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[00:00] James Bond games have had a turbulent history, from the heights of Goldeneye to the depths of low-effort tie-ins like 007 Legends. But after a decade-plus with no licensed Bond games, Hitman developer IO Interactive has delivered 007 First Light,

[00:18] an original title running on IO's Glacier Engine. It promises more of IO's signature immersive gameplay systems, plus some cinematic flair. So how has IO progressed for tech since 2021's Hitman 3?

[00:32] And how does the game run on PS5 consoles? This video is sponsored by War Thunder, a massive free-to-play military MMO that lets you take command of over 2,500 highly detailed tanks, trains, helicopters and ships

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[01:57] Check out the links below and give it a try today. IO Interactive's new Bond game takes a number of key technical steps over their prior hit

[02:10] run titles. The most striking element of the new game's presentation lies in diffuse indirect lighting. 007 has a brand new software RPG solution, marrying screen space tracing with a probe-based fallback using SCF. In practice, the game's lighting has a pleasing look,

[02:27] with attractive bounce and a lot of depth. Lighting has a slightly heavy appearance and over-occlusion is definitely a factor here, but I think the RPG presentation is quite pleasing. The key drawback is that the game's higher frequency lighting has derived from screen

[02:40] space information, which means that lighting information can fall easily out of screen space, producing distracting artifacts. It's not the end of the world by any means, but these artifacts do distract slightly. Likewise, specular lighting leans heavily in SSR, which isn't unexpected,

[02:56] but it does produce similar kinds of artifacts if you go through looking for them. Like recent Hitman efforts, though, the game relies on planar reflections for its mirrors and some glass surfaces, reflecting a lower fidelity and low resolution version of the world back These are used deliberately so not for every applicable surface and only when the reflecting medium is plain and flat It a neat technique if limited in applicability relative to RT reflections and it the cool visual flourish that we don often see in modern games

[03:27] I'd recommend video watchers check out Alex's excellent IO Interactive interview on the game's rendering technology from last week. But there's a lot of cool new tech in this game. It features revised volumetric effects, shadowing, light-calling, order-independent transparencies, motion-matched animation, and new GPU particles.

[03:45] Character-riving improvements surround other console-type advances, which are critical for such a story-heavy game, and the game will feature pass-tracing on PC in the turning months as well. To avoid repeating our content too much, and to avoid pre-empting zones, graphical tech-deep that have to come, that's all I'll say about the game's core visuals.

[04:02] In general, we're seeing a lot of the same visual strengths that IO established in their Hitman games, like convincingly rendering out hundreds of NPCs at once, while expanding out key rendering systems, especially lighting, to match current-gen expectations.

[04:16] This is the first IO title to ship exclusively on current-gen consoles and PCs, so the rendering technology did need an overhaul, and I think the upgrades here are quite substantial. Plus, Bond goes much broader than Hitman.

[04:29] There are plenty of Hitman-inspired events here as you pry through crowds of people, but there are also explosive action scenes and chase sequences that feel a little less inside IO Interactive's wheelhouse and represent something new for their technology.

[04:42] On PS5, the visual comparison story is pretty simple. As it becomes standard this generation, 007 packs a quality mode and a performance mode, which targets 30 FPS and 60 FPS respectively.

[04:55] Visual differences between them are scant for the most part, and you can expect a very similar appearance in most scenes across the two modes. It seems like 007 was architected with 60fps in mind from the very beginning because the court-rendered tech translates rather beautifully to a 60fps console experience.

[05:13] The game's somewhat conservative but quite pretty RPGi survives perfectly here, and there's nothing particularly wanting in terms of visual setting downgrades. There are some cuts, though. Shadow resolution is the most obvious downgrade, as the game's shadow maps take on a softer, rougher, and more substantially alias presentation in the performance mode.

[05:32] It's hardly the end of the world, though, and like a lot of shadow map solutions, the fill frame can make lower resolution shadow maps appear more realistically softened in some lighting scenarios, so it's not strictly worse, necessarily.

[05:44] Beyond that, there do seem to be some GI tweaks in the mix, though changes are hard to spot in side-by-side comparisons. Some other lighting changes seem evident in these interior scenes. I didn't notice any cuts in LODs or Toppin or Voidmetrics or other visual tweakables in my comparison,

[06:00] though it's likely there are a range of quantitative alterations across the game to accommodate a higher performance target. As usual, the bulk of the differences lie in a familiar refrain, resolution, and image quality.

[06:12] 007's first flight depends on episode 3.1, sweet 5 in the game's non-PS5 Pro console outing, according to the developer, and we find some familiar image quality characters here. Expect a reasonably good looking image but with common faults in motion and at rest like the flickering that you observe in these stark shots The game is not all that stable typically and a bit of movement often provokes the digital chunky reconstruction artifacts we used to from AMD over analytical upscaling tech

[06:41] Shots like this reveal larger issues, and typical FSR pain points like Voyage can look a bit rough on PS5, especially in camera pans. Image quality in general isn't great on Sony's base console, but the performance mode definitely gets the worst of it.

[06:55] Expect a softer performance mode image as well, as quality mode is clear and sharp in the 4K panel, while the performance mode strays towards something a little less distinct. Image quality is perhaps the largest weakness of first line on PS5, and I expect this will be a pain point for many gamers.

[07:11] Internal pixel counts are around 720p, typically in performance mode, at least in the shots I tested, with some a little above that. above that. Quality mode is a bit above 10WP usually, averaging around 1152p in the shop

[07:25] by counting. IO Interactive's conservatism with resolutions, and their careful approach to employing ray-crashing tech does lead to some strong performance outcomes on PS5s. In the content I was able to sample for this preview, the game ran at a very consistent

[07:40] 60FTF on Sony's console. I primarily played in performance mode, and I didn't encounter This chase sequence, which has been featured heavily in the game's marketing, is the only real exception, dropping clusters of frames at times.

[07:53] The shootout and in-air portions run fine, it's just a fast reversal, but seems to drive some small issues. Cutscenes also seem to drop frames on camera cuts at times. Yet this minor turbulence annoys the game's 30fps quality mode seems to run at just about a locked 30fps throughout, including in this demanding sequence.

[08:11] I'd personally lean towards a 60 FPS targeting incarnation instead, however, given that performance is usually stellar in that mode, and the visual downgrades aren't too pronounced in general. PS5 Pro is pretty simple compared to PS5.

[08:36] The key divergence lies in image quality. PS5 Pro uses Sony's PSSR in its sole visual mode, which thoroughly bets the base machine's FSR 3. It's simply much clearer, much sharper, and much better than the PS5's off-gaming treatment.

[08:51] This driving sequence is a mess of serrated edges and speckled, poorly resolved fine details in the base machine, while the Pro is quite clean in comparison. It's not perfect, but it's a much stronger upswing treatment.

[09:03] The Pro was also superior to the base machine's quality mode, in my opinion, with fewer artifacts and a better overall look. I did some brief tests on the Pro's inherent PSSR toggle, and 007 does appear to be using the more recent upgraded iteration of the upscaler.

[09:18] A direct side-by-side with the enhanced PSSR Pargo off and on shows a basically identical image strongly suggesting the second-gen version of the technique is new. That's not a surprise, because we wouldn't expect the original PSSR to produce imagery like this.

[09:35] Internal resolutions come in quite a bit north of the base machine at about 1000p in my counts versus around 720p on the base machine performance mode although there could be some variance Beyond that divergence PS4 Pro seems to use settings more similar to the PS5 quality mode

[09:53] The shadows are a clear giveaway, as Pro sports sharper shadow outlines than the base machine. I don't think the underlying visual settings matter that much here, because the aliasing presentation on the base console is much more concerning, but there are some differences.

[10:07] Frame rates are also quite good. Our playing-bound stress test reveals a locked 60fps on Pro, barring some dropped frames on camera cuts and cutscenes. I imagine the game could drop elsewhere, but in my experience it really hugs that line at 60fps.

[10:21] That's a very positive outcome for Pro players, with excellent performance and utility available on the console. Beyond the visual minutiae, 007's first start is an interesting game.

[10:37] Early showing suggested a globe-trodding action-adventure in line with something like Uncharted, but the final game is much more deliberate and heavily hit and inflected. A typical sequence might involve moving through a crowded space, satisfying objectives by scanning the environment,

[10:52] trailing characters, impersonating staff, and employing other deceitful means. In general, this is a slow game and not something that will necessarily scratch that Uncharted Ditch if you've been looking for something to match Naughty Dog's Dormant series.

[11:04] The action is also not particularly close to the quality bar established by that series, with some awkwardness in the sequences I played. Maybe there's not a reasonable bar to expect a developer like IotaClear, especially across the fairly content-riches of a player adventure, but it is worth noting.

[11:20] Thankfully, the game's tech is strong with good priorities on consoles. holes. The key concession here lies in image quality on base PS5. FSR 3 does okay with the game content here, but it's a definite sticking point in an otherwise

[11:35] good presentation. The combination of a higher internal resolution and PSSR can set up very satisfactorily on Pro, with a much better experience for discerned players. Both PlayStation seem to be in good shape for their respective hardware, but that difference

[11:51] is worth noting. I would have liked to discuss Xbox as well, but we weren't sampled Xbox code in time before this video, and we were sampled PS5 code only a few days before this video's publication. I would expect a substantively similar experience on Series X relative to

[12:08] PS5, but Series X is more of a wildcard. That console will also give us some insight, potentially, into the upcoming Switch 2 version, which may suffer similar compromises. So 007's first

[12:20] Sprite offers a very attractive game for PS5 players. Bond strikes the right technical balance on Sony's current-gen hardware. If you enjoyed this video, please like, subscribe, and press the bell for use of notifications.

[12:34] Check out the Patreon at patreon.com slash digitalthandry for exclusively access content and to get in touch with social media. And thanks again to War Thunder for sponsoring this video. Don't forget to check out the links below to play for free.

[12:47] And remember, there's a massive bonus pack available right now for new players or those returning after more than six months on PC and console.