Digital Foundry | The Medium tech analysis: a closer look at Xbox's first next-gen exclusive

[JudgmentJay]

I know you've been quoted a million times but boy oh boy. What a ridiculous post.

That only happens when the game is rendering two different simultaneous scenes. Aaand it's just the worst it drops to. Meaning that in those scenes are not always 900p.

The rest of the game is 4K. Smh.

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According to the video the game averages 1440p in non-spilt screen scenarios on Series X and 900p on Series S (7:54). So not a locked 4k.

Anyway, interested to try this out on PC. I think I'm just going to lock it to 30 fps and crank the graphics as far as they'll go. It's such a slow-paced game so 30 fps shouldn't be too bad.

 

[Raigor]

Miles Morales, despite being also a last Gen title, also showcases the graphical strength of the PS5. Considering its one of the first 60fps console games, with Raytracing. It certainly looks very impressive, and will be compared to the Medium. Especially since it has a variety of caveats.

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Are you seriously comparing the work made by an AAA studio with a multi-million dollar budget and with Sony behind the development to an indie title with a budget of €7 million? No fucking shit Miles Morales looks better and performs better.

Only people that lack basic knowledge of game development, budgeting and scale are going to compared Miles Morales with The Medium.

 

[pswii60]

It appears even on the PC with a 3080 card it struggles at times, so I expect some updates to smooth out the experience on all platforms.

The Medium cannot run with constant 60fps on the RTX3080, even at 1080p/High/RT Off settings

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Yeah just saw this on DSOG. And there's me thinking my 3080 would play this at 4k/60 lol. Not even 1080/60 :o

Will just play on the X then.

 

[digitalrelic]

Are you seriously comparing the work made by an AAA studio with a multi-million dollar budget and with Sony behind the development to an indie title with a budget of €7 million? No fucking shit Miles Morales looks better and performs better.

Only people that lack basic knowledge of game development, budgeting and scale are going to compared Miles Morales with The Medium.

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Let's compare Vampyr to The Last of Us Part II while we're at it.
Or Call of Cthulu to God of War
Or A Plague Tale to Uncharted 4

... how silly.

 

[Raigor]

Let's compare Vampyr to The Last of Us Part II while we're at it.
Or Call of Cthulu to God of War
Or A Plague Tale to Uncharted 4

... how silly.

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I was expecting more from a place like ERA where people are actually """informed""" and know the basic difference between small and blockbusters production but apparently i'm wrong.

 

[lost7]

I think it looks good to be honwst

 

[ClamBuster]

but can it run The Medium

 

[E.Balboa]

These talks about resolution are so 2015. Comparisons to different budgets, genres, art styles, disregarding the split screen aspect.. that's just too much. First post set the tone precisely.

It's disappointing to still see this in Era. Actually, it's been happening more than ever.

Back OT, It does look good. It's different, the split screen aspect may introduce some different scenarios, it opens up different gameplay and art styles possibilities, and this being in practice an indie game made for Gamepass I think it's shaping up to be pretty nice.

 

[Nooblet]

I was expecting more from a place like ERA where people are actually """informed""" and know the basic difference between small and blockbusters production but apparently i'm wrong.

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Tbh A Plague Tale was a small budget production and yet had tech and polish that matched AAA productions...and even exceeded some of them especially in terms of polish. The reason they were able to do so was because the game itself is small in scope compared to an AAA game. What I'm saying is that it's not always as clear cut as high budget vs low budget, especially if the low budget game is already aiming lower in scope allowing it to be polished to a high degree. It's why 4A was able to match up in visuals with AAA with Metro 2033 and why CDPR was able to make Witcher 2 look as good with just $10 million.

Bloober Team on the other hand is not really known for their technical prowess, though Medium does look remarkable visually, which is especially something considering how average Blair Witch looked.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

I was expecting more from a place like ERA where people are actually """informed""" and know the basic difference between small and blockbusters production but apparently i'm wrong.

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ERA is tens of thousands of people. This place calls each other out on bullshit all the time, like you just did. It's not a hivemind of perfect reasonable liberal gamers. Grow up a bit and stop generalizing. Fanboy shit will always be here.

 

[Lozjam]

Are you seriously comparing the work made by an AAA studio with a multi-million dollar budget and with Sony behind the development to an indie title with a budget of €7 million? No fucking shit Miles Morales looks better and performs better.

Only people that lack basic knowledge of game development, budgeting and scale are going to compared Miles Morales with The Medium.

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It's a shame that this smaller game, is the first exclusive for Series X and S. A lot is kind of riding on it to show the power of the console, because Microsoft kind of failed to do it.

Compared to the Playstation titles, this is a little bit underwhelming. Considering we have the amazing detail and art directions of Demon Souls running at 60 fps, 60fps Raytracing with Miles Morales, and just insane detail and pleasent graphics of astrobot(plus showing the capabilities of a new controller). A lot has been kind of riding on this title, since not even Halo will be exclusive.

Despite that though, it's a cool looking game. I might give it a try when Xcloud is a bit more mature, and I have non capped internet.

Props to the team for making a new way of visualizing the game. It's just unfortunate it has these caveats.

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Context of my words is just as important as the context for developer schedules.

I am saying that the developers clearly did not have a capability to make a huge stunner, the caveats are disappointing, and MS has failed to show off the power of their new console. Because they have failed to have an exclusive game thus far, the Medium had to do the heavy lifting. Which obviously is not fair. It is simply the situation, that makes it whelming. The very title of this thread is, "a closer look at Microsofts first next gen exclusive". With Medium having that role, of the first next gen exclusive. It is quite whelming. Not bad by any means, but whelming.

 

[Raigor]

Tbh A Plague Tale was a small budget production and yet had tech and polish that matched AAA productions...and even exceeded some of them especially in terms of polish. The reason they were able to do so was because the game itself is small in scope compared to an AAA game. What I'm saying is that it's not always as clear cut as high budget vs low budget, especially if the low budget game is already aiming lower in scope allowing it to be polished to a high degree. It's why 4A was able to match up in visuals with AAA with Metro 2033 and why CDPR was able to make Witcher 2 look as good with just $10 million.

Bloober Team on the other hand is not really known for their technical prowess, though Medium does look remarkable visually, which is especially something considering how average Blair Witch looked.

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Asobo is still a much bigger and experienced studio compared to The Medium and even if they played with the same budget, the former still had more experience working as a support studio in AAA titles and they are more skilled technically, they even have their own in-house engine which was used for Plague.

Budget is always a problem for a lot of studios and The Medium despite having their biggest budget yet it's a good looking games with all the issues they had, you can make good graphics with low budget (see Hellblade) but you are going to cut corners left and right in some aspects.

$10 million back in the 2000s was a lot of money especially for Polish and Ukrainan developers, while now, both CDPR and 4A Games are working with multi-million budgets.

 

[Pryme]

Context of my words is just as important as the context for developer schedules.

I am saying that the developers clearly did not have a capability to make a huge stunner, the caveats are disappointing, and MS has failed to show off the power of their new console. Because they have failed to have an exclusive game thus far, the Medium had to do the heavy lifting. Which obviously is not fair. It is simply the situation, that makes it whelming. The very title of this thread is, "a closer look at Microsofts first next gen exclusive". With Medium having that role, of the first next gen exclusive. It is quite whelming. Not bad by any means, but whelming.

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The entire premise of your argument is flawed, since you assume (illogically) that only exclusives can show off the power of your console.

Nobody is pushing the Medium to do any 'heavy lifting'. Hitman 3 came out days ago and pushes visuals the previous gen xbox could never manage, at double the framerate.

I have no idea why this narrative is being pushed, but perhaps it's time to stop?

Gears 5 enhanced on Series X and it's Hivebusters DLC shows off the power delta between the One X and the Series X quite handily. Ditto for multiple third party games that have been released thus far.

Please let this budget game breathe.

 

[Galava]

Looks like not even recent CPUs can handle this game at 60fps. If it can't even achieve it on a 3080 at 1080p, it's definitely a CPU bottleneck.

 

[pswii60]

It's a shame that this smaller game, is the first exclusive for Series X and S. A lot is kind of riding on it to show the power of the console, because Microsoft kind of failed to do it.

Compared to the Playstation titles, this is a little bit underwhelming. Considering we have the amazing detail and art directions of Demon Souls running at 60 fps, 60fps Raytracing with Miles Morales, and just insane detail and pleasent graphics of astrobot(plus showing the capabilities of a new controller). A lot has been kind of riding on this title, since not even Halo will be exclusive.

Despite that though, it's a cool looking game. I might give it a try when Xcloud is a bit more mature, and I have non capped internet.

Props to the team for making a new way of visualizing the game. It's just unfortunate it has these caveats.

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The Medium was never going to be a technical tour de force. At least anyone who has played a Bloober game before could tell you that. So there's no real shame to it.

You should check out Hivebusters which is already a real showcase for the XSX.

 

[Raigor]

Context of my words is just as important as the context for developer schedules.

I am saying that the developers clearly did not have a capability to make a huge stunner, the caveats are disappointing, and MS has failed to show off the power of their new console. Because they have failed to have an exclusive game thus far, the Medium had to do the heavy lifting. Which obviously is not fair. It is simply the situation, that makes it whelming. The very title of this thread is, "a closer look at Microsofts first next gen exclusive". With Medium having that role, of the first next gen exclusive. It is quite whelming. Not bad by any means, but whelming.

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MS doesn't need The Medium to do the heavy lifting and it's not supposed to do it

 

[iareharSon]

It'd be cool if they built a game around this concept, but being able to seamlessly transition between the real world and the other world (similar to how you can toggle between the new and old graphics for Halo Anniversary) instead of split screen - and building action and nuzzles around that. You'd be able to build great scares and puzzles around such a system.

 

[zoltek]

If the game is fun, who cares if it has the resolution of a game from 2013. The unique mechanic is enough draw for me to try it AND it's on GamePass.

Side observation: There are very few posts about how this resolution is a let-down and the vast majority are those complaining that those posts will derail the thread, thereby actually derailing the thread themselves.

Just play the game and stop whining. The game poses a significant draw on power needing to render two separate scenes while catering to the relatively gimped XSS. All things considered, I'm looking forward to trying the game out.

 

[jim2011]

It'd be cool if they built a game around this concept, but being able to seamlessly transition between the real world and the other world (similar to how you can toggle between the new and old graphics for Halo Anniversary) instead of split screen - and building action and nuzzles around that. You'd be able to build great scares and puzzles around such a system.

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Oh what I wouldn't do for a new Soul Reaver which did exactly that.

 

[Equanimity]

I'm not going to watch this video until I've completed the game. I just need to know one thing, is the wonky frame pacing frequent?

 

[Deleted member 17289]

I was expecting more from a place like ERA where people are actually """informed""" and know the basic difference between small and blockbusters production but apparently i'm wrong.

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Is funny how you include the whole forum on your argument and still call out everyone misinformed....

 

[Dictator]

I'm not going to watch this video until I've completed the game. I just need to know one thing, is the wonky frame pacing frequent?

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It is frequent, yes.

 

[Iwao]

Oh please.

Criticising a game that drops to 900/600p at 30fps in 2021 is completely valid.

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The only thing to criticize is whether their vision for the dual screen stuff was worth it in the end. What did it add, and what did the lower res take away? Resolution gets compromised often enough, sometimes due to the hardware/development tools and sometimes it's an artistic choice. Criticising the resolution here sort of reminds me of when people were going around complaining about The Order: 1886 because they chose to present the game in anamorphic widescreen.

 

[Deleted member 46804]

Gameplay matters more to this forum than visuals until it doesn't. Funny to see.

 

[OldDirtyGamer]

If the game is fun, who cares if it has the resolution of a game from 2013. The unique mechanic is enough draw for me to try it AND it's on GamePass.

Side observation: There are very few posts about how this resolution is a let-down and the vast majority are those complaining that those posts will derail the thread, thereby actually derailing the thread themselves.

Just play the game and stop whining. The game poses a significant draw on power needing to render two separate scenes while catering to the relatively gimped XSS. All things considered, I'm looking forward to trying the game out.

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It must be hard for smaller AA dev houses to read the internet. This game is trying something unique at least.

 

[rashbeep]

i think the environments and lighting generally look pretty great, not really out of place with what we've seen on next gen so far

characters and animations on the other hand are where the budget shows

 

[Equanimity]

It is frequent, yes.

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Thank you, Alex.

 

[DukeBlueBall]

Oh please.

Criticising a game that drops to 900/600p at 30fps in 2021 is completely valid.

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900p / 648p at worst before temporal reconstruction. We all saw from the PS5 UE5 demo that 1440p reconstructed can look very close to native 4k. That's a 2.25x visual resolution increase. 900p reconstructed would be be around ~1350p visually, and 648p would be around 972p visually.

Gears 5 on the 1X / Xsx bottoms out at 1080p base before temporal reconstruction and everyone would agree that it's a very sharp and detailed game 100% of the time.

This isn't Rdr2 on PS4 pro and Xb1s type of situation here.

 

[Furiousone]

Could careless about pixel counts and thinly veiled console war BS. The Medium looks like it has a cool premise and is giving me some Silent Hill vibes. It wasn't on my radar but now it is. Kudos to the dev team.

 

[hydruxo]

Definitely some hiccups here and there but visually it is a really intriguing game. Got about halfway through the video and some of the sequences they showed looked really neat so I shut off the video not wanting to spoil it too much. Worth playing through the game just for the dual view mechanic + the atmosphere/music.

 

[dallow_bg]

Sucks for my Series S but not in a rush to play it.

 

[Edge]

Interesting how they describe the frametime/frame pacing problem.

I have this EXACT problem in Hitman 3, constantly on my Series X when turning camera, but nobody else seems to have or notice that. Really weird.
Maybe I have to play around with deactivating VRR and 120fps or so.

 

[zoltek]

It must be hard for smaller AA dev houses to read the internet. This game is trying something unique at least.

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Completely agreed.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

Horror games have basically become the territory of indies on PC, so I'm excited this game exists and will be pushed heavily. I feel like the game pass model is a huge boon to one and done 10 sub hour experiences

 

[Deleted member 84505]

I'm allowed to be disappointed at resolution drops to 900p on X and 628p or whatever it was on S yeah? I understand it is rendering two levels at once, but then maybe they should have made more compromises to the scope of their game, or maybe gone with a less taxing art style? I barely want to play any games at 30fps these days, let alone with resolution drops that low.

This certainly isn't a dig at Xbox or anything. I just think the developer should have maybe re-thought some of their directions.

 

[MaulerX]

I'm allowed to be disappointed at resolution drops to 900p on X and 628p or whatever it was on S yeah? I understand it is rendering two levels at once, but then maybe they should have made more compromises to the scope of their game, or maybe gone with a less taxing art style? I barely want to play any games at 30fps these days, let alone with resolution drops that low.

This certainly isn't a dig at Xbox or anything. I just think the developer should have maybe re-thought some of their directions.

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It'll probably be the same way when it eventually drops on PS5. Just look at the next-gen upgrade for Control UE. Was expecting more out of that tbh. Point is some games are doing things that are a bit taxing (at least this early in the game) even for next-gen hardware. Sucks but It is what it is.

 

[takriel]

Gameplay matters more to this forum than visuals until it doesn't. Funny to see.

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Whatever fits your narrative I guess.

 

[Deleted member 46804]

I'm allowed to be disappointed at resolution drops to 900p on X and 628p or whatever it was on S yeah? I understand it is rendering two levels at once, but then maybe they should have made more compromises to the scope of their game, or maybe gone with a less taxing art style? I barely want to play any games at 30fps these days, let alone with resolution drops that low.

This certainly isn't a dig at Xbox or anything. I just think the developer should have maybe re-thought some of their directions.

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So you won't play any back compat games? Compromising on your vision to hit a specific target resolution is stupid. High resolution doesn't matter if the game isn't what they wanted to create.

 

[Deleted member 84505]

So you won't play any back compat games? Compromising on your vision to hit a specific target resolution is stupid. High resolution doesn't matter if the game isn't what they wanted to create.

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No, i'm not playing any back compat games unless they've had next gen patches. That's not what I bought a next gen console for. It's the combination of lower resolutions along with 30fps together. Just not interested in playing games that way anymore.

 

[jfkgoblue]

MSGV was 900p on Xbox One and was considered a visual masterpiece. It's not sharp, but that doesn't mean it's not gorgeous.
Resolution is not a valid metric to consider the visual quality of a game, at least to me.

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Just no... MGSV came out 5 and a half years ago. On any 4K tv of decent size and sitting distance 1080p looks bad, and should never be a thing on your flagship 2020 console. If it's because of rendering 2 scenes, maybe they should've left the RT out of that because 900p is straight up unacceptable.

I'll still give it a shot as it's on GamePass, and I will be playing on PC, but let's not pretend 900p is in anyway an acceptable resolution despite 2 scene rendering.

 

[Deleted member 84505]

It'll probably be the same way when it eventually drops on PS5. Just look at the next-gen upgrade for Control UE. Was expecting more out of that tbh. Point is some games are doing things that are a bit taxing (at least this early in the game) even for next-gen hardware. Sucks but It is what it is.

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Oh yeah, i'm not saying it would be any better on PS5. Personally i'd rather see other compromises to at least be getting better frame rates. The combination of 30fps with quite low DRS really puts me off.

Yeah I was hoping for 1440p on Control with RT on, guess I won't be bothering with ray tracing.

 

[Kasey]

I watched the video, you shouldn't render a game twice if the visual clarity is so blurred you get image quality from 2013.

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Or maybe they should pursue their central design goal, low resolution (on a box made to run at lower resolutions) be damned.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

Just no... MGSV came out 5 and a half years ago. On any 4K tv of decent size and sitting distance 1080p looks bad, and should never be a thing on your flagship 2020 console. If it's because of rendering 2 scenes, maybe they should've left the RT out of that because 900p is straight up unacceptable.

I'll still give it a shot as it's on GamePass, and I will be playing on PC, but let's not pretend 900p is in anyway an acceptable resolution despite 2 scene rendering.

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Unless I'm missing something, John said the game averages 1440p. 900p on Series X is a worst case scenario. I sincerely doubt this will be very noticable, and probably only occurs in edge case scenarios, where tons of detail and special effects are happening across both scenes.

I'm looking forward to playing on Series X. Personaply, I think it's cool Bloober team is pushing visuals so hard. Dual dual-screen on a game with next-gen calibre visuals is impressive.

 

[Deleted member 46804]

I'll still give it a shot as it's on GamePass, and I will be playing on PC, but let's not pretend 900p is in anyway an acceptable resolution despite 2 scene rendering.

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If I put a photorealistic game in front of you at 720p and another game going for 4k with today's visuals you would be wowed by the 720p game every time while the 4k would be wholly unimpressive. Resolution is just a small piece of the puzzle. Maybe wait to see what the game has to offer.

 

[jfkgoblue]

Unless I'm missing something, John said the game averages 1440p. 900p on Series X is a worst case scenario. I sincerely doubt this will be very noticable, and probably only occurs in edge case scenarios, where tons of detail and special effects are happening across both scenes.

I'm looking forward to playing on Series X. Personaply, I think it's cool Bloober team is pushing visuals so hard. Dual dual-screen on a game with next-gen calibre visuals is impressive.

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In the video even at 1440p on my monitor it is very noticeable

If I put a photorealistic game in front of you at 720p and another game going for 4k with today's visuals you would be wowed by the 720p game every time while the 4k would be wholly unimpressive. Resolution is just a small piece of the puzzle. Maybe wait to see what the game has to offer.

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But it's not?

Resolution is one of the things that I notice the most when it comes to games, 1080p just looks bad. Period. If you are playing on a 15" laptop screen, yeah sure it's fine, but on my 27" PC monitor(which I am actually fine with 1440p on) or my 4K 55" TV(which I was also fine with DeS's 1440p upscaled to 4K).

But 1080p on either of them look really bad. Like I said, I will still play it(actually have it preloaded), but I am very disappointed because I was hoping for something that could show off the 3080's capabilities. (right now every game that pushes the card only does so with RT, which is nice, but not yet quite the visual game changer), and saw this was next-gen only. Probably shouldn't have let that happen.

 

[chandoog]

I'm not going to watch this video until I've completed the game. I just need to know one thing, is the wonky frame pacing frequent?

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It is frequent and the one point you should know from the video is that DF have contacted the developer about it (the frame pacing) and the developers have said they're looking into it for a future patch.

 

[Gitaroo]

Pc version support dlss right, should give it a lot more performance head room.

 

[Equanimity]

It is frequent and the one point you should know from the video is that DF have contacted the developer about it (the frame pacing) and the developers have said they're looking into it for a future patch.

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Thank you, that's good to know. Frequent frame pacing is worse than frame drops in my experience.

 

[Cyclonesweep]

In the video even at 1440p on my monitor it is very noticeable

But it's not?

Resolution is one of the things that I notice the most when it comes to games, 1080p just looks bad. Period. If you are playing on a 15" laptop screen, yeah sure it's fine, but on my 27" PC monitor(which I am actually fine with 1440p on) or my 4K 55" TV(which I was also fine with DeS's 1440p upscaled to 4K).

But 1080p on either of them look really bad. Like I said, I will still play it(actually have it preloaded), but I am very disappointed because I was hoping for something that could show off the 3080's capabilities. (right now every game that pushes the card only does so with RT, which is nice, but not yet quite the visual game changer), and saw this was next-gen only. Probably shouldn't have let that happen.

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1080p looks bad to you?
Man I'm really glad I don't think anything that's not optimal best everything is trash.

onto the topic game looks really good and looks interesting to play. Hopefully they can fix the frame pacing issues.

 

[MrKlaw]

is it game pass on PC too?

Torn between XSX and 65" OLED, or 3080 and simple LCD monitor (although ultrawide)