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As part of the grand reveal of new games at PlayStation’s State of Play, it’s also now been confirmed that The First Descendant is getting enhanced ray tracing on the PS5 Pro.
Prior to this, we had seen footage of The First Descendant on PlayStation’s next console edition, however we hadn’t yet learned the specifics of what upgrades we were getting. This was a result of the footage being isolated to cinematics rather than gameplay, and so assumptions were muted.
Now, Jin-hwan Kim, lead engine programmer at Magnum Studio, Nexon, has said that in “The First Descendant, we put significant effort into expanding the ray tracing feature by leveraging PS5 Pro’s superior GPU performance and enhanced ray tracing architecture. As a result, we achieved more lifelike and natural lighting and shadow effects compared to the standard PlayStation 5.”
While the ray tracing improvements over the PS5 seem subtle, it’s the enhanced performance while the feature is activated that is going to prove to be more enticing for fans.
Initially, the PS5 version of the game suffered from devastating performance issues leading to players downloading and installing the PS4 variant instead. While most of those issues have been ironed out, the unstable ray tracing mode has proved a persistent issue. It looks as though TFD’s optimised ray tracing could be an irresistible temptation for players to pick up the PS5 Pro now.
Kim continues. “Additionally, by utilizing PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, we were able to deliver higher resolution and better image quality. We are also currently working on enabling FSR 3.1 Frame Generation to provide improved framerate. We hope that players of The First Descendant will enjoy enhanced gameplay experience with superior image quality and frame rate through PS5 Pro.”
The statement doesn’t indicate that FSR 3.1 frame generation is confirmed, but that they are working on it. There’s little reason to believe it won’t be implemented in due course.
It’s a good time to be playing The First Descendant on PlayStation. At the moment, there’s a bug affecting Xbox players and not their rival counterparts.