The 792p resolution on Xbox One is a curious one. It's a 21 per cent increase over 720p, and the use of multi-sampling anti-aliasing makes it punch a little above its weight in an era where the more usual post-process AA can actively harm image quality at lower resolutions (as seen on Battlefield 4 on Xbox One). However, when we first saw Titanfall, we were pretty certain we were seeing 720p or something close to it (1366x768 perhaps). We remain curious about why Respawn would choose this particular framebuffer size, as that additional 21 per cent of resolution isn't giving us a boost in quality commensurate with the GPU resources being allocated to it. The question is, could that graphics power have been better deployed elsewhere?
There's been plenty of talk about Titanfall's sub-native resolution, but while that is not exactly ideal, the biggest problem we have with the game in its current format is that the magic combination of ingredients that made Modern Warfare work has come slightly off the boil here: the Xbox One version simply cannot sustain the required 60fps. The consistency in performance just isn't there and so the gameplay often doesn't feel quite right.
So, just like the beta, we see Titanfall frame-rates on Xbox One dip into the mid-30s at its worst, and at those points the rock-solid consistency we saw in the early iterations of the Modern Warfare experience is gone, and with it - arguably - the essence of the "twitch" shooter. In mitigation this does tend to happen while you're seated in your Titan, so the need for ultra-low latency controls is lessened, but there's no doubt that the player's immersion in the experience is dented by the compromised performance.
Respawn's adaptive v-sync decision works out OK for general, on-foot pilot gameplay but there's still too much of the 'adaptive' and not enough of the 'v-sync', resulting in an obvious tearing that impacts visual consistency. However, the effects vary: with little in the way of left/right panning, it manifests almost like a 'wobble' - noticeable, but nothing that unduly affects the quality of the gameplay. However, in the middle of pitched battle, with the player spinning around to tackle new threats, the tearing is very obvious and highly distracting.
We ran the game on our recently constructed "next-gen" Digital Foundry PC, pairing a six-core AMD FX-6300 with a GeForce GTX 760. Texture quality needs to drop to very high, but otherwise, everything is on max and we can hit 1080p60 with lashings of anti-aliasing, but the performance level is not sustained - but still a clearly noticeable improvement over Xbox One. Frame-rates were OK overall, but it's a little sobering that the same machine achieves a higher overall performance level on Battlefield 4 on high settings. We also tried our high-end games machine featuring an overclocked Core i7-3770K matched with a GTX 780. At this point we could run Titanfall on insane texture settings with maximum anti-aliasing with just occasional stutter at 1080p, but we lost the 60fps lock when ramping up the resolution to 2560x1440.
When we spoke to Respawn producer Drew McCoy at Gamescom last year, we were fully onboard with the "frame-rate is king" response when we asked about the possibility of 1080p60 on Xbox One. The key to the best Titanfall experience is all about the frame-rate - it's a crucial element of the interface between player and game and it's a core element in defining the gameplay. The end product is still a massive entertaining, highly playable piece of software, but on Xbox One at least, the performance level clearly isn't anywhere near locked to the magic 60fps, with Respawn sailing dangerously close on occasion to nerfing the the magic formula that makes this game great.
By and large, when you need the signature twitch-levels of response, Titanfall delivers, but it does so at a price - eye-rending screen-tear. That's a compromise that the erstwhile-Infinity Ward team members never implemented during their run on Modern Warfare and we were surprised to see it manifest so obviously here. As a result, the pure thoroughbred arcade experience that defined Call of Duty and is instrumental to Titanfall's success is left somewhat compromised, with a level of visual artefacting that frequently looks plain ugly.
Titanfall has clear performance issues on Xbox One, but it's still a fun experience. However, when playing on PC, the fluidity in refresh, response and control is leagues ahead.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-titanfall-next-gen-face-off
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