With the arrival of Elden Ring: Shadow of the ErdtreeFromSoftware’s souls-like has once again come under the scrutiny of Digital Foundry. The verdict? With the arrival of the expansion the game has taken neither steps forward nor backwards, which is not a positive result considering that the performance and optimization problems from two years ago are still present.
In fact, tech enthusiasts say that the game behaves in a similar, if not identical, way to how the game appeared two years ago after the appropriate corrective patches. This means that on console there is no single graphics mode for PS5 and Xbox Series which ensures a stable framerate at 60 fps. The exception is the PS4 version played in backwards compatibility on PS5, which guarantees a stable and rock-solid framerate, with obvious compromises to image quality.
Even the Quality and Ray Tracing modes are far from flawless, due to the lack of a framerate cap that blocks it at 30 fps and consequently it is possible to witness fluctuations between 30 – 45 fps and sometimes even below this threshold.
No DLSS, FSR and XeSS on PC
Even on PC the situation hasn’t improved one iota. The maximum framerate is still stuck at 60 fpsthere are no options for ultrawide, ray tracing leaves a lot to be desired and there is no support for modern upscalers such as DLSS, FSR and XeSS, which are now the minimum equipment of every double and triple a game.
Not only that, the game still suffers from problems frame-time inconsistency due to CPU bottlenecking, even on a beefy processor like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Digital Foundry also noted rarer but more extreme frame-rate drops, down to 0fps.
In short, Shadow of the Erdtree offers unparalleled artistic direction, lots of new content and a vast new setting to explore, but in terms of optimization and performance we are not there. In this sense, Digital Fondry’s comment is rather critical:
“Keeping in mind the issues on consoles and PC, it’s worth remembering that Elden Ring was a huge financial success for FromSoftware, and it seems strange that in the last two years no money has been reinvested to improve technical quality of the game on PC or console,” says Digital Foundry.
“This criticism comes with genuine respect for what FromSoftware has achieved with the Souls series; few developers match this studio when it comes to world-building and 3D combat. But on every platform, we see a developer who continually ignores technical problems fundamentals.”
Meanwhile, today FromSoftware released a patch that facilitates the expansion, accompanied by a small guide to help players.
