DF Direct Weekly #282: 007 First Light Path Tracing, Kingmakers Gameplay, New GPUs Delayed To 2028? transcript

Hello there and a very warm welcome to this the 282nd edition [music] of DF Direct Weekly, our weekly show discussing the latest gaming and technology news. Lots of topics to get through this week. We're going to be leading with uh a quick lowdown on 007 First Light Flight Path Tracing, which is uh something of a double-edged sword, but remarkable nonetheless. Um 12 minutes of King Makers gameplay. They've been watching or looking out rather for more on that title for quite some time and we finally have it.

Lots to talk about there. Tom, hello Tom. >> Hello. Let's just introduce you. Hello Tom Morgan. Hello. >> How's it going? Uh yeah, I've got a Fire Emblem Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave segment coming up later on as well which has been in demand and uh yeah, looking forward to getting to that as well. >> Okay. And um Oliver McKenzie, hello. Uh Diablo I 4. Taking [laughter] a look at that this week. >> Yes, Rich. I think we all have our own respective segments with our own respective captures for this week, so that should be good.

I think a lot of work has gone into this particular episode, so hopefully it shows. Yeah, I'd like to have an episode where we can just sort of sit back and comment on what everybody else is doing, but apparently not much this week, [laughter] even with the Tokyo Game Show. Anyway, um I guess we should just crack on. Um, but first this DF Direct Weekly is brought to you in partnership with Alienware. The latest state-of-the-art Alienware Area 51 delivers a flagship reborn with a focus on extreme highquality design, cuttingedge silicon and thermal precision, and it's available now.

In addition to top-end GPUs, the new Area 51 also supports AMD's Ryzen 9000 X3D processors from the 9800 X3D up to and including the new 9950 X3D2. Ryzen 9000X3D processors deliver by far and away the best CPU gaming performance we've tested to date and are a key recommendation for a high-spec gaming PC. [music] And to keep performance sustained at the highest level, Alienware has overhauled the internals with a new gasket architecture.

The system uses a combination of 180 and 140 mm fans to create positive pressure, moving 25% more air while remaining 45% quieter than prior generations. [music] Combined with a 1500 watt platinum PSU and enough thermal headroom to handle the 600 watt powered draw of the RTX 1590, the new Area 51 is built for the absolute limit of modern PC gaming. Okay, so our first news topic of the week and it's basically a game release or rather a patch release.

Um, IO Interactives brilliant 007 first light has received its path tracing update and uh, man, this is this is crazy stuff. It's kind of like uh, path tracing with the gloves off, so to speak. Um, it's fair to say that the visual transformation uh, that's delivered by this upgrade is uh, I'd say it's extraordinary. It's really really interesting. It's it's a fascinating combination of um, how can I describe it? comparing sort of um artists intent without any kind of raid tracing involved versus like the full-on pathfaced experience and uh we'll be talking about some of the A2B comparisons a bit later on.

Um but there has been controversy about it and it starts with the recommended specifications that were put out by um IO Interactive where basically they're suggesting that to play the game at 1080p 60 frames per second with path tracing on the medium setting um an RTX 5070 should be able to do that. Now, you know, with DLSS, I've been able to play a fair amount of path facing games um on the 5070 um just fine, right?

But always at 1440p, 1080p, that's sort of pretty heavy. Then it's talking about recommended specifications where um it's suggesting an RTX 5080 at 1440p and uh again, that's heavy. You kind of associate the 5080 with being a kind of like a 4K card, right? Um, and then path tracing ultra and uh 5090 there obviously 4K at 200 fps plus DLSS 4.5. Now what they're talking about there is actually frame generation and um yeah, you you shouldn't really be doing this on PC recommended specs.

Uh adding your various sort of caveats. Uh you've got to be fully transparent about what you need to run the game without frame generation I think. Um, [snorts] and yeah, I'm just going to quickly talk about performance first of all because it is quite important before we talk about the good stuff because the 5070 stuff in particular is wrankling me a bit because I did actually um first of all play on the 5080 and yes, it's heavy.

Then I played on the 5070 expecting to be able to like drop resolution and everything would be okay on the same settings. Um, and it kind of works, but you know, you 1440p is out of the picture. You can't use um anything higher than 1080p really. And you do need to use DLSS super resolution on top of that. And um I eventually used balanced mode for that to get the kind of performance you're seeing in this performance clip, which kind of looks okay, but that is with 2x fame gen.

Um, now that's that's looking okay, I think, but you know, the resolution is low. This is really, really heavy. Um, the image quality isn't quite where I'd like it to be. I kind of think the 5070 is a 1440p card. Um, so tricky. Um, but, you know, acceptable because you're getting a taste of the experience. Acceptable, but not great. But then you get to this section here, um, the the sort of chase scene, um, before the big airfield fight.

It's just a mess. I I I don't know what's going on here. I think maybe we're running out of memory because the performance collapse here is just extraordinary. It's, you know, I can't recommend um 007 first like path tracing on the 5070. And that pains me because kind, you know, I kind of like the 5070. It's the card that I usually have plugged in when I want to play a new game because I can actually find a game's limitations um quite easily.

But, you know, you can tweak, you can get a good experience. So, the fact that you can't get a good experience with um a a transformative upgrade like this, it it does wrankle. As I said, uh quickly going to talk about 5080 performance here. Um it recommends 1440p. I played 1620p DLSS performance mode. That was with a custom uh resolution and with 2x frame gen. There was 2x frame gen on the 5070 as well, by the way. And the reason I've got 2x frame gen here isn't because I love frame generation.

It's because um certainly in the current build my my feeling is that Nvidia reflex is not enabled unless you have frame generation active. Um because remarkably um uh latency drops with frame generation with 2x frame gen the latency to 2x4x frame gen is lower than without frame generation active. So, it's all about latency from my perspective. And um to get that kind of 50 to 60 millisecond uh latency or lower when the scenes are lighter, you've got to have frame gen active.

So, yeah, it's it's kind of not great. And again, um the the chase scene that does sort of impact performance quite heavily um more than more so than the rest of the game, weirdly. Um, kind of curious. Not testing the 5090 here because Tom's got it [laughter] on the project. >> Giving that project giving that a hearty chuckle. [laughter] >> Yes. >> Good for you. Your first taste of of unlimited power Palpatine style. >> It feels good for now. >> Um, [laughter] >> but Oliver, yeah, the performance isn't great.

IO Interactive has said that there's going to be improvements. Um, I understand that the uh latency issue has been identified. whether it is reflex not being on with frame generated frame frame generation inactive not confirmed but likely the case so that's going to be addressed as well I suspect but Oliver let's talk about the good stuff now because I've put together in fact I spent like about an hour putting together just like shots uh comparing path tracing on and path tracing off and >> the difference is like a a revelation right >> yeah it's pretty night and day to be honest when you actually look at the kind of lighting phenomena that are present within the scene with path tracing off and with path tracing on.

It's a pretty huge difference. I think probably the biggest difference for me lies in reflections which have much better fidelity to the scene, especially on like semig gloss materials like wood where you get much softer and less defined reflections that really sell that material and its properties. or even on materials like painted stone and other materials with kind of a rougher or slightly uneven finish. It looks very cool.

Uh shadows are also much better with good contact hardening. You get very sharp detail up close which falls away to softness at a distance. Um, the GI is also quite a bit better, which I think you can see in a number of shots, including this shot with the bookshelves here or in really quite a few shots here where the GI solution they had before had very coarse SDFbased tracing and then this screen space passed and it didn't really capture some of these fine details or in some cases you got a little bit of light leak here and there or you got some kind of, you know, the appearance of occlusion wasn't quite preserved as much as you'd like and those fine soft shadows weren't present. um the lighting generally looks more directionally correct and it's brighter as well which you might expect from a you know technique that's preserving more of that lighting information and actually giving you a little bit more of that light in the scene.

Now, there are one or two shots where maybe something does look a little bit messed up possibly. Like in this shot, there's a lack of shadow on this hose in the scene, which I did notice, which didn't quite feel correct to me. Uh, did not quite look correct to me. But overall, I think it looks very good. >> In terms of performance, I think you've gone over the information quite admirably there, Rich. I think it it is very heavy.

It is very heavy. And obviously running on a VRAM, that is like the extreme scenario. And I I don't know that at present at least the game should be considered as being kind of compatible with 12 GB cards. I agree that, you know, 16 GB cards are probably where you want to be for this game or or higher obviously, but I think it's a very heavy game. But what we might see in the future and I think what we're starting to see with this and with other, you know, techniques like obviously DOSS 5 is very heavy that maybe frame generation is just one of those things that developers are kind of baking into their performance assumptions when they're making games and high-end GPUs with frame generation are acceptable in this game at least. obviously take a big image quality hit, but you know, running this game at like 100 FPS on a decent card at 1440p, 1620p output, I think that looks reasonable, but it is very very heavy, like exceptionally heavy relative to almost any other game in the market, even relative to other games with very heavy rate tracing or even, you know, uh, path tracing and titles like Cyberpunk.

I think this is like extremely heavy. Um, is the visual return there? I think it largely is, but it's really going to depend on having a high-end card and being fine with frame generation as a means to get good performance, right? Um, so I think those are appropriate caveats, but what they've delivered here looks very good. It just, you know, could probably be a little bit more performant is my guess. [laughter] >> Yeah, I mean, I do think, you know, it is just a hunch, I guess.

But you know um the the concept that the 12 GB card is struggling inordinately in that section >> right >> it does kind of suggest that there is a memory problem there because you know you can scale compute right and we've scaled the um um the resolution right down and yeah there is a VRAM meter that seems to be saying that it's it's it's kind you know kind of close to being maxed out but the thing about VRAM meters is that they never seem to be fully accurate >> so you know the the evidence kind of suggests that it's gone beyond the um uh the 12 GB limits of the 5070 which is again you know here's the thing right the the last time I looked the 5070 was number four the Steam hardware survey so you know um basically Nvidia has sold millions of these things at this point and um overall it's a pretty good card um but not for this I think it's fair to say so 50 [laughter] 5070 Ti upwards expect to use frame generation which you know for path tracing I think a lot of people are using it anyway great Um, I wouldn't be so concerned about the, you know, looking at the the frame rate meter and dividing it by two.

Check Check out the latency in the top right. Um, 50 milliseconds or so is okay with a Joyad. And um, yeah, there is a visual return here that I think is is is well worthwhile, but you know, um, man, it's heavy. [laughter] And, um, yeah, there's something else which I noticed. Um it seems to be the case that uh there is a bit of stutter in there. Um which I didn't notice before. Um it's especially noticeable on the scene cuts, right?

U maybe it's just a multi frame generation thing that happens. >> Um but yeah, that's that's sort of more pronounced. Um didn't really impact my enjoyment. >> Yeah. >> Does it happen more so with the the frame gen enabled? Is it more obvious? I guess >> actually seemed to be less so, weirdly enough, but except for those scene cuts, right? >> It's natural causes as well. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Right. Okay, that kind of makes sense then.

Fair enough. Yeah. >> Um, yeah, you've you've got you've kind of got to check it out though if you've got the means, you know, to sort of paraphrase Ferris Ber, [laughter] if you have the mean if you have the means, I highly recommend checking it out. Uh, Tom, what do you think? Well, now I really want to check it out on this uh RTX 5090 you've kindly sent sent my way. Um yeah. Yeah, looks gorgeous. Honestly, uh like it's it's impossible to dismiss it like as oh it's a superfluous extra.

I don't need it. Say if I was on a lower-end GPU. Actually, this is really tantalizing. Like it's a good reason to move to better GPUs. and the fact that the RTX5070 is a bit uh short in terms of you know what it's able to get away with here in terms of the base res base frame rate figure before multi-gen uh multiframe generation is a bit of a shame. I I do think that the uh the performance drop on the 5070 later on is it's got to be an optimization thing, right?

Cuz it just it tanks so so sharply after the the club scenes where it's absolutely, you know, it's very doable. It's basically just that that driving scene where it's really impactful, where it becomes unplayable really. Yeah. Uh the other scene seemed to be sort of generally okay, but um yeah, that particular section, it was the same on consoles, wasn't it Oliver? That that driving section seemed to cause problems. >> Yeah, that is my kind of chosen stress test for the game on consoles.

Or at least it was when I tested it back, I guess, in was it April now? It was quite a while ago. But um that is the scene that regularly drops frames across a variety of console systems. So that's like a very good stress test. But obviously I was not seeing frame rates in like the 15 to 20 FPS range [laughter] that does suggest a different kind of limitation. I I would think >> need needs more work. There is a also a um a high and uh a medium pathf facing setting.

And um basically if you're looking to claw back performance, you can. But in my test scene, which was in the um in the club there, um basically 58 FPS um with the high path tracing and then uh 62.4 with the medium. So not a game-changing performance win by dropping the path tracing setting there. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, the path tracing I mean because the original just used sort of softwaredriven uh raid trace GI to have the sort of complete package of RAID tracing extras bundled on top it is transformative to this game.

As I said 5080 5090 5070Ti at least check it out because it's obviously a free upgrade and uh yeah it's very very good. [laughter] I'm just looking forward to those optimizations at some point. And I do think that the uh PC specifications chart does need to be revisited because um >> yeah, I mean I'm not quite sure they can't be talking about native 1080p, native 1440p, native 4K for those, [laughter] you know, it's it's just not going to be happening.

The only caveat they've put on is that DLSS ray reconstruction is automatically enabled. um and they're not talking about any other form of um DLSS. Now, in their non-path trace specifications, they have a caveat or asterisk rather saying DLSS is not enabled for the minimum recommended and enthusiast categories. So, it's only on ultra there. So, they're not making a similar distinction. I mean, you've got to use DLSS super resolution and pretty much um uh certainly from a latency perspective right now, you've got to use fame generation as well.

Um, yeah. So, need some work. And we've actually got a question here, a supporter question from David Graham. Uh, PT in 007 First Light, the fifth game where PT is only exclusive or rather exclusive on Nvidia. You think Control Resonant and Witch are three remastered will be the same as well. What's the implication of this? Um, yeah, can't really say for Control Resident because I haven't really tested it at the moment.

Uh, which are three remastered. Hopefully, it will be sitting on the Red Engine uh existing implementation which has a deninoiser that's AMD compatible. But I do think that's probably the reason why the path tracing seems to be uh Nvidia only certainly to begin with because it's using or seemingly sort of uh reliant on um ray reconstruction. So that's kind of not a good thing and we need we kind of need developers and AMD to be talking more about uh ray regeneration so that you know we can actually have this stuff enabled um for AMD users.

Yeah, the kind of vendor lockout stuff always uh leaves a a bad taste in the mouth. Yeah. Um speaking of AMD though, there has been some um changes or rather one welcome change to this patch. um there was kind of like a hardcoded inversion of FSR 3.1.5 in the launch version of 007 first light and um you can actually use FSR 4 now um for AMD GPUs which is good news because the image quality is probably I think you'll agree Oliver one of the sticking points >> with first light the reliance on FSR3 >> yeah it did not look so handsome on consoles at least where they were doing like 720p FSR3 upscale feeling look kind of gross a little bit.

But then on PS5 Pro, which obviously, you know, has a lot of similarities with its new PSSR technique to FSR4, image quality I thought looked fantastic. So, I'd imagine you're going to get a similar uplift here. Um, which should be pretty good in this title. I think FSR3 is not really quite up to the demands of the kinds of upscaling that you'd need to run this game in a really performant manner on like mainstream GPUs, right?

It's it's it's a little bit of a heavier pedal as well. >> Absolutely. Um, that's all we got to say about that one though. But yeah, it is uh gorgeous to look at. Um, but the kind of scope within which to play it at the moment is it's a fine balance between sort of getting the latency right and getting the resolution to keep up decent image quality. I'm hoping to see more improvements on that soon though. Um, but let's move on.

Right then. So, we've been waiting for some time for some kind of update from uh Redemption Road about King Makers. The trailer came out a while back and it was kind of like quite astonishing to actually see this playing out in motion. An entirely new sort of game concept, I think, and a highly compelling one. Now, obviously, we just had that trailer. A lot of people thought it was fake, but now we have 12 minutes of gameplay.

And I tell you what, I'm loving what I'm seeing. Um, Tom, what do you make of this game? Because, um, [laughter] it's it's it's quite extraordinary, isn't it? >> Yeah, on many levels. Uh there's there's quite a lot of extraordinary stuff going on in that trailer. To speak on the gameplay side, uh I think it's impressive for a number of reasons. It's like I don't know the best way I suppose to take it from the start. You've got a game that was announced such a long time ago with such a silence in between this uh reveal and then that people started to wonder, is this a real thing?

You know, is it viable? You know, is this just a something they could mock up and but it isn't going to be actually playable? It looks like a proper game. It It looks like a very wellthoughtout idea. Whether it meshes and balances, you know, as I'd like it to because there's so many moving parts, I don't know. We'll have to see. But it's uh you know, the the way I describe it is it's like Earth Defense Force. You remember that series where you shoot all the bugs, >> right? >> Uh yes. >> Mixed with the film Army of Darkness, the Sam Ramy film.

[laughter] >> The time traveling stuff there just fits right in. People have said, "Wouldn't it be great to mod that with the the like Army of Darkness style thing going on there?" But yeah, in terms of the tech, this is like you couldn't really ask for more of a CPU workout. It's taking two genres uh that have notoriously pushed CPU on PC, like the the RTS, the sort of the Rome Total War style, Creative Assembly style, top down stuff, always very CPU heavy, lots of threads and cores needed for that.

And then on the other hand, when you go down to the floor, the ground level, you're faced with, you know, this custom Unreal Engine 4, which is pushing all these incredible physics-based um destruction elements on buildings with each pillar and uh uh support on each building just falling apart and then the whole thing capsizes. So yeah, it's in, you know, I'm very eager to see how this runs on uh modern PCs and whether we can actually get the results because I don't know about you guys, did you see frame rate drops in the feed?

Cuz that was I thought I saw some some >> Yeah, there there are I mean performance isn't a flat 60. Uh Redemption Road were kind enough to send us the the the the actual video that they uploaded to YouTube. Um but you know >> u you don't know what hardware it's running on. You don't know anything really. But at the same time, um, what we're seeing here is quite extraordinary. And I think, you know, um, handling that amount of units both in a kind of as a sort of RTS and also as a kind of third person shooter is quite a remarkable turn of events. >> Um, I'm just loving the concept of being able to bring in uh, modern weaponry and ordinance to like a medieval battle.

It's just quite extraordinary. The the only sort of you've got to have some element of suspension of disbelief though because I'm sure that if you know uh an attack chopper came in to a medieval battlefield, you know, there'd just be like widespread terror and everyone running away. I don't think they'd be hanging around to get blown up. But, you [laughter] know, you've got to suspend disbelief for this. And uh some of the scenes that you're seeing here are just it's like something I've never seen before in a game.

And I think that's the key thing which excites me about this. Obviously, there's a great tech story here, right? But also, I'm just reminded of, you know, there was this kind of period just when the Xbox 360 PS3 era was kicking in properly where you suddenly saw games that were just extraordinary that you kind of hadn't seen before. I'm thinking back to when, you know, Assassin's Creed was first revealed. And um it was like, wow, I've really got to play this.

This is something that I've not played before. I really want to get hands-on with this. And this is exactly the feeling that I'm getting with King Makers, which uh I mean, you're just looking at it and you're just sort of a gape at what's going on there. And the physics stuff looks tremendous. Again, that's something where which we haven't really seen too much of in this generation. Um sort of advanced physics, but they're talking about here every single building uh being uh destructible, which I think is extraordinary.

Uh the level of carnage on display, remarkable. Um, Oliver, I'm curious about your take on this. >> Yeah, I think this looks awesome. Uh, the thing that really stands out is the scale of the fighting and the scale of the crowds and the combat. Apparently, I know John talked to them about this, I believe, I think a couple years ago, but I think they're using the GPU handling animation for all the characters, at least up to a certain distance away from the character, right?

Um, so they're like bypassing the CPU entirely for animation apparently, which is pretty cool. That's actually how you get this level of scale. And then I think closer up to the player, they basically kick in more advanced animation systems and things like that, but they have this uh >> scaling out to a certain distance, which is pretty cool. I also like the environmental destruction. That was a new element, at least to me, in this particular showing.

It does seem a little bit like Battlefield's environmental destruction where you kind of break buildings into pre-cored chunks, but it does seem like if you damage a building structural supports enough that the entire building will come down. Like there's one shot where the player is, uh, driving a tank backwards through a series of buildings, uh, multiple story buildings even, and the entire structure is coming down basically once a critical mass of its structural supports have been removed.

Um, so that's pretty cool. I don't know how that would apply or if that would apply to some of the games extremely large structures like castles, but at least, you know, the environments do seem substantially destructible. And that is a pretty cool element that there is this larger scale kind of simulation of physics going on in addition to the kind of precored chunks that you get uh blown out of buildings. Otherwise, this looks pretty reasonable from a visual perspective beyond all the interesting simulative elements. uh materials seem to have preier properties.

The particles and motion blur look pretty good. It looks very unreal in a sense, but not very unreal in a bad way, just very unreal in the sense that it's like obviously got some level of visual sophistication behind it. The only real concession seems to be that the game's GI is is relatively basic. Um, and interiors are lit with a sort of kind of like this bright ambient term, I would say, with some SSAO adding in a bit of small scale occlusion detail, but it's not really capturing like really accurate GI.

I don't know. Obviously, this game's pushing all kinds of crazy tech. I don't know exactly what point you kind of stop being reasonable with uh complaints like that, but uh yeah, I mean, this game looks really cool. Um, I hope it is released at some point soon. They they seem to delay it a little bit last minute last year. Um, I'm not quite sure what the what the reasoning was behind that, but this does look outside of, you know, some performance quirks here and there and things like that, uh, this does seem to be a basic realization of the vision they sketched out to John a couple years ago, shown in relatively extended form, which makes me think, hey, they're actually on track to delivering this game.

Maybe it's not the finished article now, but they actually have a a vision behind it and a way of productizing this game and making it like a shippable product. Hopefully, that's the case. I think that's probably, you know, at least this showing does seem to indicate they're on the right track, which is encouraging. >> Mhm. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I haven't got too much more to say about this, just that I'm extremely excited by what I'm seeing.

And it's it's quite interesting because, you know, in terms of like, um, uh, the sort of cutting edge rendering features, it doesn't really have them. It is an Unreal Engine 4 game, but it doesn't really seem to matter because that's not the focus of the game. >> The focus of the game is is just on the concept and the delivery of that concept. And they've, you know, certainly based on what we're seeing in this 12 minutes of of gameplay, they've done it.

I think that's, you know, as I said, it's the sort of game where you see it and you want to play it. And I really do want to play it. Anyway, let's move on. Okay, our next news topic of the week. Now, it's fair to say that uh we're kind of under extreme pressure here to deliver content on a huge array of games that have all mysteriously been compressed into a time period that seems to stretch from beginning of September to like the first week of October.

I think that's the bottom line. Uh it's almost as if there's going to be a game coming um in November, early November perhaps that you know has basically moved everything else forward [laughter] possibly. One of those games, although it doesn't really apply I suspect in this case, but it certainly has uh had implications on our scheduling is Switch 2's Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave. Uh typically we would have done a full review on this, but we've just got so much going on that a number of games, including this one, have kind of like slipped through the cracks.

But that's what we can do in DF Direct. We can present some uh opinion and um I guess some um sort of truncated analysis. So Tom, you've been taking a look at this one and um you do indeed have impressions. So let's hear them. >> Yeah, I've got a few impressions. Uh they I don't think Nintendo have anything to worry about when it comes to GTA. They could have released this anytime pretty much and probably gotten away unscathed.

Um, it's a high quality game as well as are the previous two games, Fire Emblem 3 Houses and Fire Emblem Engage, which were both Switch One titles of course and very well-loved as well. Uh so as a bit of a recap, I I I think these games are brilliant and I've got so many friends I know here in in Brighton and Havaria which who adore uh Three Houses especially, but the thing with that game was um the tech side was never really up to par with the quality of the game uh in the rest of the gameplay package.

You had no anti-aliasing. You had um 30 FPS with drops and uneven frame pacing. had poor texture filtering and a very muted color palette in in three houses. Now, John looked at Fire Emblem Engage a bit later on and a lot of those problems were improved. The 30 FPS cap was a lot better in that 2020 through3 released game. They had um you know a nicer color palette, more like bright and vivid and pleasing on the eye. And they they added anti-aliasing.

How about that? the Nintendo a Nintendo game with anti-aliasing, but it was just like a you know edge smoothing type thing. It wasn't super advanced. Uh but it did a reasonable job, but you know, there's still some flickering and all all the rest of it. So, cut to today with Fire Emblem Fortunes weave on Switch 2 and well, you know, it's it's a it's not a stunner, but it is. And it certainly it builds on what Engage started in terms of the design, the characters kind of avatars being animated and popping up and talking and um the color palette and all the design choices feeling a bit more integrated like you have the top down map look and then you go down to the battle on the ground with the over the shoulder when you do your attack.

And that feels just as um seamless as engages. And it's also worth noting that loading times in this Switch 2 version are snappy. uh when you go between areas and between the map and the battles and exploration. So already we're on to a good start, but the key two things are um performance and image quality which you know two parts to it which I did want to see improvements and the performance to start people wanted to see 60 frames per second out of this game especially given the visual quality of it and uh that you know it's not really you know we're seeing Cyberpunk on Switch 2 at this point and some incredible stuff running at 60 and in fact a lot of Nintendo's output published first party stuff has been 60 like Mario World and Bonanza, Yoshi, Zelda, Ocarina of Time as well even.

So really, you go into this hoping for 60, but that's not happened. We've got a locked 30 which is okay, but it is really well locked. At least it's improved on engage in terms of there's no no drops so far in my 2 hours of testing. It's not a lot. There's a lot more to come later on. There's more unit, you know, allies to recruit and a lot more um areas to uncover. But in two hours, I've not had a single drop, which is put in a good good place to start.

It even improves on the there was a hitch in the in engage when you went from the map to the top down map view to the battles where there'd be a hitch every time. And given the frequency of that, that was kind of a bit of a nuisance. So, this improves that. And uh so if you want lock 30 that's you've got it. Textures fine. Shadows fine. Texture filtering is a bit blurry but you know it it's passable. They do have motion blur um motion for velocity based camera movement and object based as well which is nice a nice cinematic touch.

But for the uh actual big beats, narrative big beats, you've got pre-rendered cutscenes once more. So, anything that's actually pushing uh something a bit more action-packed, you're moving to that format with a a video that plays. And they look good. They look like the encoding quality is much higher than what was possible on switch ones CG pre-rendered cutscenes. And the install size on this Switch 2 version is only 27 gigs.

So it hasn't bloated the the overall size of the package that much. So it's a yeah, they've done so well so far in terms of um you know improving certain elements of it, but I wouldn't say it's like a groundbreaking rewrite of what we saw before. Now image quality is where we do see some big movement. I think it's a a big step forward. You've got induct play. It's running at it's targeting 1440p while docked, but it appears to be using a 720p base resolution.

And that's via a reconstruction. It's very much like give it a few frames and all those edges disappear. Throw some movement in or uh obscure uh an an object in the background and it breaks. Possibly DLSS haven't been able to lock it down, but it's for sure reconstructing and it's a more advanced technique than what we saw in engage. And as for portable 1080p target obviously it's the screen uh dimensions the screen spec there but 540p base.

So uh those are the that's the setup and it looks a lot better for it. It looks much crisper but you will see on movement especially on like like flowing capes and u thing all the elements which usually break reconstruction anti-alysis you're going to get some some breakup. Um yeah it's a it's an interesting package. mouse controls included, too, which is good news. Joycon 2 mouse controls. I still probably prefer to just use the regular gamepad as it feels more familiar and it's less finicky.

Your your posture with the uh the uh Joy-Cons uh in mouse mode isn't always uh the most comfortable to me, but some people might prefer it. But yeah, otherwise it's it's a good progression. Just a bit disappointing on the lack of 60, I think. >> Right. Okay. Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, in terms of the mouse mode stuff, uh I haven't really used it much before. I played a bit of Metvoid and uh also last week when doing the VRR testing, the Switch 2 Welcome Tour.

I don't really get on with the mouse uh side of things cuz it just seems to be that the uh the stick the um the analog stick gets in the way of of uh you know, using it like a mouse. >> It's just a bit annoying. Yeah. Actually, >> agreed 100%. It's it doesn't feel quite I mean maybe it's a matter of just getting used to these things but feels a bit sort of uh there's not enough of a hold on it. >> Yeah. I mean obviously a mouse has been refined over decades to be this sort of ergonomically nice thing that you instantly uh you know know and understand the feel of and then to suddenly go from that to a kind of like this very sort of thin uh device with a with a big sort of analog stick on it is a bit of a bit of a shift.

Yeah. >> Um, Fire Emblem Fortunes weave though, Oliver. Thoughts? >> Yeah, I think this looks okay. I mean, it basically looks kind of like how I expected, at least from the early trailers. I mean, the environments do look more detailed than we saw in Engage. I would grant that. And the characters look pretty good. But, uh, I think the biggest issue here is there's only a basic sense of global illumination. Not really much sense of global illumination.

So the lighting of shadowed regions is very uniform. You basically get the same kind of ambient color and temperature all throughout those regions. >> I spotted that. >> And uh that's the biggest >> it's the biggest issue where it feels like, you know, a little bit of SSAO, SSGI, you know, some probes here and there. Maybe you can improve that a little bit. Um I don't know exactly what they're doing already, but it it just isn't effective.

It isn't it isn't producing a very effective image. And I don't know what engine this game is on because I don't think Koe Techmo is involved. I know they were involved with Three Houses. Um I don't know what engine this is using. I think it's just Intelligent Systems that's developing this one. >> Uh along with Nintendo, of course, >> but um this title does seem to be using I would I would think it's DLSS based on some of the artifact patterns that it's producing.

Um I think it's maybe uh one of the the lighterw weight DLSS models, one of the DLSS light models, although it's not. it kind of produces uh results that are a little bit similar to what I saw in Star Wars Outlaws, which I believe is the DLSS light title, but they're kind of some DLSS light titles that will have certain kind of curved edges, but more breakup than you'd see with CNN DLSS, but they don't have the same kind of like really raw aliasing patterns that we see in some other DLSS light titles, like Hogwarts Legacy, for instance, which has very severe uh artifacts and kind of these very harsh uklitian edge artifacts all over the But yeah, I do think this is the LSS in some variety perhaps um just based off of the artifact patterns and that's pretty much expected.

I think image quality looks good, but we still haven't reached that kind of white whale point. I don't know when we will reach that point of an actual like almost fully Nintendo developed first party game or Nintendoled first party game at least >> that actually does use DLSS. Yeah, cuz I wouldn't count this as being in that bucket cuz I really think this is like probably intelligent system developed with some Nintendo oversight, right?

Maybe some Nintendo producers in the project, but probably not um actually substantially Nintendo developed in terms of the core technology. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um do you recommend the game, Tom? >> 100%. I mean, based on two hours of play, you know, it's it's hard to give it a fair uh fair appraisal of what the whole package is going to be, but the reviews across the board have been glowing. And I loved Three Houses. I think it's uh there was a lot going on in terms of um just in within the starting sort of on boarding.

The idea is quite compelling. You're kind. You're enlisted as a you know a hero by the goddess and you you're given a choice of four pathways to four characters to choose four heroes to play through their stories and you access them through an obelisk in this uh like ruin and it's you kind of pick and choose between them and the idea is you go into that past and you're trying to recruit more heroes, warriors is essentially to help you in your grand battle in the present day.

So it's a kind of it's a cool conceit. Um but it's yeah it's like the I don't think you know talking on the technology alone sells the sort of package generally is look it's a nice pleasantl looking game. It's not like pushing any boundaries but it is pleasant pleasant enough and it's clear and in much the same way as the you know intelligent systems have made so many great games over the years. I believe it's Advanced Wars as well.

They're very uh they're very good at UI and making sure you understand what's going on on screen in ter in very dense and what could be quite complex uh strategy RPG circumstances as well. So they kind they kind of uh simplify it to a point where it's easy to very legible. So yeah, I'd 100% recommend it. It's the story's engaging. It's got great characters, beautiful soundtrack, great cutscenes as well. CG pre-rendered as they are.

So, yeah, give it a thumbs up for sure. >> Okay, lovely. Okay, let's move on. Okay, uh again, filing this one under Switch to games that we haven't had time to do a full review on. Uh this week we saw the uh release of uh Diablo I 4 on on Switch 2 and um Oliver, you've been taking a look at this one for us. So uh tell us more about this. >> Yeah, I have been taking a look at this one. This was a bit of a s well I shouldn't say surprise because we expected this game for quite a while, but they did announce it at Blizzcon and then release it like 3 days later, which did not give us a whole lot of time to prepare or adjust uh things.

But I did take a look at this cuz >> yeah cuz I I'm personally interested in this title and I also took a look at Diablo I when it launched back in 2023 for us at least on consoles. Um so I have some experience with this game. On Switch 2 there are two modes and that applies to both docked and handheld configuration and I'm just taking a look at dock. Now um basically you have a toggle for enhanced visuals on and enhanced visuals off.

And the key difference between them is that enhanced visuals off targets 40 fps and enhanced visuals on targets 30 fps. Um, if you have a 120 Hz display, you get to choose. But if you only have a 60 Hz display, you have to have it enhanced visuals on, which is kind of as expected, right? Because obviously 40 fps does not really divide into 60 fps cleanly. 60 Hz cleanly. Um, but weirdly they look about identical to me, at least docked, which is strange.

And you actually, when you actually look closely at them, even like the pixel structure, the aliasing structure of the image looks the same, which suggests they're going to the same output resolution, at least in my on my own judgment, which I believe to be 1080p. Both render at 1080p, as far as I can tell, um, as well. >> Silly. Yeah. So, both render it. I it is uh it is a fine resolution for a game like this, but yeah, both rendering at 1080p.

Um little bit weird, especially given that they have this like, you know, they set this toggle and and you presume that it runs with higher visual settings. The only difference is that the enhanced visuals toggle on appears to have a slightly sharper resolve, but in a way that mimics the look of post-process sharpening and not in a way that mimics the look of, you know, substantially higher resolution uh final imagery, right?

At least to me. The game says that the enhanced visuals mode uses ray tracing. Um, in the settings you can read and it says that it uses ray tracing and it enhances fur and it does all these things, but I'm not so sure because Diablo I uses ray trace shadows and reflections on the other platforms. Um, but the RT shadows do not seem present here based on their uh aliasing patterns and based off of some um a certain lack of softness as to them that I tend to see with the rate trace shadows.

So, I don't think that's the case. reflections are harder to judge, but I didn't see good evidence of them either. Unfortunately, Diablo I doesn't have very adjustable cameras, so it's kind of hard to see some of these things, but I don't think ray trace shadows are are evidence, and I kind of wonder if maybe that's a bit of a hold over from the other platforms, but I'm not quite sure. Um, both do seem to do a pretty good job of hitting their respective frame rate targets.

So, 40 fps and 30 fps, there are some drops and there are some like little traversal hitches and things like that. Not perfect. And there are some frame pacing issues weirdly with cutscenes in the 40 fps mode where they're 30 fps cut scenes but they have frame pacing problems. Anyways, uh not ideal there. I also did test the handheld mode a bit. I don't have figures in that one but does seem to run just fine at least in my own personal testing.

Um and it seems to be a pretty good experience in handheld mode as well. As a final note, I did draw up some uh PS5 comparisons um which I was a little bit curious to see. And the main limitation seems to be that Switch 2 in both of its modes has lower texture detail, less model complexity, fewer foliage shadows, so grass is not as effectively shadowed, and worse image quality, and probably also worse spell density, stuff like that as well.

I did notice that in Switch 2 that spell effects weren't very dense. Um, so that could be uh that could be in in the in the title as well. So overall, I think this is a pretty good port. It's just kind of a weird port in a couple of respects. like I didn't expect the two visual modes to um have incorrect descriptions in the menus possibly at least based on my own testing that seems to be the case or to exhibit no differences in terms of the resolution of that imagery.

And I know that uh Blizzard was saying that the at least in dock mode that the uh that the enhanced visuals off mode goes to 1080p and the enhanced visuals on mode goes to 1440p. And I really didn't see good evidence of that in my testing. In in the character of the resolved imagery, it really looks like a 1080p image on both to my understanding, to my knowledge. So, yeah, kind of a weird release. Maybe not fully baked in a couple of those key respects, but it did seem to run well enough for me.

And, you know, I think 30 FPS is a bridge too far with Diablo I, but I think 40 FPS is very playable and actually feels pretty good, so I'm not opposed to that. >> Uh, so Tom, Oliver's pretty much laid it all out. What do you think? >> Yeah, I mean, I've not had much uh time with Diablo I in general. I did play Diablo III quite a bit and enough to do the coverage back in the day on Switch One, which was interesting, right? >> And I remember um having to backtrack quite a bit on the, you know, in terms of finding areas that would really push switch one.

And there were obviously these uh hyper like wild dungeons that you could go to later on in the game that I had to borrow saves from other people to get to like level 100 type of stuff. And in Diablo I 4, I'm reading that there's like level 100 nightmare uh dungeons that are about equivalent. So I wonder if there's some sort of dynamic res component in play which is more aggressive say on the the 40 fps variant uh than the 30, >> right?

Um because it really when once the effects start going it they really start going in these games. Um >> yeah it's it's very hard to it's very hard to call it based on the first like even 10 hours even 20 hours. >> I would completely agree with that and the testing that I was doing was based off of characters that are not at max level. So I think my my most leveled up character was like level 33 or level 34 or something.

Not super high level by any means but high enough level that you can go through and see big crowds of enemies and do things like that. Um, that is a key limitation of of what I can do here with this game because obviously, you know, the very endame content could be super crazy. Uh, or at least a little bit crazier and I don't really have a good feeling on that. But in general, you know, I think this probably holds true for at least reasonable enemy encounters.

In terms of dynamic resolution, I actually didn't notice any dynamic resolution with this title when I tested it last on uh the when it launched uh in 2023. So, I wonder if it's maybe not a dynamic rest title. Although, Diablo II was a very heavy dynamic res title all over the place. Uh, really conspicuous dynamic rest, including on Switch One. I played a lot of Diablo II on Switch One, actually, so I'm very used to the performance of that title.

And yeah, no apparent dynamic res here. I don't know if that's a technical change or if I'm just not pushing it hard enough, but uh, yeah, good experience. Although I do miss, you know, Diablo II is a very light game, but the fact that it could hit 60 FPS in a console like the Switch One pretty reliably, that was very cool. And Diablo III now, when you run it with the handheld boost mode feature, it does look pretty awesome on Switch 2, I have to say.

So losing out on some of that really crisp and high frame rate performance is a little bit not the greatest, but Diablo I looks way better than Diablo II in my opinion, so maybe that's worth it. Yeah, the lighting quality in Diablo I is just on another level. >> Yeah, and the materials and the shadowing and it's got way more advanced technology. It still looks really good in my opinion. It's still one of the better looking um you know isometric games.

I don't know how many of those there are, but it's a very good-look isometric action game that's super fun and I I would recommend it for sure. And you know, it's not bad on Switch 2. It's pretty good on Switch, too. >> Okay, lovely stuff. All right, let's move on. Okay, so our final news topic of the week and uh yes, we've had some uh pretty positive stories so far, but yes, we're back to negativity again. [laughter] Ah, >> must we? >> Um uh yes, unfortunately.

So, um yeah, basically a rumor from uh leaker Kepler_L2, who's got a pretty good track record with this sort of thing, let's be fair. Um, basically, uh, dropping the bombshell, though I think we kind of half suspected it's going to happen that there's basically not going to be any new GPU releases coming in the year of Art Lord 2027 bar 1. So um this was um uh posted on a forum online and um basically Kepler is saying that uh Nvidia's sorry AMD's AT2 is the only GPU being released next year and he says that everything else from both AMD and Nvidia is 2028.

So you know let's break that down. What does that mean? Um so 82 is if the rumors are to be believed um an RDNA5 GPU mid-range 64 compute unit. So, you can probably consider that to be a next generation uh version of today's um RX970 XT that also has 64 compute units as I understand it. Um pretty grim times if you know we're waiting so many years before we actually get any new GPU architectures. Uh Kepler believes that the Nvidia stack uh is going to roll out in 2028 and there'll be the rest of um AMD stuff happening 2028 as well.

So yeah, I mean obviously we all know the reasons why there's this kind of like malaise in the hardware space at the moment. It's simply the case that um cutting edge silicon requires memory and memory is hugely expensive at the moment and the um the cost of it seems to be ballooning ever higher every week. Um Oliver, it's uh not great news, is it? But I guess to be uh to be expected at this point. >> Yeah, it's pretty depressing.

And ultimately we know that from these GPU vendors especially from Nvidia but also from AMD their focus is on data centers and their focus is on AI and whatever resources would be going into new consumer GPU launches whether that's engineering resources or that's manufacturing resources um are going into AI in one form or another. They're going into either data centers or they're going into uh proumer products, right?

That might be used for workstations and things like this. At least that's where the money is currently. So, you'd expect if they are going to make allocation decisions, they're probably going to be allocating more resources towards those products. AT2 is an interesting wrinkle in this whole story though because AT2, to my understanding and based on the leaks, is the next gen Xbox GPU. that is the basically the GP tile that goes into goes into Magnus I suppose. >> Um so that actually existing on a 2027 time frame makes sense because if you've taped this thing out and it's hitting manufacturing and it's in the next Xbox, why wouldn't it be in the PC market as well?

You know, if you're going to offer that product to general consumers, that would certainly make sense in terms of timing. But I do kind of feel like, you know, obviously I'm in a privileged position. I have a 5090 PC. I'm I'm doing okay here. But I do kind of feel like games are are pushing hardware in ways they haven't before. Obviously, the introduction of DLSS 5 changes the rubric, at least in some people's minds, for how we should think about performance.

And not just DLSS 5, but the idea that we're going to be running, you know, more advanced neural filters, potentially more advanced upscaling, more advanced neural rendering technologies on games in the future. That does kind of put a little bit more emphasis on accelerating that whole process. That might put more emphasis on new hardware products. Obviously, at the outside of this program, we were talking about 007 First Light, which is enormously heavy.

[laughter] So, you'd want some faster rate tracing acceleration probably in your consumer hardware, and we're not seeing that at the moment, at least not for a while, apparently, according to this rumor. Um, and at the same time, I've noticed that supplies of very high-end GPUs, so supplies in particular of the RTX 1590 are dwindling in a lot of markets. So, in Canada, you know, I'd have to spend at least $8,000 Canadian dollars to get a 5090, >> if not over $10,000.

In USD, I know that people are spending, you know, pretty enormous amounts on RTX 5090s, new RTX 5090s. It's a it's a very very very expensive product at the moment across multiple markets. I don't know if that's the case all around the world, but I know it's a very expensive product. The lower-end cards seem to be doing okay at least uh relative to, you know, expectations. They're still inflated a little bit, but you know, I don't know exactly uh if the market is being well served with current products.

I don't know if that accelerates timelines at all, but it does not seem to be a great situation at the moment with graphics hardware in general. And I I I don't necessarily blame the vendors either because I think all the incentives are aligned and probably consumer behavior in general is aligned not to support new graphics card launches at this time. So [clears throat] >> yeah, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world, but I would like to see new graphics hardware at least if it does offer, you know, a generational leap in some of these key capabilities.

I I would like to see it happen uh a little bit sooner ideally. Yeah, it's very interesting something you pointed out there that the AT2 tile is the same that's in the um project Magnus Project Helix um console that's coming from Microsoft. So does make you think again about what project helix actually is. if there's, you know, exact commonality between the GPU that's in a discrete graphics card and within um the Microsoft console, maybe the definition of what an Xbox is is somewhat elastic.

Interesting. >> Um Tom, I've got to say, you've got my 5090 at the moment and uh you had the signal honor. You had the signal honor of meeting my brother because my brother was going to Brighton. I said, "Can you uh let um Tom uh can you can you meet Tom and give him my 5090 because we've reached the point now where uh the 5090 is so valuable that I don't trust a courier with it." >> $10,000 was that was that the amount Oliver said there >> for Yeah, I can imagine. >> It was 8,000 Canadian.

I think that's fair to say. I've I've just gone on to Scan, which is kind of like um uh one of the bigger uh PC retailers in the UK. And the cheapest 5090 there is like £4,200. >> Yeah. >> Which is like, you know, over 100% markup. >> That's That's a little less than 8,000 Canadian, I think. But it's still a pretty big markup. >> Yeah. Croaky, you wouldn't want to lose that to like uh DHL or someone just >> Yeah. The other thing, of course, is that, you know, you would never get uh £4,100 back from whatever insurance, you know, so >> what you got to do, it was an alternative to me driving down and uh my time is extremely limited.

My brother, who's uh basically retired at this point, coming down for a day trip to Brighton and handing it a good uh a good 2 and 1 half hour trip as well. So, you know, but on the other hand, your brother did get a nice day out in Brighton and on a nice day as well. So, >> he's got time on his hands. So, win-win. [laughter] Worked out pretty well. >> But, uh, no, no graphics hardware to speak of next year, except possibly uh an AMD GPU, which just happens to be the same GPU that's going into Project Helix if the rumors are true.

On the one hand, it's is a bit depressing, isn't it? And on the other hand, it's kind of like the case that um, you know, this 2028 time frame for the rest of the GPU stack, is it actually going to happen? We just don't really know at this point. The whole market's just been completely disrupted at this point and it's uh >> uh not great news, is it? >> No, they usually I mean Nvidia and AMD usually have like a a map for years in advance of how they want their GPUs to roll out, which architectures they want to have and um yeah, that has been disrupted.

There's there's no question. Um, it's, you know, I I'd be very curious to see what happens in 2028 in terms of, uh, how much of a blowout it is in terms of how much it revolutionizes what we've already got, if they're holding back for a while, if they're going to find workarounds for the memory limitations, if that's even possible. Broken new deals with the distributors from memory that would please everyone. It's hard to forecast is the problem.

I I can only sympathize in that way. Like it's hard to for anyone to forecast given the climate we're in in the industry with the supply there. But yeah, if anyone knows if anyone's first to know, it will be Nvidia and AMD. >> Well, you'd think, wouldn't you? [laughter] >> I don't know. It's just a bit bleak at the moment. I don't really want to dwell on it too much, but um um basically everything is up in the air. the concept of whether we're going to get next generation consoles.

I mean, I think Microsoft is pretty much locked in at the moment, but how are they going to actually deploy that when the console's going to be so expensive and with very little visibility on how many units they can produce, how much they're going to cost to produce, it's puts puts them and it puts the user in a really bad uh place. I think at the same time, you know, you are looking at games like Grand Theft Auto 6 and you're looking at what current generation silicon is capable of achieving uh albeit with what is effectively an infinite budget.

And you know, you can't help but feel there is still quite a lot of life left in the gaming hardware that we've got today. And uh I'm as as DFD direct uh regulars will know I'm an addict to Facebook marketplace and uh Facebook has done a remarkably good uh job of tailoring the feed to my particular tastes and uh it is the case that at least the current generation of hardware for the time being you know the used prices are looking okay uh for everything except [laughter] uh perhaps inevitably the PlayStation 5 Professional which is um astonishingly expensive.

I mean, people are now basically charging a premium for a used Pro, which is uh which is not a good place to be. >> Um I'm just hoping that there is actually some sort of coordinated strategy to to make sure that the consumer market isn't completely shafted, but if there is one, you know, please disclose it because um yeah, it's not looking particularly great at the moment. Um that's all I've got to say about that one.

Okay, so yeah, that's all looking pretty bleak. Haven't got too much more to say about that. So, I guess we're just going to be rounding off this particular direct on a downer, which isn't particularly great, but but we are. Hope you enjoyed the show regardless. Like, subscribe, share all the off chance you did. Ring bells for notifications and whatnot. Uh DF supporter program, patreon.com/digitalfoundry. Lots going on there.

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