.
- Some areas like the Act 3 City buckle the performance into the low 20s
- Tearing in top 20% and bottom 25% of the screen when frame rate drops
- Quality mode targets 30 FPS
- Manages to stick to it very well
- No motion blur makes 30 FPS feel choppier
- Act 3 again causes the frame rate to drop to mid 20s
- V-Sync locked so no tearing in Quality mode
- DF suspects a CPU bottleneck as both Perf and Quality have the same kind of performance when stressed.
- Can have substantially worse performance than a mid-range PC in CPU bottleneck areas
Split Screen:
- Split Screen: Vertical split with each window getting 1280x1440p
- Close to Ultra settings but some minor cutbacks like shadow quality seen, it degrades the farther the split screen players get.
- Performance is locked to Quality mode equivalent including similar drops in the same areas.
Conclusion:
- PS5 version "does the job" for gamers without a high end gaming PC.
- Controller control scheme works fine at first but becomes cumbersome as the game goes on.
- Cannot use mouse and keyboard on console.
Visuals:
- PS5 seems to be running at or close to PC Ultra equivalent settings.
- Notable visual difference noted in DoF where PC has a toggle to turn 'denoise' off which is fixed on PS5 and better shadows.
- PS5 has Performance Mode on/off toggle.
- Quality: Fixed 1440p.
- Perf: Looks 1440p but has extra artifacting and ghosting, suggesting FSR2 type up-sampling from 960p.
- DRS is likely but not noticed.
- Perf mode holds up typically very well but some softness is noticed on closeup.
Performance:
- Performance mode targets 60 FPS
- Interior and most exteriors run fine with some little dips.
- Some areas like the Act 3 City buckle the performance into the low 20s
- Tearing in top 20% and bottom 25% of the screen when frame rate drops
- Quality mode targets 30 FPS
- Manages to stick to it very well
- No motion blur makes 30 FPS feel choppier
- Act 3 again causes the frame rate to drop to mid 20s
- V-Sync locked so no tearing in Quality mode
- DF suspects a CPU bottleneck as both Perf and Quality have the same kind of performance when stressed.
- Can have substantially worse performance than a mid-range PC in CPU bottleneck areas
Split Screen:
- Split Screen: Vertical split with each window getting 1280x1440p
- Close to Ultra settings but some minor cutbacks like shadow quality seen, it degrades the farther the split screen players get.
- Performance is locked to Quality mode equivalent including similar drops in the same areas.
Conclusion:
- PS5 version "does the job" for gamers without a high end gaming PC.
I have yet to finish BG 1 & 2 on Steam before I play this one 
.
I'm kind of disappointed that they did not cut some details to keep the game closer to 60 and allow for a slightly higher resolution in performance mode. It seems very blurry as it is.
.I'm kind of disappointed that they did not cut some details to keep the game closer to 60 and allow for a slightly higher resolution in performance mode. It seems very blurry as it is.
You don't need to play the other 2 games, they're a completely different storyline. In essence this is only "Baldur's Gate 3" because Larian licensed the name to use to market the game using the same setting as the other two games.I have yet to finish BG 1 & 2 on Steam before I play this one
I'm kind of disappointed that they did not cut some details to keep the game closer to 60 and allow for a slightly higher resolution in performance mode. It seems very blurry as it is.
OP
OP
Tell me about it man. Shit. I'm tired of all the same ole repeated gameplay over the years.
Even if developers stuck to action/adventure, it would be nice to have more options in story. More dialogue, more reading, more interaction with the NPCs, etc..
Played for few hour. So far so good. I am playing at easiest setting because I am not good at this type of games.
Gameplay for sure. Story I think will always be subjective.
But the effort into the world, NPC’s, choices etc should be in more games now. Especially RPG’s and Open world games. We’ve been stuck on the same open worlds since PS3/360 Era, time to make them better and richer. Not just better graphics and bigger open worlds.
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