Remedy Entertainment may have realised Microsoft’s dream of converging live action and video games into one with its upcoming Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break, the time bending third person shooter but all does not seem hunky dory when one looks closely at it.
Digital Foundry has released a detailed report analysing a pre-release version of the game where it says that the game runs at 720p as opposed to game developer’s presentation at Siggraph 2015 which had indicated that the game would run at 1080p at 30 frames per second on Xbox One.
“In every scene tested so far, a native resolution of 720p is the consistent result found in each pixel count test – so while there’s every possibility of individual render targets operating at higher resolutions, basic geometry that we’re able to measure hands in a 720p result as things stand,” the report reads.
Digital Foundry speculates that developer Remedy Entertainment might be replicating some of the same techniques it had used with Alan Wake, which ran at 960×544, well below native 720p, but used 4x MSAA to mitigate the lower resolution.
Using techniques like motion blur, film grain along with anti-aliasing to create something that blends previously rendered frames with current ones, Quantum Break does manage to appear “stunning in many areas,” Digital Foundry team reports.
There has been no comment on the same from Remedy team but it is possible that the final resolution of the game will be higher or that, even at sub-1080p, the game will still look great. Digital Foundry also reports that Quantum Break runs at a steady 30fps, even during effects-heavy combat sections.
The report released by Digital Foundry is for the Xbox One edition of Quantum Break. But there is also the PC edition of Quantum Break but a mild response from the PC gaming community means that a lot more work needs to be done at that end.
Quantum Break, launches on 5 April across Xbox One and PC which also includes a live action TV show.