Ghost of Yotei – Technical Review
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A Brave Sequel, or Repeat of the Past?
The challenge of the sequel is etched in history, from albums, books and movies. For every Empire Strikes Back, we have a Highlander II, and games are equally as impacted. With Sucker Punch delivering one of the biggest games of the last generation, the Sequel has a large Sandogasa to fill both in visuals, performance and scale. Now with the PS5 and PS5 Pro versions to support, iIs it a cut above or a blunt blade?
Technically we are firmly in the “improving on the base” rather than change for changes sake. The first game was incredibly strong with its art direction and romantic presentation of feudal Japan and Tsushima isle. Mount Yōtei takes centre stage here, literally, with obvious connotations of Mount Fuji. But the long stretching views, swaying pampas grass, particle driven leaves, birds,petals, embers and sparks remain. Textures are a step up, with much more detail, crispness on every fabric, katana and face. Something else which has improved, character rendering, models, materials and lighting are more vivid. Light reacts and diffuses across skin, cloth, rock and wood better. Anisotropic filtering, which was often low in the previous game, is better, although issues remain here. Material reactions are more precise with a wider range of attenuation and specular. Reflections still mix projected cubemaps, Spherical Harmonics(SH), proxy lights and Screen Space Reflections(SSR) to reflect as much of the world dynamically across all modes. Pre-set times of day are blended to allow a full 24hr cycle and dynamic weather, which use a similar probe based Image Based Lighting(IBL) solution mixed with cascaded shadow maps, screen space shadows and ambient occlusion. All these combine with the denser world geometry, richer flora and fauna, animals, fog volumes and real time lighting creating a strikingly flamboyant world that is organic, physically based, constantly in motion and still solid with depth and precision on every blade of grass or horse’s hoof.
Ray Tracing The Past
A new mode also enhances this further with Real-time Ray Traced Global Illumination and improved Occlusion. This looks to be sun and moon only, and likely builds on their IBL weighted SH probe lighting model to improve light radiosity, occlusion, and reduce light leakage. It can add more indirect light bounce and colour onto surfaces and works best shining inside interiors from direct sun or moon, bouncing light into cave roofs, peoples faces or wooden logs. Outside it helps increase shadow and shade depth, whilst enhancing surface Illumination when in the direction of indirect light bounce. All 3 modes, including performance, offer excellent image quality with a greatly improved TAA solution over the first game. All the sub pixel foliage, particle systems, fog volumes, volumetric clouds and more are a problem for all AA solutions. But here, the team have excelled with a near perfect balance of high frequency sharpness, but solidity and stability that only gets softer in performance mode but never detrimentally so.
Of the Three modes on PS5 and the same on PS5 Pro just enhanced with a 4th exclusive mode. The Quality runs the highest, with an native 4K/30fps output on the premium console, and almost so on the base. With a counted 1800p low found in some brief moments. Performance mode offers identical settings, just at a dynamic 2560x1440p at 60fps. Seemingly scaling down to 1920×1080 with the same TAA pass to clean up the image frame to frame and moment to moment. Due to many engines tying effects quality to output or rendering resolution, level of detail and distant LoD is lower than quality and other Ray Tracing modes but the boost to input latency and performance is much bigger and worth that small hit.
Finally, Ray Tracing offers the same 30fps rate of quality but improves light and shadow using the RT hardware and offers an approx 44% resolution hike over performance at an approximate 3200×1800, again scaling or reconstructing from or down to a counter low of approx 1620p. The increases to image fidelity and lighting are not transformative, but do help in some cases and as the real-time cinematics seem to use this mode it can enhance model and material quality. Of note, some sections, such as riding or mini dialogue sequences use a letterboxed 21:9 ratio which renders at 3840×2160 or 3840×1640 in this mode which is a minor boost but still 24% lower than native 4k. In play though, even zoomed in, the Quality mode is only marginally sharper and thus is a minor cutback for the Ray Traced enhancements which can be of benefit in certain scenarios.
The PS5 Pro offers the same three core modes just allowing them to scale higher or less but with the same frame rate limits, aside the Ray Tracing Pro mode. The new mode offers the Pro Promise, base PS5 quality and performance combined. In this case the same Ray Tracing quality and approx 4K output at 60fps rather than 30fps, double the performance and increased resolution. The secret is this mode now uses PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution(PSSR), and this managed to achieve a close to or better image quality than the 1800p RT mode on the base PS5, even though it comes from a lower base, circa 2240×1260/1920x1080p. Some issues on textures and flicker on sub-pixel areas does occur, but image quality is largely sharper and more stable than the base PS5’s performance mode at the same refresh rate and higher image quality. Performance mode on the Pro runs at the same 1800p of the RT mode, scaling down to approx 1620p levels. Which offers an approx 56% increase on resolution for the same framerate. Even on Pro though, all modes cap the realtime cutscenes to 30fps which ensures the highest fidelity but does feel like a missed option for the Professional players.
Performance & Input Latency
Performance is rock solid and superb, only single frame drops here and there across all 3/4 modes. It can look like an engine timing issue at some points, effectively dropping a frame every 15-20 seconds or so, but this is not always the case. Either or, with or without VRR the game runs impeccably well during the stressful combat, exploration, cinematics or more and this is true of the 30 and 60fps modes on both consoles. The 30fps rate is evenly paced with a smooth, even cadence of frames, and smoothly transitions between 60 and 30 for cutscenes, albeit within a fade to black and back again. Performance may also be helped by the cinematic focus of the game using a Letterboxed aspect often, specifically in cutscenes and during all horseback exploration. Which does reduce the fill rate a little but based on the combat and other areas, I doubt they needed this for the performance gain, but it certainly maintains a higher resolution when the black bars come in on base PS5. Loading and fast travel is again, excellent as per the DC PS5 version before, taking a matter of seconds to load a save, jump a map location and even start the game and pick-up from the main OS menu. No splash screen, no menu, just straight back into the last save point and you can ride off, slash up or cook up a storm in no time at all.
Now the other big benefit from such an action and timing-based game to performance, is input latency, the time it takes from pressing a button or moving the sticks or mouse and something happening onscreen. As long term viewers know I have been covering it since I started the channel back in 2013 now. And it is a big a deal as ever, here going from the heaviest mode in Quality due to its high resolution and 33ms frame rate, we get a median input time of 114.75ms using a mix of camera and action inputs. For a 30fps game this is quite good and certainly far from the worse I have tested before, but for such a frantic game sub 100ms should be the expectation. And 30fps games make that much harder to achieve, and that is where the performance mode and PS5 Pro RT mode make even bigger strides. With them both being significantly faster and well below that 100ms threshold, unsurprisingly the PS5 Pro RT mode is the fastest being some 38% faster than Quality mode at 71ms, and performance mode is marginally slower at 83.5ms, still 27% faster than Quality with both being 30 to 40ms + faster than the slowest mode, which anyone can feel and appreciate. Loading is also cartridge level fast, with the journey from Main OS dash straight into the last save seamless and instant, no splash screen, menu or anything, straight into your last moment with no friction or delay, in less than 10 seconds, superb.
Final Verdict
Sucker Punch hit the big time with Ghost of Tsushima, both in critical and commercial success. But the technology, art, and passion for the country and source period was a huge drive in why it hit all those notes. That game is the foundation for Ghost of Yotei, the technology, visual quality, world density and immersion have been improved, refined and expanded. Cutscenes are the visual highlight of it all, but the art and colour schemes, cinematography, sound design, voice acting from both Japanese and English language are excellent, but I am sure others are equally as impressive. Loading seamless, Fast travel and game fluidity is top tier and frictionless from the off. Its biggest engine enhancement is the Ray Traced Global Illumination it now supports, with the PS5 Pro being able to run it all at 60fps without breaking a sweat. But, much like the director’s cut, it has not made a huge leap forward in any one area. It certainly looks much better, runs even smoother, loads much faster and delivers the same fast paced, timing based combat. But as a showcase for the PS5 Pro and even base PS5 it does not have the same wow factor as the first. None of that distracts from the quality, style, technical enhancements and joy the game delivers, just do not expect a generational leap over the previous Ghost.
