While PC players have been enjoying Baldur’s Gate 3 since early August, the game finally launched on PS5 yesterday, so how’s the game hold up on consoles? Well, there’s some good news and bad news. According to the tech heads at Digital Foundry, the PS5 version of BG3 offers impressive visual quality, but performance, already a bit of an issue on PC, is even more problematic on console. You can check out the full Digital Foundry video breakdown below if you have around 15 minutes to spare, or you can scroll down for our recap of the salient points.
Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS5 has essentially two visual modes, which you can choose between by setting Performance on or off. The non-Performance (we’ll call it Quality) mode offers a locked 1440p and 30fps, while Performance mode is upsampled using FSR 2 or some other tech from around 960p and runs at 60fps. As is increasingly becoming the case on current-gen consoles, Quality mode is actually the more consistent performer, maintain a consistent 30fps, while Performance mode will occasionally drop frames (although it still stays in the mid-to-high 50fps range most of the time).
Ah, but the performance figures listed above only apply to the early game. As players have discovered on PC, Baldur’s Gate 3 has some performance issues in Act 3, particularly in areas with lots of NPCs. Well, these problems persist on the PS5, with the game dropping to as low as 20fps in Act 3. Interestingly, the performance seems to be roughly the same regardless of whether the game is being played in Quality or Performance mode, implying that a CPU bottleneck is to blame.
As for splitscreen, it seems to hold up fairly well. It essentially forces you into Quality mode, limiting performance to 30fps and splitting the resolution in half, offering two 1280x1440p screens. Of course, the same Act 3 performance issues seen in single-player pop up during splitscreen action.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is available now on PC and PS5, with Xbox Series X/S coming before the end of the year. You can check out Wccftech’s review of the game here.
