Two years after its release on PC and one year after its release on Xbox, Fatshark is bringing the game to PlayStation 5, which will also support PlayStation 5 Pro. 

The PlayStation 5 port comes on the same day as the free Grim Protocols update, which adds a new endgame mode, a new mission, three new weapon families, some quality of life upgrades, and a second anniversary event. Fatshark’s Head of Technology Mikael Hansson spoke to WCCFTech about what the PlayStation 5 version will bring, whether it will support cross-progression across all platforms (no need to restart after switching), and why it took so long to release on Sony’s console. 

“We had an exclusivity deal with Microsoft that extended for a period of time after Darktide’s Xbox release. However, that exclusivity window had expired long before Darktide’s release date on PlayStation 5. The current PlayStation 5 launch date of December 3rd is the result of the development team establishing a solid timeline by the end of which we could have a solid PlayStation 5 version of the game ready. The most complicated parts of launching with cross-play support for PlayStation 5 were handled in the early stages of Darktide as a project. We decided early on not to rely on platform-specific networking solutions. This work allowed us to deliver cross-play for Xbox and Steam, and is what allows us to seamlessly integrate PlayStation 5 into our environment. Most of the technical challenges are fairly similar from platform to platform, such as supporting various parental controls and the ability to opt out of crossplay. Steam is a bit different in that it does not require these features to be supported. As for cross-progression, we have no current plans to implement it on Darktide,” Hansson said. 

He also mentioned how DualSense is supported:  “Haptic feedback is implemented for a variety of actions related to weapon handling and character abilities, as well as some environmental effects and events. The feel of blasting heretics with a fully automatic recon lasgun or swinging a chainsword are particular favorites. And yes, the adaptive triggers play a big part in tying it all together. This work will be done in time for the wider launch of Darktide on PlayStation 5 and its Grim Protocols update on December 3. Support for DualSense controllers with haptic feedback on the PC version is not something we are working on at the moment.” 

Hansson also touched on the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution upscaler: “Once the bulk of the work to bring Darktide to PlayStation 5 was nearing completion, it was relatively easy to extend Darktide for PlayStation 5 Pro. We already supported features like DLSS/FSR/XeSS on PC, so adding PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) wasn’t too much work. Now we have more power to let players blast heretics with bigger frames and faster. The addition of PSSR is definitely a game changer in terms of getting those frame rates up while keeping the image quality as good as possible. That said, PSSR is not purely hardware related, so I would have to say that the beefier GPU is the only hardware feature that really impressed us.” 

He also talked about the difference he sees between PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro and how PSSR will be used: “The difference between PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro was more significant in terms of hardware. This jump had both advantages and disadvantages. The PlayStation 4 Pro had more CPU and RAM compared to the PlayStation 5 Pro’s GPU bump. However, to take full advantage of that extra hardware, a developer had to do a lot more than if they were working on generating more frames at a higher resolution. Adding too much/different hardware could cause the different “generations” to diverge more than you would like, which could result in a game being bottlenecked by the slower of the two consoles. We had this problem with Vermintide 2; the consoles couldn’t push as many enemies as the PC version. We had very different enemy counts, and the games were optimized differently on each platform, which prevented crossplay from being a thing for Vermintide 2. The PlayStation 4 Pro solved this problem to some extent, but because we need to support all players, including PlayStation 4 users with technical limitations, we were never able to fully utilize all the extra horsepower. 

The PlayStation 5 Pro is fast enough for us to achieve a comfortable 60fps in PSSR-enhanced 4K (High mode on PC). We run PSSR in the equivalent of balanced mode, which puts the internal resolution at 2258×1270. We can’t run PSSR and any of the other alternatives on the same platform and hardware. It can compete with the best of them and provide the expected benefit for the game,” Hansson added. 

Finally, he also talked about what’s going on with ray tracing: “We did not focus on porting any of the ray tracing solutions on PC to PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 5 Pro. The cost-benefit ratio wasn’t considered favorable. Darktide already looks pretty darn good without ray tracing, and our focus for PlayStation 5 Pro was to deliver the 60fps performance equivalent to PlayStation 5 quality mode. We just feel that the prospect of additional frames is more appealing to Darktide players than the addition of slightly better visuals.” 

Warhammer 40K: Darktide is available on PlayStation 5 today. 

Source:WCCFTech