While the PS5 might not have the greatest launch game lineup of PlayStation consoles, it looks set to boost the performance of some of the best PS4 games, most notably God of War.
Developer Santa Monica Studio tweeted that God of War will run up to 60 frames per second using the ‘Favor Performance’ mode on the PS5. And as a nice little extra, you’ll also be able to transfer your saves from a PS4 to the PS5.
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When it launched in 2018, God of War not only impressed us and just about everyone else with its story, combat, and world building, but also its stunning graphics. Even running on a base PS4, the game looked fantastic, especially on an HDR TV. However, it only ran at 30 fps on the base PS4, with occasional frame rate drops.
The PS4 Pro ran it a little smoother, with a performance mode unlocking the frame rate, but the experience wasn’t exactly smooth. The PS5, with its 10.28 teraflops of graphics power, looks set to smooth that out and deliver something akin to a constant 60 fps.
You might wonder why the PS5 can’t run God of War at 120 fps. Well, it’s likely that it will run at a native 4K resolution on the PS5 - something it couldn’t do on the PS4 Pro - which is a lot more demanding.
Furthermore, there’s a difference in core hardware architecture between the PS4 and PS5, meaning despite being a game for an older console, God of War might not be able to harness the full power of the PS5. We’ve heard before that the PS5’s jump in power can almost overwhelm some PS4 games and thus it has to artificially slow itself down in a backwards compatibility mode.
Whether you’re picking up the game for the first time or looking to finish that NG+ save, God of War (2018) on the #PS5 will offer: 🎞️ Up to 60 FPS using the ‘Favor Performance’ video option🎮 Save Transfers – start right where you left off on the PS4!October 26, 2020
But God of War at a smooth 60 fps sounds rather appealing, especially if we can continue where we left off, perhaps to go and tackle the tricky Valkyrie bosses. And we hope to see other PS4 games get performance boosts on the PS5, notably Bloodborne, a seminal From Software game that was excellent other than its long loading times and dips in framerates.
The PS Plus Collection looks set to deliver a suite of optimized PS4 games for the PS5, but that’ll need a subscription. We hope to see backwards compatibility expanded on the PS5 to offer an experience the Xbox Series X is poised to deliver.
