Digital Foundry expert analysts have released a very detailed comparative video of the PS5 and Xbox Series versions following the second update of the “next-gen” patch. The results are not very rosy.
As a reminder, this second update allowed a nine-year-old Fallout 4 to offer different graphics modes and different framerate limits. If the result on PS5 and Xbox Series is more convincing, many much deeper problems remain.
Fallout 4 Stamped on PS5 and Xbox Series… on the surface
Thinking to please players following the success of the Prime Video series, Bethesda decided to resurrect Fallout 4 to make it natively playable on PS5 and Xbox Series via a next generation patch last month. The result was unfortunately a radioactive cold shower. Quality mode simply didn’t work on Xbox Series (a shame, since the studio belongs to Microsoft). A second update aimed at fixing what can be fixed was deployed a few days ago.
It seems that the situation has since improved on PS5 and Xbox Series… pretty much. Quality mode still presents failures, despite consoles on paper being more than powerful enough to run a nine-year-old game. Despite the latest patch, Bethesda still recommends playing Fallout 4 on these platforms in Performance mode. Besides this, a much deeper problem persists: slowdowns and unwanted jerks. When the physics engine is put to the test or during walks in the ruins of Boston, the game displays significant jerks, even in Performance mode. This problem, however, comes from a gap at the heart of the venerable title’s aging engine. Digital Foundry recommends a patch going deeper into this area to correct this pitfall. And even then, improvements are unfortunately not guaranteed.
Meanwhile, on PC…
Despite these fundamental problems, the version that suffers the most from the next generation patch of Fallout 4 remains that on PC. The addition of support for wide and ultra-wide screens on this platform seems to have been done in a hurry. The interface remains unsightly stretched, despite the latest update. Worse still, mods that have corrected problems never resolved by Bethesda are systematically broken by new updates of the game.
Some PC gamers even believe that Bethesda should focus only on the console versions and let modders do the rest. Given the situation, however, Fallout 4 does not seem to have finished being patched. See you in the next update to find out if this time it’s the right one?