Dark Souls Remastered is looking…a bit off

At least it has 60 FPS on lock

This week, Bandai Namco gave some outlets a look at the upcoming Dark Souls Remastered. While never touted to be a complete remake of the original, the results from these preview builds are looking a little less than stellar. The biggest thing in this remaster’s favor is that the framerate does look to be a locked 60 FPS on PS4 Pro, so the game will undoubtedly feel better to play. The rest is where some issues start to come in.

Digital Foundry has a solid breakdown on a lot of the graphical changes that have been given to Lordran, but my own eye is noticing a huge change in art direction. The big difference is that the new lighting model is going for a more realistic approach, making a lot of the textures look flat. I’m also noticing a tremendous amount of color change going on. It seems like the game has been given a gray filter, which ends up making the experience look pretty drab. A lot of the textures are also missing specular layers, which ends up robbing the beginning prison scene of its depth.

That being said, I cannot overstate how wonderful the increase in resolution looks. I prefer my games to be very clean and free of jagged edges and this looks perfect in that regard. It doesn’t seem like a modern, 2018 game, but the $40 at least represents that this isn’t a full priced re-release.

A lot of this could change before the remaster launches, but why not take a look and see if any of these changes are just nitpicks or genuine issues. I’m sure a lot of purists will be upset, but I can take subtle art changes for a dramatically more playable version of the game.

Dark Souls Remastered: Early PS4 Pro vs Xbox 360 Graphics Comparison + Frame-Rate test! [Digital Foundry]