On the face of it, this particular tech review should be fairly straightforward – Asobo Studio’s A Plague Tale: Innocence was one the great sleeper hits of 2019. The custom engine powering it delivers a simply beautiful experience, but like many last-gen titles it was capped to 30fps. The ‘next-gen’ patch upgrades the game to 60 frames per second, whether you’re gaming on PS5 or either of the Xbox Series consoles – but what the developer didn’t tell you is that the Microsoft machines also benefit from a stealth 120Hz feature too.
In essence, the blueprint for A Plague Tale: Innocence seems to be the last-gen Xbox One X rendition of the game, which was the best console version available at the time. It rendered the experience at a native 1440p resolution, using temporal super-sampling to deliver an effective presentation for 4K displays – and that’s the same target Asobo aims for with the PS5 and Series X upgrades. From there, Asobo adds some additional upgrades to the visuals, while at the same time dialling back one particular setting – a set-up that’s the same on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, which are effectively interchangeable from a visual standpoint.
Let’s talk about the additional enhancements first. Yes, frame-rate increases from 30fps to 60fps, doubling visual feedback and lowering input latency. However, additional fluidity is added via the welcome addition of motion blur. Camera movement now adds a velocity-based blur – missing on Xbox One X – with independent per-object motion blur added to the mix. And as a plus, it helps to disguise the ghosting artefacts of its TAA technique, working well with Plague Tale’s grey, overcast aesthetic. Motion blur easily goes in the plus column for me in this case – the only minus point being that there’s no toggle to turn it off, which may frustrate some. Speaking of post-processing, the game also has a particularly intense form of chromatic aberration, but there is an option to dial it down, which I’d personally recommend using.
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