PS5 Pro Makes Quality, Performance Modes in Dragon Age: The Veilguard Better Than Ever

PS5 Pro and Veilguard combo is wild bait

And this is why I've bought a pro. Not for the limited stuff available on older games. For what it'll do for the next 3 years of games.

@Bentleyma I like the idea of people having choices to play games in whatever mode makes them happiest.

@Andy22385 it's nice to see someone enjoying gaming and hopeful of where it's going 👍 I'm a bit more cynical and think it's a ***** show on all sides at the minute. For me they need to back up the new hardware with games tailored for it before I'm interested. A decent TV runs quality mode in 40fps so the gains aren't so obvious with this yet

@Northern_munkey Same here. When the Ps5 Pro was first rumored way back and people were complaining it wasn’t needed. I was saying this is what i wanted moving forward for consoles. I wanted Sony and Microsoft both to have a base and high end model. It gives console players choice, something we normally didn’t get until last gen. For those that don’t want it or sadly can’t afford it, it don’t take away from your console experience. For those that can and do want that performance it’s there like in the PC space. I really like what Sony has been able to do with the Pro. I hope next generation we see this same approach and the Xbox get’s in on the action as well. Not much longer now and my Pro will be here. I’m excited.

Dragon age the veilguard is going to be a amazing game.its gonna bring bioware back.word up son

Wait, is that thumbnail photo really from Veilguard? It looks like an early PS4 game. I am not expecting Naughty Dog or even CD Projekt Red levels of graphics but geez, they are not a small company, I expect way more.

@HonestHick " it’s there like in the PC space"

Yeah, no, not with that CPU But the total cost across the generation is ballpark!

@Bentleyma I think it effectively is making the 60fps mode the must-play mode, but they're going to give people the choice to REALLY juice up the visuals at 30fps if they so desire.

I'm slowly being won around by the pro after being dead against it. Just don't wanna have the conversation where I tell the Mrs and my son I've spent another £800 on a console so no fancy holiday this year sorry

Well of course they would be "better than ever". This is about as meaningful a headline as when Apple says the latest iPhone is "the fastest iPhone ever."

I've slowly come round to the Pro and have it preordered. I've already sold my PS5 and just have a disc drive sat waiting for the next 3 weeks. I recently upgraded my TV, so I may as well take full advantage of it

@JaBrony123 And what, pray tell, is so horrible about that photo? I literally see nothing wrong with it to be honest..
Then again, I suppose it's SOME people's hobby - you for exemple - to find something, no matter how small, to bitch and cry about.

Yikes..

@playstation1995 I certainly hope so! The change in art style still irks me, but I'm remaining cautiously optimistic. That said, the marketing for this game has been abysmal; here's hoping that doesn't translate to terrible sales (assuming the game is good).

Yeah i'm most likely making this my "launch game" for the Pro next month.

Sure I will live playing it in on the base ps5 ...won't be pulling my hair out trying to notice a difference if I got the pro ...will just wait for the ps6

Will wait for pro, and see performance review 1st - lets hope they dont go too far with the RT and visuals - 60fps is the core of a performance mode after all.
Then if it reviews well (normal & technical) then i will probably give this a go.

@Andy22385
Yes, quite agree that games going forwards are far more likely to use the new hardware better than patched older games - though a big part of me was also thinking that based on the last year or so I dread to think what state performance modes on base PS5 will be in after Pro launches now that devs have the "opt out clause" of "Those that care about performance modes will have bought Pro".

I am also grateful for the excuse to go back and replay a few of my 'pro enhanced' favourites though....

I cancelled my pre order of the pro because I only have 2-3 games on the horizon that would actually benefit from it. I'm sure I'll play these games again in a couple years anyway and when I do, the PS6 should be out.
But maybe I'll change my mind, PS6 is still 4+ years away.

Shhh. We're only supposed to speak negatively of the PS5 Pro so as to not enrage those that do not understand market forces.

Watched the Digital Foundry coverage of Final Fantasy Rebirth. The base Ps5 is almost like the Switch version compared to the Pro

@NEStalgia i mean the pro another choice like we have in PC space. In the PC space most don’t go for the more expensive cards around the world. But thats the nice thing about PC, there is a price to performance point there for everyone, more limited in console, but i like the option of 2 consoles, a base and a Pro. It don’t leave out players that don’t want or need that performance but gives players like myself the option to get it.

@Andy22385 This is ultimately why I got one also.

@NEStalgia not all of want a pc tho. I recently bought a steam deck to play some shmups I’m interested in and I’m overwhelmed with that! I still don’t know what protons are.
I’ve bought a pro cos I want to just put a disk in and it to look as good as possible

PS5 Pro players are going to be experiencing this game like KINGS! Sure, they'll be paying a pretty penny for it, but it will be clear what they're paying for!

I don't give a good goddam if it rubs my back and makes me warm milk before bed...no disc drive, no stand, no sale.

@tangyzesty
What strange hill to die on. You can buy the stand and disc drive if you want them. Is the problem that Sony is not selling an $800 model with those included?

@HonestHick Yeah but I'd be kinder to it if it offered appropriate upgrades for the coin. You know dragons dogma 2 and how it's CPU bound on PS5? The same exact cpu that's in the PS5 Pro? I was running it on my 7800x3d yesterday. It sips 7-28% CPU. The fans never even rev up due to CPU heat. They rev up when launching steam and Xbox store but not playing dd2. How is that lightweight cpu game destroying console CPUs? How bad are these CPUs? And still in the pro! I won't compare GPU because because that's apples to watermelons. But the CPU....

Now, Skyrim with 300 mods running in VR with an LLM, that'll rev fans like a leaf blower 😂

@smallbrownbike Haha, steam deck is both the shallow and deep end of the pool at once. Use it at face value and it's a console like any other. But try to be a power user and you're dealing with Linux, much more complicated than Windows. Proton is a Windows compatibility layer for Windows games to work right in Linux.

Think of it like a layer that lets you play PlayStation games natively on a Mac.

But yeah certainly PC, or at least custom PC isn't for everyone just irks me how console is imitating the PC pricing over a generation but not offering as much.

@NEStalgia could very well be optimized poorly still, but i would lean on it being the CPU. As we know the CPU in consoles always tend to be on the weaker side for budget reasons and 9 out of 10 games are GPU bound. Sony’s hands were tied on the CPU due to backwards compatibility. At least say’s digital foundry. They acted as like they knew the CPU wouldn’t be much different. But again consoles come with some cuts and time after time we see it in the CPU. I really hope Xbox and PS6 change that next gen. Not holding my breath tho. Things like VRR and PSSR help some, but it can only do so much. If Xbox era is to be believed. They think the next Xbox will be a handheld that runs Series S level with 1440P and then docks to near Series X level at around $500 bucks, not sure about that but ok, the second part of that write up is where i did get a little excited and that was a $800 dollar console. That is BEEFY on specs across the board. Now before people and yourself read this and say well no one is going to buy that at that price outside of the hardcore. MS knows this, they have the data with the current Series X. You please the fan’s with a $500 dollar handheld that don’t care much for performance, and give the hardcore players that don’t want to be on PC a near PC like machine that can blast most games at the performance we were told we’d see this gen. That i would snag in 2 seconds. I don’t see Sony or MS giving us a subsidized box next gen, but we will get a little more juice. Any how that was the rant section of this reply. But to your point yes, consoles are cutting the corners to heavily on the CPU’s and it shows for those few games that need it.

@HonestHick I can't imagine why Sonys hands were tied to the same CPU for bc. That's kind of like saying they had to use the PS4 CPU otherwise no bc. And pcs should run 486s for Doom. I'm seriously finding DFs coverage of this product uncomfortably suspect. It could have had a new CPU that ran in PS5 mode just like the PS4 CPU runs in PS4 mode.

idk about the Xbox rumor. Seems very pie. I assume a turbo mode, not an egpu for cost but series x level hardware on a handheld would be hard, and not cheap.

" machine that can blast most games at the performance we were told we’d see this gen. "

Lol. Kinda says everything really 😂

@NEStalgia i would need to rewatch the video. I believe it had something to do with with RDNA features and messing up BC. So they acted as if it was a no brainer we wouldn’t see a massive bump in CPU. I am sure if it was able Sony would have just to say they can run GTA6 at 60fps, seeing as that is a CPU bound game. Overall i am looking forward to seeing what it can do in a year or so time. Some of the games they are showing now are really impressive and others are smaller upgrades. That F1 racing game from codemasters was insane. Horizon zero dawn not so much.

So they are saying this game won't have Ray Tracing on PS5 or is what they mean is its only available on Fidelity on PS5?
This is where the Pro could cause a problem down the line. Devs will get lazy with the PS5 version for optimisation and just say if you want something then you should have a PS5 Pro which runs our game nicely. I remember later down the track with games on PS4 and PS4 Pro, they started running terribly on PS4 which made the Pro a viable option. This was towards the later half of that cycle.

@HonestHick If that were true ps6 would have no bc without adding a PS5 CPU on it like the PS3. IDK. Df is being totally sketch here.

The pattern I'm seeing is that games that already had awkwardly low internal rendering resolutions that were abusing FSR badly because it's not meant for trying to make low res into 4k are the ones benefiting most from PUSSR.

@NEStalgia even more shocking to me is Sony was able in their first attempt to be better than FSR. By PS6 they will really have it in better shape. Yeah i will need to rewatch that DF show. But they were talking about why we wouldn’t see a big CPU bump. Just the 10% overclock which won’t move the needle for those CPU bound games. Again thankfully 90% of games are GPU bound, so the PS5 Pro will show gains in those games. I want to see what DLSS will do for the switch 2. We might see some nice looking ps4 ports and of course Mario and Zelda should look stunning. I know i won’t win any cool points with this, but i want to see Zelda Wind Waker using all of the switch 2. Since we didn’t get the Wii U port to Switch.

@HonestHick

Just the 10% overclock which won’t move the needle for those CPU bound games.

It might, we'll have to wait and see. On paper it sounds insignificant, but as shown with Dragons dogma 2, a comparative scenario running through the city had the pro averaging 20fps more than the base and was much closer to it's 60fps target. Still not perfect in a poorly optimised game, but it was running a lot better on the "same cpu". This would also fall in to the PlayStation's vrr window which those of us with compatible displays will benefit from.

@NEStalgia

Yeah but I'd be kinder to it if it offered appropriate upgrades for the coin.

It does, but we've already been over this. Double the drive space, a much improved gpu, faster memory, an overclocked cpu, and a proprietary ai upscaler. What you think that's worth is subjective, but as previously discussed, you're not building it for $699.

I'm not sure what your almost £500 cpu has to do with a cpu bound games comparative performance though.

@HonestHick I haven't seen the comparisons, but are they comparing to it fsr in Ultra Quality mode on current equivalent PC cards (7700xt or so?) or are they comparing it to that shoddy, 2 generation old fsr that seems to only run in performance mode that's used on base console? Again sketch if so, there comparing low modes in old products to a new product and far gets a worse rep than it deserves. If they're comparing to 7 series pc cards with far in ultra quality then fair game.

Lol, Nintendo port begging and not for TTYD. That's a new one 😂

@Intr1n5ic id like to add to your list and say the Pro is also bringing 2-3X ray tracing which is not cheap and took some time to get that right and integrated into the system. I think the pro outside of the CPU that i think is fair to say might not be much of an upgrade on it’s own but with the AI and stronger GPU i think will make for a nice package. Overall i have nothing but good things to say about the Pro and i think it is going to be stunning going forward as dev teams get more time and understanding of it.

@NEStalgia They showed it with ray tracing and it looked next gen better. I was shocked. Tho we know racing games tend to look good when you can throw GPU power and ray tracing at them. This one did not disappoint. Check it out on DF. Oh i have zero shame to port bed from Nintendo. I like their classics and newer stuff. Wind waker is my favorite Zelda. I was a big time GameCube fan. I had so much fun with all the first party games on it. I never got it for Wii U, i thought it would come to switch and never did. So i want that switch 2 version bells and whistles out.

@The_Wailing_Doom such valid points. It’s like the physical media hold outs want to “tax” the people who prefer digital by making everyone pay for disc drives. I applaud Sony for coming up with such an equitable solution as to offer disc drives to people who want them without being ugly external drives and allowing the rest of us the option of not needing to pay for hardware we wouldn’t use.

@Intr1n5ic $340 CPU, but yeah that's a nice CPU but the point isn't that such a nice CPU runs the game well. The point is the game barely even USES the CPU. At all. Single digit to below 29% at peak. It'd run well on a potato. But not on the consoles.

But yeah I think that larger SSD was such a stupid misstep as it boosted the price into crazy while the market it targets likely already has an SSD to swap in. If the console were 550 or 600 with the original SSD it would look much better. Or just sell a 2tb and a 800gb model separately like phones. Or PS3...

@HonestHick tbf, even as a 4090 owner, I'm pretty meh on rt. Yeah it can look nice but most of the time it merely lights differently not necessarily better. I enable it basically because it's there lol.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Breaker confirmed!

I seriously doubt this will be as popular as other dragon ages. It looks like a new IP made in a modern corporate board room with a checklist to follow to get virtue points. It’s clear that the men that made BioWare have been long gone prior to Mass Effect A.

@Bentleyma it would've needed an upgraded cpu as well for that to happen

@NEStalgia

It'd run well on a potato. But not on the consoles.

It ran like crap on tons of different configurations up until a patch a few weeks ago, and even that hasn't fully resolved it. You just have to Google DD2 pc performance and see the complaints for yourself. It's a horribly optimised game, and not just on console.

I'm really looking forward to the pro. Its been a tough year & this is going to be a much deserved gift to myself. Mind you, I can barely afford it, but I'm doing a few extra shifts to pay for it. And I don't want to hear anyone crying over the $700 price tag, I wish it were that price here!

I couldn't resist and ended up preordering a pro, only problem now I need a disk drive but they have sold out everywhere (god damn scalpers)

@Andy22385 Exactly !!!

@Vaako007 100%. This game has me worried sick about the next Mass Effect. They've gone the direction of so many other new teams with modern franchises and just burned it to the ground.

@Intr1n5ic Well, it's a game that, ironically actually runs worse with DLSS on, which is a feat I can't understand how they managed.... Fwiw though I was running it modded for VR tonight. I had to turn rt off, not for performance but because rt doesn't behave with forced vr, it shimmers across the view. And with dlss off it looked and ran better. But was getting 60-70fps. I think the finally seemed to fix whatever was wrong because that's a very tall order even on a high end rig. I didn't expect much from it but now I'll play the whole game in VR which is bonkers. Doesn't look photorealistic like Skyrim heavily modded which might be the best looking VR thing in existence, and it has too much alias shimmering, but plats well. That wouldn't have happened pre patch.

@Bentleyma That's exactly what I thought at first, then realize, 60FPS fidelity mode that is promised by Pro only addresses 75% or market. 25% of gamers are OK with 30FPS, and so for those people it makes sense to use the power of PS5 Pro to get even better graphics @ 30 FPS.... and then we can have a PS5 Pro Pro, that does PS5 Pro Fidelity mode at 60 FPS ^_^

@McBurn PS6 is definitely not 4 years away ^_^ more like 2, and will highly depend on when Xbox launch its new console, which, given how poorly it's currently going for them, will likely be sooner rather than later.

@Kalime78 Wow, you sound quite confident. However I'll stick with my 4 year speculation. I see no reason for Sony to react to a new console from Microsoft anymore and Sony never released a new system after 6 years.
I wouldn't mind it though, just saying 2 years sounds unrealistic to me^^
No matter when the next PS comes I'll be there anyway

Dis game is going to be great. Greatly whack, that is! Birmingham!

@themightyant Not that it really matters to me, but it's hard even for people working at Sony to predict right now. Sony can and will adjust their plans depending on the market as they always do, but if nothing major happens, I still think the PS6 will release in 4+ years (meaning 2028 or later to be clear).

It's almost Pavlovian how the word "Pro" in an article generates 50+ comments very quickly

@NEStalgia That sounds amazing. What headset are you using?

@NEStalgia A PC still has the biggest spyware on it called Windows 11 that is a big reason not to want it.

And the same problem will always be there it's not plug and play so I drop kicked my PC out years ago got a cheap laptop and only use it for the basics.

@Kalime78 absolutely isn't 2 years. There was a chip shortage and covid, that's delaying things. Even by a normal timeline it'd be another 3 years. They won't follow what Xbox do anymore, the Pro shows that. I can see Xbox releasing one in the next 18 months tbh.

@CrashBandicoat I just don't see the point of Xbox existing as a console anymore, given the struggles this gen i wouldnt even be surprsed if they dropped out of the console market totally. I have gamepass but on a laptop, it's a much better experience.

@Intr1n5ic Of all the great content I never expected Skyrim would be the thing to blow me away most of all. It's seriously lifelike in an almost eerie way. Not the NPCs, but the environments. I'm using Quest 3 for now. My intention was to get a Pimax Crystal Light, but then I decided I was going to overspend and get a Crystal Super, I put a reservation on the super bundle with both the QLED and mOLED modules which is quite a spend after just building the rig and the Quest setup, plus it's more tuned to get the most out of it on future GPUs, not even 4090 while light is more about maxing 4090. But I'm not sure if finances will hold up for it, and, as I use the Quest, other than wishing for better blacks, I'm almost wondering if I actually need better. The black level sucks, but the clarity is much better than I expected in terms of not noticing screen door on sufficiently complex looking games. And even the compression with wireless isn't horrible for most things (The Luke Ross modded games suffer from the compression badly, like Elden Ring, HFW, GoT, etc. But Skyrim for example I only see SDE if I look for it.)

@Flaming_Kaiser TBF, we all know Sony's spying on us too. Maybe not Nintendo (yet) but they will.

But yeah, I get not liking Win11 in that regard, who does? There's always SteamOS for those concerns (it's what Deck runs.) But with Windows, I'm honestly shocked, having returned to PC from an absence of a long time, just how plug and play it's become. If you hand a novice a premade PC/laptop, give them Steam Big Picture mode or Playnite (launchers that look and feel just like consoles) and a controller, and they'll never know it's not a console.

Obviously getting into mods and customizing things gets a lot more complex but that's bonus additional.

@Deljo it's a ***** show on all sides at the minute.

Some things will never change.

This isn't gonna make me get a Pro or Veilguard.

This will be my first game to play on the PS5 Pro!!

Can't wait for both

PS5 pro makes games look better the stand PS5? I thought that would have been obvious! isnt that why your spending £700 - £800 on it

@playstation1995 purple fortnite?

@McBurn I have my reasons to be confident... but again I think the ball is in MSFT court and PS will not leave Xbox a one year first to market advantage ^_^ which is from a business sense the main reason they shouldn't have launched Pro, but short term revenue is a priority for the moment... I mean it is for the entire industry... it might come back and bite them in the ass if Xbox launches early...

@Andy22385 it sounds as crazy to you as it is to me.... but I guess time will tell....

@NEStalgia yes the 2TB jacked the price well up here we are having only invested in larger storage a year or so ago and no they do this. It must have contributed over €200 to the price

@SystemAddict Yeah, maybe at their wholesale pricing it was almost no cost difference to throw it in, but at retail pricing it's at least a $50 difference. Even $650 may have not looked as unapproachable as $700, though I still think $600 was the right price to hit if they wanted to sell to more than the ultra enthused niche.

Man, I guess everybody can see now- the PS5 Pro is for kings!!!!

@NEStalgia I know they don't have technology that makes screenshots when I'm typing in everything. And big corp with things like passwords, sensitive messages yeah I don't want that. For me its a good thing makes me try Linux for safety reasons.

@Flaming_Kaiser Lol yeah. And the mobile OSes are even worse! Even though Android is Linux based! That's the whole crux of the value of Linux. It's the catch 22. Because most of the world is based on the commercial platforms, Linux doesn't get the software most people want to use, so it tends to be the domain of governments, academia, and uber nerds.

The other problem is UEFI. Like mobile devices it's become the OS behind the OS. Even with a clean Linux you never quite know if the hardware behind it is spying too. Would have been seen as paranoia, but Lenovo has been caught doing that, twice, to the point US gov banned their PCs as a security risk to China. I'm sure they're all spying. Now the add hardware AI...... Much as I love my games I just wish we could roll back to the 80s and get rid of the Internet.

Not gonna lie the official support for installing Linux on a PS3 is what prompted me to jump from PC to console in 08 😂. But the consoles are spying now too.

@NEStalgia I remember my SNES and Playstation 1 "fondly drop it in and even decades later the only thing is the controls of the PS1 I never want to see those return. 🤣