Ubisoft has revealed that Watch Dogs: Legion can only run at 30fps on PS5 and Xbox Series X with 4K resolution and real-time ray tracing enabled. Interestingly, even high-end PCs weren’t able to reach 60fps with high graphical fidelity before Nvidia announced revolutionary 30 Series GPUs, but there’s little question that this is underwhelming performance considering what Microsoft and Sony have hyped “next-gen” up to be.
According to July’s technical research by Digital Foundry, even the most powerful Nvidia graphics cards weren’t capable of running Watch Dogs: Legion with the highest specs at 4K/60fps with RTX enabled. Preview versions distributed by Ubisoft were locked at 30fps; trying to go above this value resulted in NVIDIA RTX2080ti struggling to reach stable frame counts. It was somewhat of a troubling revelation that might point to questionable under-the-hood design, but it’s worth remembering that ray tracing is a newer technique that’s yet to be properly tamed by current hardware.
In an AMA session on Reddit, Watch Dogs: Legion producer Lathieeshe Thillainathan was asked about performance features of the game and whether it will be able to reach 4K/120fps with ray tracing enabled on PS5 and Xbox Series X. According to the producer, the game will indeed run at 4K with ray tracing enabled but capped at 30fps on both the next-gen consoles. Users reacted to this response in an expectedly disappointed manner, asking for at least an option to opt in to a 4K/60fps performance mode without the demanding real-time ray tracing technology. Unfortunately, the live producer didn’t elaborate on this topic further, leaving these concerns unaddressed. The rest of the community questions were mostly focused on gameplay details rather than the technical aspects of the game.
At the beginning of October, Ubisoft revealed a post-launch story expansion for Watch Dogs: Legion, the post-launch Bloodline DLC, which will reintroduce a handful of fan-favorite characters to the game. The most notable comeback is Aiden Pearce’s one – the caped protagonist of the original Watch Dogs game will return as a playable operative, with a beard and an exhausted look this time. On top of that, Legion will receive a fair portion of free content starting with an online co-op mode in December.
The only place to fully enjoy Watch Dogs: Legion in full 4K glory with both ray tracing and frame rates reaching or exceeding 60fps will be high-end PCs equipped with Nvidia RTX 30 Series GPUs. Considering that back in July, the existing Nvidia solutions weren’t capable of the highest performance in the game, it shouldn’t be surprising that consoles with older GPU solutions can’t run the title at its best. For Xbox Series X, this is even more embarrassing given its widely advertised 12 TFLOPs of graphics power.
Watch Dogs: Legion will be available on Xbox One, PS4, Windows PC, and Stadia on October 29, 2020, and it will launch for Xbox Series X/S on November 10 and for PS5 on November 12.
