Thanks to various showcases we now know what games will look like on the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but only to a certain extent. We’ve yet to get a proper look at games making use of the consoles’ next-generation power and ray-tracing capabilities.
However, a new trailer for Observer: System Redux reveals how the remake of the 2017 game can put all the graphics grunt to Sony and Microsoft’s machines to work. And the results are pretty stunning, albeit in a rather grim fashion.
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Observer: System Redux is a psychological horror game set in a brutal and dark cyberpunk future; the original game realized this setting rather well. But with 4K textures, boosted volumetric lighting, ray-tracing and HDR applied to the game in what appears to be a fairly comprehensive remake, it really looks like a next-generation game.
Developer Bloober Team promises that Observer: System Redux will have “truly immersive environments” thanks to the use of next-gen tech. With puddles of rain reflecting flickering lights in real-time and neon light being bounced back to the player’s eyes from sticky pools of blood, the game has a much deeper degree of realism, though it’s not a world you’d really want to be immersed in outside of a game.
Effects and rendering techniques like global illumination and ray-tracing can be severely taxing on all even the best gaming PCs. So it’s clear that the graphics power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X — 10.28 teraflops and 12 teraflops respectively — will be brought to bear on games that aim to push the envelope for console graphics.
Given it will make use of 4K textures, we’re expecting Observer: System Redux to run at a native 4K resolution on the PS5 and Xbox Series X. But what wasn’t mentioned was the frame rate.
With all the graphical effects in action, there’s a good chance that Observer: System Redux will run at 30 not 60 frames per second on the new consoles. That may not be acceptable for action-packed shooting or racing games, but it should be fine a slow-paced horror game.
Halo Infinite is expected to run at 60fps, but the backlash to its less than next-gen graphics that were shown off at the last Xbox 20/20 shows that there needs to be a fine balance between delivering next-generation visuals and a fast framerate. That could be one of the reasons why Halo Infinite has been delayed until 2021.
Regardless of how the next-generation power is brought to bear, it looks like the PS5 and Xbox Series X will both be capable of some impressive graphics. November can’t come soon enough.
