Immortals Of Aveum On Unreal Engine 5 Is 'Cutting Edge', But Overall Xbox Visuals Suffer

"It's also clear Immortals has technical issues that need solving"

by Ben Kerry Mon 28th Aug 2023

The team at Digital Foundry has taken a good look at EA's new Immortals of Aveum, and the results here are somewhat surprising, at least on a technical level. The overall sentiment is that the game has lots of new-gen cutting edge tech under the hood, but that tech doesn't always result in the best presentation on consoles.

The brand-new Xbox Series X|S shooter incorporates lots of new Unreal Engine 5 goodies such as Epic's 'Nanite' and 'Lumen' features, but the game really struggles to hit high resolutions as a result, especially as it runs at 60FPS on both consoles. Here's the pixel-count breakdown from DF's analysis:

"PS5 and Series X target 4K using AMD's FSR 2.1 temporal upscaling. The base resolution this is scaling from though is a much lower figure - at 1280x720 on each. Every shot tested so far comes in at 720p - on camera cuts in cinematics, or at the screen's edges in gameplay.

Even more notable is the state of Xbox Series S. Again this version targets 60fps - and resorts to FSR 2 scaling to get there. The base resolution here though comes in at around 768x436, resulting in a much blurrier image, and even more pixel breakup than the other two machines."

Yes, we're looking at well under full-HD figures for Immortals of Aveum, and although we definitely noticed something there during our hands-on time for review, we didn't expect the numbers to be this low! Still, AMD's upscaling tech is putting in work to bring the display resolution up.

Overall, the DF team is "fascinated" with the tech behind the game, but the outlet does feel there's work to be done in terms of the overall presentation on consoles.

"Overall, Immortals of Aveum is one of the most fascinating games I've reviewed in a while, even with its issues. Between the focus on current-gen development, its use of Unreal Engine 5.1 features - nanite and lumen - there's a genuine ambition to push for cutting edge tech. But yes, it's also clear Immortals has technical issues that need solving."

We played through the game recently on Xbox Series X, and although we're no tech experts by any stretch, we did enjoy our time with Immortals of Aveum. Check out our full written review down below.

Are you shocked by these resolution figures? Let us know what you make of Immortals of Aveum in the comments section.

[source eurogamer.net]

Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin' in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he's not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that's far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.

1
InterceptorAlpha
Mon 28th Aug 2023

Hopefully this isn't a sign of UE5 games to come.

I know something like Fortnite works amazingly. But it also an old game that was ported over to UE5.

Ideally this is just a sign of early/new use of the engine.

2
RIghteousNixon
Mon 28th Aug 2023

Bottom line, we need a significant leap in consoles hardware power for games to run at 60fps, 4k, while utilizing all of the various upgrades available in engines like UE5 without having to resort to varying degrees of upscaling. It’s gonna be a bit…

3
GamingFan4Lyf
Mon 28th Aug 2023

I know Lumen can be quite heavy, but Lumen is used in Fortnite and the image quality is still quite high at 60fps. Maybe this game chose hardware Lumen for better fidelity over software Lumen?

I do wonder how well FSR3 works with frame generation. What is the minimum native framerate that can produce a locked 60fps? Also, is it something that can be done on console?

If so, it is possible that developers can target a locked native 30/40fps in order to keep native resolutions higher and just let frame generation push it to 60fps and image construction push it to 4K.

4
AlwaysPlaying
Mon 28th Aug 2023

Maybe once everyone has finished Starfield a patch will be out … if not then it is a current gen hardware issue

5
BAMozzy
Mon 28th Aug 2023

@InterceptorAlpha Look at the history of Games - in many cases, devs got more and more and more out of Engines as they 'learn' to optimise their games better on that hardware.

As more and more people develop games on UE5, the open nature of UE5 will benefit. What may be a 'problem' area today could be solved tomorrow and shared to ALL devs so that they 'benefit' too. It maybe that they have a Solution for making Nanite be more performant for example that benefits all developers using Nanite in their upcoming games.

Look at Frostbite on PS4/XB1 (Battlefield 4 at launch) and the subsequent improvements throughout the generation.

I bet Jusant for example won't be as 'low' as 720p with FSR 2.0 so it really comes down to the developers. Looking at the new CoD, that looks 'incredible' graphically - likely to be running at 60fps too so its a design choice. They may have used 'massive' assets in Nanite to create the environment that is why its so 'heavy' compared to more traditional methods with different LoD models taking much less processing time.

What really bugs me more than the fact its using some method of upscaling is the dishonesty in advertising - I bet its 'listed' as a 4k game. What next, Starfield being listed as a 60fps because it uses FSR 3.0 to 'artificially' create the impression the game is running more smoothly, updating more frequently etc that it is. I have little issue with 'upscaling' technology to 'boost' the presented Picture Quality to look more like a 'higher' resolution,but be 'honest' - its a 720p using FSR to improve the PQ above what 'native' 720p should look like and 'closer' to Native 4k. The 'closer' to Native, the closer it looks too.

FSR 3.0 will 'smooth' out the presented frames by inserting 'fake' frames in between, its not making the game run at '60fps', its a 'visual' effect, like FSR 2.0 is a 'visual' effect to make the game look higher res, FSR 3.0 is a 'visual' effect to make the motion appear 'smoother' on the display. So I would be ANGRY if games using FSR are being advertised as 'higher res/higher Frame rate' games. This is a 720/60 game!!

6
Lucylu1983
Mon 28th Aug 2023

In a few week there will be a patch for a few games and coming to consoles especially xbox series x and including immortals of aveum

This patch will include FSR 3 which is a big improvement to what we have now

I saw a video at the weekend on YouTube and FSR 3 was announced last week during the gamescom I'm not an expert at all that stuff but it may be helpful to know for anyone reading the comments

7
evan23
Mon 28th Aug 2023

@GamingFan4Lyf

I do wonder how well FSR3 works with frame generation. What is the minimum native framerate that can produce a locked 60fps? Also, is it something that can be done on console?

AMD only recommends using FSR3 frame gen when the base framerate is already at least 60fps. The point of it is to increase visual fluidity, not solve performance problems.

8
GamingFan4Lyf
Mon 28th Aug 2023

@evan23 You mean like how developers are using FSR 2 to make 720p look like 4K? 🤣

9
evan23
Mon 28th Aug 2023

I think this is partially about UE5 optimization and partially about the fact that current gen consoles are under powered for accomplishing the visuals that developers are pushing for. Especially at 60fps.

The reality is that pushing high-end visuals in some of these games at 4K pushes an RTX 4090 to the max. That is often with DLSS scaling enabled using internal resolutions less than 4K. Current gen consoles are not even close to that.

As we continue to move toward increased ray tracing and other advanced features, we are going to see this more and more in the current generation.

10
Tonmoy
Mon 28th Aug 2023

It's a relatively new studio with many new techs they wanted to try their hands on. Inexperience with the tech may have led to such disappointing results. But hope they figure out fast.

11
Savage_Joe
Mon 28th Aug 2023

forget the xbox struggles. 720p base res on the bigger consoles?!?!? dayum! Epic really needs to look into this

12
OldGamer999
Mon 28th Aug 2023

So why is the base resolution so low 720p.
Is that because the graphics are so intense and there is much visual splendour on the screen the resolution is as high as it can go to keep the 60 fps in check?

13
smoreon
Tue 29th Aug 2023

@RIghteousNixon True. Of course, there will be new features, effects, and visual standards by then, and the struggle will start all over again!

14
smoreon
Tue 29th Aug 2023

@evan23 Yeah, I don't think a lot of people get that there's always some degree of compromise- you can't have an expansive world with all of the latest graphical bells and whistles, and 4K, and 60/120/144fps, all at the same time. Especially not on mid-range hardware.

Of course, optimization and careful choice of priorities both go a long way, and I'll be the first to point this out whenever someone goes "oh, this game had to be 30fps because-".

But it was clear from the initial UE5 demo, as well as the Matrix demo, that current consoles can't harness all of the latest tech without cutting either resolution or performance.

15
karlhendrikse
Tue 29th Aug 2023

According to my calculations that's less than one sixth of 1080p on Series S. How any developer can think that's acceptable I have no idea. It's embarrassing to even exist in the era of "8K" gaming machines when game developers are so greedy for graphical features at the expensive of resolution and frame rate that native 1080p60 isn't even guaranteed.

Please all game developers: native 4K120 is absolutely non-negotiable for all games. I don't care if you have to use GameCube-level lighting and polygon counts. Get the baseline working first, then you can see how much headroom you have for fancy shaders or whatever.