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[Digital Foundry] Saros on PS5/Pro: Beautiful Visuals, Polished and Approchable

Mr.Allan said:
I hope this game has some epilepsy warning all over because omg, it's super chaotic and flashy. Looks generic as fuck tho.
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RPS37 said:
Oh god please no I still haven't gotten anywhere in Returnal.
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there are adjustable gameplay modifiers






With Saros we set out to create a challenging and rewarding action game where every death is valuable. So prepare to die, but also come back stronger with every cycle. With Carcosan Modifiers, you can adjust your experience to lower the challenge… or ramp it up. Find a balance that's more suited to you. Combined with the Armour Matrix, you'll love upgrading Arjun and adjusting your stats and abilities.

For players who want less challenge to beat that boss or a tough biome, use Protection Modifiers to adjust your experience. Damage Enhancement allows you to increase your damage dealt to hostiles. Shield Power Enhancement makes your Soltari Shield not consume power so you can use your Power Weapon more often. Lastly Overlord Restoration is a game changer which allows you to be at full armor integrity when you face the Overlords on Carcosa.

For players who want even more challenge, use the Trial Modifiers. Weapon Decay means your main weapon will decay through usage. Hostile Death Projectiles is pretty self explanatory. Last but not least my two favourites are Growth Incapacitor I, which removes second chance, and Growth Incapacitor II, which removes all Armor Matrix enhancements for even more of a challenge.
 
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rkofan87 said:
there are adjustable gameplay modifiers

With Saros we set out to create a challenging and rewarding action game where every death is valuable. So prepare to die, but also come back stronger with every cycle. With Carcosan Modifiers, you can adjust your experience to lower the challenge… or ramp it up. Find a balance that's more suited to you. Combined with the Armour Matrix, you'll love upgrading Arjun and adjusting your stats and abilities.

For players who want less challenge to beat that boss or a tough biome, use Protection Modifiers to adjust your experience. Damage Enhancement allows you to increase your damage dealt to hostiles. Shield Power Enhancement makes your Soltari Shield not consume power so you can use your Power Weapon more often. Lastly Overlord Restoration is a game changer which allows you to be at full armor integrity when you face the Overlords on Carcosa.

For players who want even more challenge, use the Trial Modifiers. Weapon Decay means your main weapon will decay through usage. Hostile Death Projectiles is pretty self explanatory. Last but not least my two favourites are Growth Incapacitor I, which removes second chance, and Growth Incapacitor II, which removes all Armor Matrix enhancements for even more of a challenge.
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As long as it doesn't lock you out of certain parts of the game?
 
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Ahhhh man, the lack of destruction is a shame. I used to love shooting those statues in the first game. Had goodies in them too.

Gameplay will be king here, game looks decent.
 
Ugh how disappointing, pop-in and shadow issues in 2026 on a 1st party sony game. They didn't make use of UE5 at all and the use of crappy FSR to top it off.
 
squallbr said:
My question is, Saros has the same returnal system, when we die? thats sucks
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Yeah Im waiting for the same answer... reviews mentioned a good progression system. So it might be better, anyway rogue likes are a genre I cant spend too much money on it, I drop the games as soon as I beat the final boss and finish the story, it feels so pointless to keep playing it after.
 
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It's UE5 but it doesn't use lumen, nanite or virtual shadow maps so that helps it run better than other UE5 games.
 
Zuzu said:
It's UE5 but it doesn't use lumen, nanite or virtual shadow maps so that helps it run better than other UE5 games.
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It's like to say it's a woman but she doesn't use vagina, tits and ass so that helps to run better sex.
 
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Seomel said:
Alanah has her tits going for her, but in game like this you wouldnt even see them 99% of time
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What if she ran backwards looking towards the camera for the entirety of the game? Now this is a revolutionary game design idea.
 
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Karim said:
It's like to say it's a woman but she doesn't use vagina, tits and ass so that helps to run better sex.
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more like: it's a woman, but she doesn't use botched cosmetics surgery, 30cm long fingernails, and a karen haircut, so that helps to run better sex.
 
honestly very disappointing visually and technically

and the enemies/gameplay looking so similar to returnal, probably get it down the line when its cheaper
 
kevboard said:
more like: it's a woman, but she doesn't use botched cosmetics surgery, 30cm long fingernails, and a karen haircut, so that helps to run better sex.
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Without UE5 features game just looks last gen. They could make it on UE4 and port it to PS4 as well..
 
Bojji said:
Without UE5 features game just looks last gen. They could make it on UE4 and port it to PS4 as well..
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sure, but that's the burden they took by going with UE5.

the thing is, Lumen is just not good enough to work here. so many light sources that move dynamically would probably result in an insane amount of boiling, while simultaneously completely destroying the performance.

on base PS5 they probably even would have needed to use software Lumen (on Pro maybe they could get away with hardware Lumen) so the precision issues would be even worse there, and no skinned objects would be traced against.

if they wanted good RT + UE5 they could have gone with UE Vite, but that was probably not available yet when they started development.
 
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kevboard said:
sure, but that's the burden they took by going with UE5.

the thing is, Lumen is just not good enough to work here. so many light sources that move dynamically would probably result in an insane amount of boiling, while simultaneously completely destroying the performance.

on base PS5 they probably even would have needed to use software Lumen (on Pro maybe they could get away with hardware Lumen) so the precision issues would be even worse there, and no skinned objects would be traced against.

if they wanted good RT + UE5 they could have gone with UE Vite, but that was probably not available yet when they started development.
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Those particles are light sources? They can always just use emissive textures but nothing else. Not every light source in UE5 games works with lumen (I think devs has control over it).

Forget about hardware lumen on this gen, unless Witcher 4 ships with it.
 
Bojji said:
Those particles are light sources? They can always just use emissive textures but nothing else. Not every light source in UE5 games works with lumen (I think devs has control over it).

Forget about hardware lumen on this gen, unless Witcher 4 ships with it.
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the question then becomes if it would actually add anything meaningful to the visuals, if the main attraction is omitted from Lumen.
 
kevboard said:
the question then becomes if it would actually add anything meaningful to the visuals, if the main attraction is omitted from Lumen.
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Yeah, it wouldn't have last gen lighting...

Outside of fight players also explore the levels.
 
I think Returnal's visuals are better overall, the artstyle and colour palatte are much better than this.

Saros looks a bit.. meh in comparison? Brown and gray, like going back to the 360 days.
 
Bojji said:
Yeah, it wouldn't have last gen lighting...

Outside of fight players also explore the levels.
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since their environments seem to be almost fully static, that's more of an issue with bad light baking I'd say at that point.

it's not like they have a dynamic day/night cycle.
and their levels are made up of hand crafted chunks and not fully random structures.
so if you omitted all the skinned objects, and all the particles from Lumen, what you're left with is static GI that is calculated in realtime.

sure, it's a way to get good GI easier, but good GI can also be baked in the UE editor using higher fidelity RT than you could ever dream of using in real-time.

I assume they didn't bake higher fidelity GI because their game is already massive as is. which is kinda weird given the type of game it is. 80+ GB for a AA Rogue-Lite is kinda insane.


but in the end, I bet it was just not possible performance wise. it already has drops in extreme scenarios as is.
 
kevboard said:
since their environments seem to be almost fully static, that's more of an issue with bad light baking I'd say at that point.

it's not like they have a dynamic day/night cycle.
and their levels are made up of hand crafted chunks and not fully random structures.
so if you omitted all the skinned objects, and all the particles from Lumen, what you're left with is static GI that is calculated in realtime.

sure, it's a way to get good GI easier, but good GI can also be baked in the UE editor using higher fidelity RT than you could ever dream of using in real-time.

I assume they didn't bake higher fidelity GI because their game is already massive as is. which is kinda weird given the type of game it is. 80+ GB for a AA Rogue-Lite is kinda insane.


but in the end, I bet it was just not possible performance wise. it already has drops in extreme scenarios as is.
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Baked lighting still omits dunamic objects like characters, it's better for fps games because you only see weapon most of the time. But for game where your character is constantly on screen and glows in dark environments?
 
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