FromSoftware’s game seems to be in the same situation as Demon’s Souls on PS3 – unless the Bloodborne remake ends up being a PlayStation 6 launch title…?
Although PlayStation 5’s full backward compatibility with PlayStation 4 is a very welcome feature, Sony Interactive Entertainment seems to have significantly neglected it: PlayStation 4 games cannot take advantage of the system’s performance to provide an enhanced gameplay experience from the very first moment. This missed opportunity has always seemed baffling, especially after it became clear that developers would barely need to intervene for a game like FromSoftware’s Bloodborne to run at native 4K resolution without the standard version’s known frame-pacing problems, and even above 100 FPS at lower resolutions.
Digital Foundry showcased what is essentially a PlayStation 5 remaster of Bloodborne, one that FromSoftware does not seem particularly eager to develop. Modified by Christina and run on an exploitable retail copy, the game was improved so that it could use the system’s extra RAM, with CPU and GPU clocks configured to always boost to their maximum frequencies. This usually does not happen in a backward-compatible game. Thanks to the additional 4 GB of RAM, Bloodborne runs at native 4K and locked 30 FPS without the terrible frame-pacing issues of the original game. Thanks to mods that introduce lightmap-based global illumination optimization and remove chromatic aberration, the visual artifacts caused by the inability to improve anti-aliasing are far less distracting, resulting in an experience that comes as close as possible to an official remaster.
The situation becomes even more interesting when the resolution is lowered to 1440p and 120 Hz VRR is enabled. In that case, with an unlocked frame rate, Bloodborne generally runs above 60 FPS and reaches the 70 FPS range, reducing input latency – something that is always important to keep low in a game like this. With volumetric effects in use, the frame rate can drop below 60 FPS, but it remains above 48 FPS, keeping it within the PlayStation 5’s VRR range. At 1080p, the game runs around the 100 FPS range, resulting in the smoothest gameplay experience available on the console.
Since all of this was achieved with minimal changes and apparently without developer intervention, it is baffling that backward-compatible games cannot take advantage of PlayStation 5’s performance to provide a better gameplay experience at higher resolutions and smoother frame rates. Perhaps Sony will fix this with PlayStation 6… but the question is what price tag it will get.
Source: WCCFTech
