A demo for Luminous Productions’ upcoming action RPG was released last week, and tech channel ‘ElAnalistaDeBits’ put the PS5 demo on the test bench. Forspoken runs in the Luminous Engine but going by this new comparison, the game might have been better off with Epic’s Unreal Engine. As can be seen in this new video, lighting, textures, geometry, and detail density are clearly lower compared to the reveal trailer that was shown off back in 2020. Also, the game’s ray-tracing mode appears to lack ray-tracing of shadows for various elements, including vegetation. As it stands, this mode doesn’t seem to be the best way to experience this title on PlayStation 5. Check out the new comparison video down below and judge for yourself.
- Forspoken presents 3 graphics modes in this demo: Quality, Ray-Tracing and Performance.
- The Demo is an extract of the final version of the game. I don’t expect major visual or performance changes when it is released in January.
- Quality mode features better textures, draw distance and higher resolution (1728p on average).
- Ray-Tracing mode decreases resolution (1512p on average), texture quality and drawing distance to present better shadows on some elements, but not on reflections or global illumination.
- Ray-Tracing of shadows does not apply to all elements. Vegetation does not benefit from this technique and represents a large part of the environment. I definitely do not recommend this display mode.
- Performance mode has the same texture and draw distance clipping as Ray-Tracing mode, as well as limiting its resolution to 1440p dynamic with temporal reconstruction. Despite the visual sacrifices, it does not maintain a stable 60fps.
- Forspoken supports 120Hz, however, this mode limits the maximum resolution to 1440p in all display modes. Ray-Tracing and Quality modes reach 40fps at 120hz, while Performance mode remains at 60fps.
- Compared to the 2020 Reveal Trailer, we can see that the game has had a big downgrade since then in lighting, textures, geometry, detail density….
- I consider that Luminous Engine is not up to par in Forspoken and the final result is far from what was initially promised at a visual level. This is further proof of why Square Enix has migrated its Final Fantasy franchise to Unreal Engine. After several delays, Forspoken is now slated for a release on January 24 for PS5 and PC.
