While a few of our intra-console comparison series have made a case for their respective Fidelity, Graphics, Cinematic and Quality Modes so far, all came with huge hits to frame-rates. These four titles are frantic, action-heavy affairs that feel the step down to 30 fps more than most. Resident Evil Village is a different proposition.
It asks players to tolerate losing a few frames here and there in exchange for some ray-traced elements. As we saw in our PS5 Gameplay Demo comparison, Resident Evil Village‘s application of RT is subtle but with the full game available to us, we were able to find better examples of its immersive quality.
We captured all images at 4K and then resized them using the same process to keep the differences consistent. Images with ray tracing enabled are on the left; RT-off shots are on the right.
Ambient, Atmospheric
We’ve praised Resident Evil Village‘s atmosphere and the visual immersion on all systems we have covered previously. Similarly, the game does an amazing job pulling a player into its dark, often disgusting world. Ray tracing isn’t a transformative experience here but instead, it’s a quick mix and a final polish.
Resident Evil Village features diffuse reflection and interreflection. Light creeps around spaces in a more realistic fashion; reflecting back from objects and mixing its hues as it goes. It also features very low resolution reflections – the odd polished surface, pane of glass or pond will show a hazy mirrored image.
Previous console ray-traced efforts tended to have better resolution of reflections but these tended to be one-trick ponies in this respect. Though we have noted that these titles offered more potential uses for accurate mirroring and reflective techniques.
Ray-traced ambient occlusion tends to tone the image in Resident Evil Village. Certain ray-traced scenes seem to even out in terms overall brightness as global illumination met with object interreflectivity. Other ray-traced scenes seemed to have light sucked from its darkest corners.
A Small Trade
Ultimately, Resident Evil Village doesn’t ask much in exchange for its RT visual finery. PlayStation 5 asks the most – the frame-rate dipping into the low-fifties at its worst points. Xbox Series X fares around 10% better better in terms of momentary and minimum frame-rates but neither console truly struggles with RT enabled.
The game doesn’t allow you to easily switch between modes so we suspect that most of you will proceed to the game’s 60 fps RT-disabled mode. We sincerely hope you will give the “45 fps” RT-enabled mode after seeing these screenshots as it’s not all that bad.
Is this the most compelling ‘graphics mode’ considering it’s only a few frame-rate drops here and there? Or is the solid 60fps of ‘performance mode’ too good to turn down? Do you like the atmospheric and ambient approach to Resident Evil Village’s ray-traced elements? Do the 9th gen. systems use ray tracing effectively or are they too weak to pull it off properly?
