• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

[DF] Exclusive - Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition: Xbox Series X|S DF Tech Review

dcmk7

Banned
It is the effect it has on my XSX, it is the reason seeing big budget cross generation titles on both consoles (XSX and PS5) is not the most pleasing thing I can think of. It sets a minimum specs bar for XSX or it is left to its own devices and thus a bit behind (min 540p resolution, lower draw distance, pop-in, etc… same experience? 🤔). The generation just started too.

This is so getting replaced by a mid generation update and it is not meant to live as is as a supported target for more than 2-3 years tops… it just has to…
Yeh, for the price paid to get lows of 540p, in 2021 isn't very good. Personally feel MS should have made something better for the price.

Pop-in is really distracting to see.

At least the uncompromised versions of the game are a lot better.
 
Excellent question. Also how is the XSS holding things back when all these games are on PC? Metro is on PC right now. Do people honestly believe this game was impacted by the XSS? Do people think all PCs out there have superior specs to the XSS? I am starting to believe some of these guys really think the XSS and Switch have the same performance.

I understand the concern. But there has to be some basis for it.

Looking at Ratchet and Clank, there is so much granular detail that one needs to zoom in at 100% to see it.

All that can be skipped on Series S and nobody will notice any difference. Especially at 1080p target resolution.

Next gen only games like Stalker 2, Starfield, again, I can easily see them running on S while looking good.
 
So I played it on my series s last night sat on the couch playing on the 40" 4k samsung 2017 TV and it was perfectly fine had no issue playing it on there, didn't notice any thing that put me off playing it. Sure it's not as nice as the 55 inch qled in the office with the series x but its not night and day difference, game felt the same to play and on the smaller TV the upscale image looked fine.
Very happy with the series s as my second console.
 
So I played it on my series s last night sat on the couch playing on the 40" 4k samsung 2017 TV and it was perfectly fine had no issue playing it on there, didn't notice any thing that put me off playing it. Sure it's not as nice as the 55 inch qled in the office with the series x but its not night and day difference, game felt the same to play and on the smaller TV the upscale image looked fine.
Very happy with the series s as my second console.

4k will introduce softness.

But if still looks good, that's what matters.

And smooth 60fps.
 

Riky

$MSFT
So I played it on my series s last night sat on the couch playing on the 40" 4k samsung 2017 TV and it was perfectly fine had no issue playing it on there, didn't notice any thing that put me off playing it. Sure it's not as nice as the 55 inch qled in the office with the series x but its not night and day difference, game felt the same to play and on the smaller TV the upscale image looked fine.
Very happy with the series s as my second console.

People just use the minimum to troll, it averages somewhere near 900p and looks good on my 1080p set, nice and smooth as well.
 

Redlight

Member
Nevermind I guess about the level loading. It looks like Winter is a very small section and loads fast on both. I found that on the stream the Volga level took around 48 seconds on the PS5 and on a PC gameplay walkthrough on Youtube it showed around 34 seconds. I could not find the XSX video of the same section.
There only a relative handful of 'long' loads in the game. In general gameplay if you load a quick save, or die, you're looking at 3-4 seconds.
 
4k will introduce softness.

But if still looks good, that's what matters.

And smooth 60fps.
Yeah it's definitely lower res but the smaller screen definitely helps. Personally I would have been happy with a 30fps option, even on the series x but the devs didn't offer that. What the series s is achieving in this game is impressive for that level of gpu and I like it.
 

Rossco EZ

Member
downloading now on series X, really enjoyed it the first time playing so looking forward to this. :messenger_beaming:

what's the best way to share some screenshots here? I always get errors when I've tried to upload a 4k photo in the past.
 
Last edited:

thewire

Member
Excellent question. Also how is the XSS holding things back when all these games are on PC? Metro is on PC right now. Do people honestly believe this game was impacted by the XSS? Do people think all PCs out there have superior specs to the XSS? I am starting to believe some of these guys really think the XSS and Switch have the same performance.
Ah yes back to the pc spec debunked narrative, you do realise every new generation of consoles, the new console specifications raises the minimum specifications requirements on PC going forward, 3-4 years from now when cross generation is done, that’s when we will see how bad the series s is on game development & what the lowest common dominator does. Every narrative about the system has been proven worse than before, first it was it’s just 1440p box for cheap… wrong it’s sub hd in 2021 with a lot of games, easy to develop just flip a switch and it scales…wrong requires significant work by developers with half the development community hating it (universally a bad thing), it’s the same as a series x just at 1080p… wrong has missing graphics features and struggles with raytracing cause of its low memory bandwidth & split pool of memory, it will expand the Xbox audience… wrong still getting outsold over 2-1 every week by the ps5 and the series s is sitting on store selves all over Asia & europe. It’s an awfully weak system to shackle the generation and the only defenders are the usuals who still the think the Xbox series s will perform better than the PS5.
 
Last edited:

KAL2006

Banned
Ah yes back to the pc spec debunked narrative, you do realise every new generation of consoles, the new console specifications raises the minimum specifications requirements on PC going forward, 3-4 years from now when cross generation is done, that’s when we will see how bad the series s is on game development & what the lowest common dominator does. Every narrative about the system has been proven worse than before, first it was it’s just 1440p box for cheap… wrong it’s sub hd in 2021 with a lot of games, easy to develop just flip a switch and it scales…wrong requires significant work by developers with half the development community hating it (universally a bad thing), it’s the same as a series x just at 1080p… wrong has missing graphics features and struggles with raytracing cause of its low memory bandwidth & split pool of memory, it will expand the Xbox audience… wrong still getting outsold over 2-1 every week by the ps5 and the series s is sitting on store selves all over Asia & europe. It’s an awfully weak system to shackle the generation and the only defenders are the usuals who still the think the Xbox series s will perform better than the PS5.

Agree with this

PS4, Xbox One became the base line for PC after cross gen phase.

Now unfortunately Series S will be the baseline after cross gen phase.
 

Kholinar

Banned
Series S should just drop RT entirely. This is getting embarrassing at this point. I don't get why people are lauding the SeS for running RT at 60. That's like lauding a gaming potato for running ultra settings at 720p. Yeah, the settings are cranked and all, but its still fucking 720p. 1440p console my ass...
 
Well at least the baseline this time, is a modern GPU architecture and a desktop class CPU, when the ps4 and xbox one released the CPU and GPUs were already old tech.
Also as reconstruction techniques improve, having a lower res on the series s wont matter as much. As long as the CPU and SSD are up to scratch it will be fine.
 
Last edited:
Series S should just drop RT entirely. This is getting embarrassing at this point. I don't get why people are lauding the SeS for running RT at 60. That's like lauding a gaming potato for running ultra settings at 720p. Yeah, the settings are cranked and all, but its still fucking 720p. 1440p console my ass...
how many times again and again, micrsoft dont tell devolopers what to do, they could turn off RT for metro on series S but they havnt, series s could run this at 1080 to 1440p a piece of piss with no RT.
 

SafeOrAlone

Banned
Few q's, for you fine folk:

- Has anyone tried perma-death mode? Is it locked on to one difficulty or can you attach it to easy, medium, hard, etc?

- btw am I the only one who loves permanent death mode? I'm not a gaming expert or even a masochist, but I tend to lose focus when the only consequence for death is starting right over at a close checkpoint. I need that sense of consequence or I lose motivation. Anyone else?

- has anyone tried mouse and keyboard as well as the controller for this game? I'm wondering if m&kb improve the experience due to the deadzone on controllers.
I've read that m&kb are useable on Xbox.

- has this game improved much since launch? As stated, I know they added permanent death mode, which is great, but anything else notable in the gameplay department?
 
Last edited:

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius



Some raw footage for Series S version. Looks nice.



How was Series x version held back in this game?

It was not much held back in this instance, but look at what happened to the Series S instead: when you have a wide specs variance either the game is costlier to make and requires essentially two separate SKU’s done by different teams or either would suffer (higher end HW held back or lower end HW performing in a less than ideal way).

I do enjoy the Series S version being not ideal just to make the Series X to be pushing the HW more.

A $349-399 digital only 512 GB XSX would have been far better at providing a unified platform for consoles, avoided issues like this, while providing a cheaper option for people (and great downscaling to 1080p to improve IQ for those without a 4K TV).
 
Last edited:

dEvAnGeL

Member
It was not much held back in this instance, but look at what happened to the Series S instead: when you have a wide specs variance either the game is costlier to make and requires essentially two separate SKU’s done by different teams or either would suffer (higher end HW held back or lower end HW performing in a less than ideal way).

I do enjoy the Series S version being not ideal just to make the Series X to be pushing the HW more.

A $349-399 digital only 512 GB XSX would have been far better at providing a unified platform for consoles, avoided issues like this, while providing a cheaper option for people (and great downscaling to 1080p to improve IQ for those without a 4K TV).
Game engines are always built with scalability in mind, specially PC centric devs, if that's your way of thinking than PC games have been held back since the beginning of days...
 

ethomaz

Banned
Game engines are always built with scalability in mind, specially PC centric devs, if that's your way of thinking than PC games have been held back since the beginning of days...
PC is always being held by minimum specs… nothing in PC game is made to using something that won’t run in that minimum specs… since begin of the project and design the target hardware is already set.

You can just imagine if a dev on PC set minimum specs to GTX 3080 and Zen 3 and take full use of all feature of that hardware.

But yeap… PC is always being hold back by consoles and minimum specs… that is why each new generation of consoles PC have a big jump even when that big jump could be done way before new consoles come.
 
Last edited:

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Game engines are always built with scalability in mind, specially PC centric devs, if that's your way of thinking than PC games have been held back since the beginning of days...
Yes :), mostly tend to advance as the console generations advance and they are more and more reliant on having the console moolah too. Min Specs matter.
 
Yes :), mostly tend to advance as the console generations advance and they are more and more reliant on having the console moolah too. Min Specs matter.

Be specific about games that were held back.

I have seen developers make two separate games when there is a generational gap between platforms.

Like it happened with Forza Horizon 2 on xbox one and 360.

Never seen one system holding back another.
 

hlm666

Member
Lets move on to something interesting you drama queens. The next 4a game will hopefully be alot more dynamic, can't wait for the day when a rocket launcher means I don't have to use the door again, remember how fun that was in bfbc2. How much better would gta be if you didn't have to get out of the car to rob a shop.

"There is a reason why we have always been so vocally critical of the idea of baking assets (pre-generating the results of things like lighting calculations) and shipping them as immutable monoliths of data in the games package files, rather than generating as much as possible on the fly: everything that you pre-calculate is something that you are stuck with. Not “stuck with” in the sense that if it is wrong it can’t be fixed (everyone loves a 50GB patch after all) but “stuck” in a much more limiting sense – that any part of your game, any object in the scene that relies on baked assets will be static and unchanging. You won’t be able to change the way it is lit so you have to be overly cautious with decisions about how the player can affect dynamic lights (you won’t be able to move it, so you disable physics on as much as possible), and the player can’t interact with it in interesting ways, so you pass that problem onto UX design.
The more you have to rely on baked assets for your scenes, the more you restrict your game design options, and the more you take the risk that your environments will feel rigid and lifeless. Perhaps, the biggest advantage that Ray Tracing brings is that it gives game developers a huge boost in the direction of worlds that are truly, fully dynamic, with no dependencies on pre-computed assets whatsoever. There are still similar examples where such problems need to be solved, but lighting was one of the biggest and most all-encompassing examples of the lot and Ray Tracing solves it."

 

Bogroll

Likes moldy games
I don't know what people keep crying about the The Series S holding back the generation. You knew it existed before you bought your current gen console so tough shit you should have bought your console if it bothers you that much.
 

Leyasu

Banned
What ever happens kiddos, you can be sure that the XsS won’t hold back Sony’s studios. At least that should calm the fears of the “concerned” in this thread.
 
and PS4 Pro was sold as a 4k console... you sell based on best case scenario. stop being stupid
Just go back and look at the reveal 👼 Cerny 👼 did, they were very straightforward about the kind of "4K" they were targeting—xbox fans even called it "faux k".

Don't act as if Sony was nearly as deceptive as MS for these things.

Were you even alive 5 years ago?
 

Dibils2k

Member
Just go back and look at the reveal 👼 Cerny 👼 did, they were very straightforward about the kind of "4K" they were targeting—xbox fans even called it "faux k".

Don't act as if Sony was nearly as deceptive as MS for these things.

Were you even alive 5 years ago?
yes using checkerboard... that literally no game except a select few 1st party devs used...
 
Here it's down to 512p and stuff can look even lower than that because of the cheap tech (RDNA2 VRS) used.
1440p, remember!
PS5 has 8K written on the box. How many 8K games are there?
You are just picking on the output resolution, the xbox one x output 4k (and MS strongly implied it would play at 4k), the Series S has 4K output too. This is different than selling a performance target for gaming on your marketing material as the expectation.


zE6hN2h.png


Stating 4K is the max theoretical resolution, just like 12 or 10Tf for the GPU is a max theoretical performance, like Storage size is given before formatting, etc. there are reasons for it, picking a random resolution and calling it "performance target" is tricking people into thinking that's what they will get in games (even DF reacted to this announce as "surprising" given the specs, they assumed that there would be some secret RDNA2 sauce in the machine, that it was better than expected, etc.).
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Be specific about games that were held back.
GT7, Halo Infinite as a few upcoming examples on one end, CP2077 and evidently this games as few examples on the other end.

Then again you have also a few examples of games that were sold twice (two separate SKU’s and two teams working on it, have you see TitanFall?).
 

Bogroll

Likes moldy games
Just go back and look at the reveal 👼 Cerny 👼 did, they were very straightforward about the kind of "4K" they were targeting—xbox fans even called it "faux k".

Don't act as if Sony was nearly as deceptive as MS for these things.

Were you even alive 5 years ago?
To name one of a number of places I saw it advertised, Cerny wasn't on side of the bus explaining what type of 4k they where targeting.
 
There's a lot of green fans in this forum that are very worried about resolution when the Series X has a 10 or 15% advantage over the PS5. But now that we have a "Next Gen" console yielding 512p it's suddenly ok.
These guys could not spot the difference between 720p/900p to 1080p last gen, now they are all selectively eagle eyed.
 
To name one of a number of places I saw it advertised, Cerny wasn't on side of the bus explaining what type of 4k they where targeting.
He spent a lot of time explaining the technical details of the reconstruction techniques used in the PS4 PRO chip to make an image at a lower resolution output similarly to a native 4K (checkerboard rendering). This was like one of their selling point... no "need" to "waste" resources for native 4k on cheap console hardware.

There was no number for an actual target resolution for games that shipped with PRO enhancements, this is why I won't site one.
 

Bogroll

Likes moldy games
He spent a lot of time explaining the technical details of the reconstruction techniques used in the PS4 PRO chip to make an image at a lower resolution output similarly to a native 4K (checkerboard rendering). This was like one of their selling point... no "need" to "waste" resources for native 4k on cheap console hardware.

There was no number for an actual target resolution for games that shipped with PRO enhancements, this is why I won't site one.
I know I watched it and bought one. But my point was your "Don't act as if Sony was deceptive as MS" And me seeing Ps4 Pro advertised as 4k in a number of places.
Most companies do it.
 

scydrex

Member
I know I watched it and bought one. But my point was your "Don't act as if Sony was deceptive as MS" And me seeing Ps4 Pro advertised as 4k in a number of places.
Most companies do it.
Aren´t there 4k games on PS4 Pro? Don´t remember. I mean native 4k? Honestly they said it was a 4k machine and clearly is not. The Xbox One X is more a 4k machine like RDR2 for example. The XSS is not a 1440p like MS says.
 
Last edited:

Bogroll

Likes moldy games
Aren´t there 4k games on PS4 Pro? Don´t remember. I mean native 4k? Honestly they said it was a 4k machine and clearly is not. The Xbox One X is more a 4k machine like RDR2 for example. The XSS is not a 1440p like MS says.
Yes Ì think there are a few. And it was alright for the money tbh. But they're all as bad as each other when it comes to advertising.
 
Aren´t there 4k games on PS4 Pro? Don´t remember. I mean native 4k? Honestly they said it was a 4k machine and clearly is not. The Xbox One X is more a 4k machine like RDR2 for example. The XSS is not a 1440p like MS says.
The XSS is a 4k machine by that metric, there must be some indie game that runs at native 4k on it... PS4 PRO has a couple of native 4k games, but it was never construed as a machine that was meant to deliver that on a regular basis.

the 4k on the box is like the size of the storage device, it's a purely technical information.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Can't speak about GT7, Halo Infinite as they are yet to release.

But Cyberpunk has perfect frame rate on PS4 now. Xbone version needs more work but will be there.


“Perfect” 🤔… agree to disagree the game is anywhere near perfect… and now meaning months after release and a shitshow on old generation consoles too at launch and tons of flack.
 
“Perfect” 🤔… agree to disagree the game is anywhere near perfect… and now meaning months after release and a shitshow on old generation consoles too at launch and tons of flack.
Cyberpunk was rushed. And this is how good it's gonna get on last gen.

But last gen consoles didn't affect pc version.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Cyberpunk […]

But last gen consoles didn't affect pc version.
Because CDPR accepted to have a crap experience on the previous consoles.

Unless you have the ability to dedicate two teams and make like two different games side by side and maybe have more time for one of them (see DOOM Eternal on Switch, with some deep deep cuts still), you are left to either constrain one version (high end machine held back) or screw over the other (low end machine running the game poorly.

Those to me seem like the likely three scenarios.
 
Top Bottom