A Plague Tale: Requiem runs at 30FPS with dazzling visuals on new-gen

A Plague Tale: Requiem is the latest new-gen game with a hard 30FPS cap, however the visuals are quite dazzling.

Visuals versus frame rates–it’s been an age-old battle since the beginning of gaming. Console-makers, engine crafters, and GPU wizards have been able to significantly reduce the trade offs over the years with technical magic like DLSS, Fidelity FX Super Resolution, and methods like Variable Rate Shading (see our Xbox Series X review for more info).

There’s been lots of emphasis on frame rates with new-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, however some games are pushing for maximum visual quality and are willing to significantly sacrifice FPS in favor of dazzling graphics. That appears to be the case with A Plague Tale: Requiem, which looks to be one of the most beautiful third-party games released on the newer generation.

According to analysis carried out by El Analista De Bits, A Plague Tale: Requiem is locked at 30FPS on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. However that doesn’t mean the game isn’t pushing the consoles to their limits.

The bit-analyzers say that the game is making all the consoles “sweat” with 1440p output resolution at 30FPS (which jumps to 40FPS on 120Hz displays with Variable Refresh Rate turned on).

The results highlight the age-old battle quite clearly and underline what kind of visual clarity can be achieved if FPS is de-prioritized for cinematic-style games like Requiem.

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Here are a few notes from El Analista De Bits:

• A Tale Plague: Requiem is a true next-gen game and it shows in its demanding performance.
• Consoles run at 30fps in 60hz mode and 40fps in 120hz mode. The game also supports VRR.
• The Xbox Series X version is the most stable on consoles. PS5 has performance issues in some areas (especially in open spaces with rats).
• Xbox Series S has some clipping in shadows, textures, vegetation, draw distance and reflections.
• PS5 and Xbox Series X use very similar graphics settings.
• PC has more vegetation, better ambient occlusion, shadows and anisotropic filtering.
• Loading times are similar on all 4 platforms.
• The PC version will receive a ray-Tracing patch soon.
• A Plague Tale is one of the first games with DLSS 3 + Frame Generation support in the RTX40 series. With this technique, we can achieve over 160fps on average with an RTX4090 on Ultra.
• It seems that A Plague Tale Requiem makes current consoles sweat, giving more modest results than with cross-gen games (as expected).