Red Dead Redemption On PS4 And PS5 Is A “Bare-Bones” Upgrade According To Technical Analysis

Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar’s 2010 cowboy adventure, is now readily available on PlayStation consoles– and Nintendo Switch– however how does it measure up to the Xbox backward-compatible versions? On Xbox Series X and Xbox One X, Red Dead Redemption has a 4K discussion– 1440p on Xbox Series S– and on PS5 and PS4, several essential improvements are evident according to the video game analysts at Digital Foundry.

While a small list of improvements are noticeable, Digital Foundry noted that much more might have been done to improve the 13-year-old game. As the group discussed, the Xbox backward-compatible variation of Red Dead Redemption is the Xbox 360 edition of the video game with a higher resolution, anisotropic filtering, and an unfavorable LOD predisposition that enhances particular textures.

While the PS4 Pro version– which is used for the PS5 variation– does have much better shadows in contrast and a slightly various gamma presentation, the rest of the game “looks much the same” in between the two consoles, according to Digital Foundry. “Models still have a sharp, somewhat blocky character, with seventh-gen polygon budgets,” Digital Foundry’s Oliver Mackenzie explained. “I could not construct out any enhancement in textures either, and the game still struggles with some extremely low-res artwork. This consists of the primary character, whose muddy face ought to have been a high priority to improve. LODs look about the same between the two releases, with turf extending far into the range on both machines, but with some obvious pop-in at times as well.”

Another point noted in the analysis is that Red Dead Redemption’s user interface hasn’t been upgraded for modern displays, resulting in 720p elements that have not scaled well to 4K TVs when played on PS5 and PS4 Pro. On last-gen PlayStations, the PS4 Pro version is the same as the PS5 variation, and the base PS4 version is rendered at a native 1080p, looks sharp, and has more aliasing in comparison.

” Red Dead Redemption is still a great-looking video game in a lot of respects,” Digital Foundry stated in its conclusion. “Its wide-open plains and stunning lighting looked really outstanding at the time of release and still hold up reasonably well in 2023. It’s the type of game that doesn’t actually require a significant overhaul to work well on modern systems– but even so this is a very barebones effort.”