No. native 1440p + TAA (or whatever the AA solution). Demon's souls at least uses hardware RT for the lighting, even if sparingly. Lighting / shadows are a generation ahead in Demon's souls anyway.
Ok, so then that makes your comparison to Demon Souls as a 'true' next gen game even more confusing. Both same res, but I'd say TLOU1:RM is certainly more than comparable visually.
Because my complaint is not only about I/O. It's about their technological choices for their first PS5 game. Spider-man runs at usually 45fps at near native 4K in an open world game (so heavy I/O jobs)
The resolution matters little to I/O load for one. As Alex showed in his DF video regardless, streaming tops out at 500MB/sec, usually around 100. It's just not that heavy.
while having long distance RT reflections. Here the game runs at 4K ~40fps in a liner world, without any RT improvements.
And massively,
massively more detail in that 'linear' world though! This is like me taking a screenshot of a fight with Spiderman beating the stuffing out of the Demon gang and then comparing it to a battle with 5 clickers in TLOU. The latter has an order of magnitude more complexity in polygon counts + lighting.
Of course it would be silly if I then concluded that SM wasn't 'fully taking advantage of the PS5' due to the flat lighting and low poly characters in that scene, as I would be ignoring the scope of SM's open world - but it's equally silly just to compare 'open' vs 'linear' and think that is anything meaningful wrt to system load without taking into account the difference in environment and character complexity.
I mean there's a
reason Spiderman on PC having a single character model on-screen in a cutscene with hair quality at high is a far bigger GPU load vs swinging through a vast city. As well, what I've noticed is the second most demanding area in the game? Central Park - the place with a bunch of (relatively low-quality) trees and no buildings. What this says to me is that Insomniac's engine is a perfectly tuned beast to represent the environment you'll be in the majority of the time, which is swinging through a city that can be efficiently culled.
It's clearly using their PS4 engine with improvements that simply needed more GPU grunt (improved res, better shadows, better models / textures etc).
I just don't know what you're expecting here. So you want RT? Well then say goodbye to 1440p in performance mode then. Just because Spiderman can do it with low-res reflections in far less geometrically complex scenes (and even then it basically converts even the sparse geometry of building features into flat textures for the reflections) does not imply the massively more detailed environments and characters of TLOU1:RM should be doable without a greater performance hit. If anything including an RT mode would be a nod to a future PC port!
You also have to bear in mind that this is a remake, but one that was never intended to deviate significantly from the design of the last release. I wish that wasn't necessarily the case and I think Sony was deceptive in how it marketed it wrt gameplay changes, but it's obvious they didn't want to risk (or bother) with any large architectural swings from an overall aesthetic and gameplay perspective. Sure, maybe if they took an extra year and really overhauled the engine they could have that 2 second loading, but I see no reason to conclude that just because there's a 15 second initial load they're holding back a massive graphical showcase - especially for a version of the game where last-gen isn't even an option. This is a PS5 native game, full stop.
(Also there's no reason why fast loading wouldn't benefit the PC version either. Spiderman and Miles were held as showcases for the PS5's IO system due to its instantaneous loading and no fast travel delay. The 'downgrade' that happened when it was moved to the PC without that specialized decompression hardware? 3 seconds load vs 1.5.)
Like with Horizon I think it's a mistake. I see those games as improved PS4 games up-resed and set for an easy PC port and clearly not "built for PS5".
These games sell a fraction on the PC years later vs what they sell on the PS5 now, the notion that the PC is involved in any purported planning for this supposed 'downgrade' is bizarre. The reason for Forbidden West being cross-gen was 99% due to the fact there were 100+ million PS4/Pro's out there and Sony would be idiotic to cut them out of one of the most eagerly anticipated sequels in recent memory, that's it.
And again - we're talking about TLOU:RM and Forbidden West here as your
examples of games that have been 'neutered' in some fashion for a future PC release. Two games that are almost universally lauded for their graphical prowess.
(Forbidden West btw also has extremely fast loading on PS5...but you're using it as an example of a game that's held back, but then using the slower loading of the TLOU as proof that it was not designed to fully take advantage of the PS5 by comparison.)
I mean it's a product my man, people have debates about perceived 'value' all the time, it's a part of the purchasing decision.
