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Otherwise it's much the same as before textures are typically a pixel-match for the original 360 and PS3 release. You get revised lighting, higher-res alpha effects, animated grass textures, plus a new doorway fog effect closer in design to Dark Souls 3's. On every console format you have a 7.5GB install (roughly double the size of the last-gen original) and the upgrade effort embellishes From Software's original 2011 work. Resolution aside, Dark Souls Remastered ticks a few key boxes in visual upgrades, though there is the pervasive sense it could have been pushed further. As it stands though, there is a performance overhead on both machines - especially Xbox One X - that isn't tapped into at points, which is a shame. In theory, a dynamic resolution could have been a much better fit here, optimising the resolution of each frame based on whether 60fps is sustainable. Potentially, a push to a native 4K would be in-step with that leap in power - as we've seen in games like Resident Evil 7 - but 1800p is where it's fixed. On the surface, it's frustrating that Xbox One X delivers the same resolution as PS4 Pro, bearing in mind the big increases in GPU compute, memory bandwidth and available RAM. And of course, most of the HUD and text elements are a true 4K too, which duly helps with the presentation. For perspective, that's a 2.7x increase over both regular machines - with temporal anti-aliasing smoothing off the image and allowing for a graceful upscale for ultra HD displays. The standard Xbox One and PlayStation 4 each target 1080p, while their enhanced counterparts both strive for the same experience at a higher 1800p pixel count. Let's kick off by re-confirming the basics we established in our network test coverage. All versions of the game target 60fps, though only one console gives us an absolute lock, while the PC release rights many wrongs - but is a remarkably unambitious effort overall. The title's CPU issues are by and large resolved in the final product, but it turns out that it's the GPU that is now our primary bottleneck. With release code in hand, we finally have a complete picture of how Dark Souls Remastered runs on consoles and PC - and while the notorious Blighttown was our first port of call for performance testing, it turns out that there are much better ways to push developer QLOC's refined version of the Dark Souls engine.
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