Digital Foundry Direct: Redfall Performance, Path Tracing & Zelda

Redfall Performance Concerns

Analysis of the 30 FPS Decision

• The team discusses the confirmation that Redfall will launch with a 30 FPS quality mode only on Xbox Series X and S.
• There is strong concern regarding the timing of this announcement, given that marketing material had previously advertised 60 FPS gameplay.
• Potential reasons explored include inefficient use of Unreal Engine 4 blueprints, lack of optimization passes, and the game potentially being rushed to release.

Ghostwire: Tokyo Performance Issues

• The team examines Ghostwire: Tokyo's recent Xbox release, noting that it performs worse than the year-old PlayStation 5 version, which is particularly disappointing for a first-party title.

Future Trends in Graphics

Cyberpunk 2077 Path Tracing

• Path Tracing (RT Overdrive) in Cyberpunk 2077 is described as an incredible technical achievement that represents the future of real-time lighting.
• Path tracing offers superior consistency over traditional rasterization and scales surprisingly well on various hardware configurations, proving it is not just a demo for the highest-end GPUs.
• The team notes how AI and neural technologies are crucial for the future of noise reduction and performance optimization in path-traced games.

Industry News and Hardware

Suicide Squad Delay

• Reflections on the delay of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League to 2024. The team suspects the extra development time is for polish rather than a major overhaul of the Games-as-a-Service (GAAS) nature of the title.

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

• Discussion of the final trailer for Tears of the Kingdom. The game appears to run on technology highly consistent with Breath of the Wild, with massive scale despite the limitations of Switch hardware.

HDMI 2.1 Capture Cards

"There's kind of a perfect storm of reasons not to produce one of these cards: the engineering effort and the application."
• The group explains why 4K 120Hz capture remains rare, citing high bandwidth requirements, lack of delivery methods (like YouTube/Twitch), and technical hurdles.

The State of Portable Gaming

• Interest in the Steam Deck continues to grow, with the team praising how it encourages developers to focus on better scalability for low-end hardware.