I know I’ve already written once about Biomutant this week, but it’s worth going back to the furry kung fu game once more, only because the studio has done something genuinely very cool and very transparent that, honestly, I wish we saw more of.
Separate to the cool character creator stuff we saw yesterday, devs Experiment 101 have released unedited gameplay footage of their furry whack-a-mole simulator on different platforms. But what’s cool about this is just how transparent they are about how well Biomutant will run on, say, a PS5 versus a Xbox One.
In two separate videos, which you can view below, the team announced that people playing on Xbox Series X will natively get the best experience on console. This isn’t by design: the studio apparently ran into stability and performance issues with the PS5, and to guarantee performance, the game will run at a native resolution of 1080p on Sony’s next-gen console. On the Xbox Series X, it’s a native 4K target at 60 frames per second with dynamic resolution kicking in to keep the frame rate high.
“With this build, the option for native 4k on PlayStation has been deactivated due to stability- and performance-related reasons,” the developers said in a release.
Here’s the PS5 footage of Biomutant:
And for Xbox Series X fans, or pure comparison, here’s the game on that platform.
For those wondering about the game’s Xbox Series S performance, there’s no footage of that because Experiment 101 doesn’t own an Xbox Series S console at all. Microsoft, if you’re listening, surely you can hook the team up — supply of the Xbox Series S isn’t anywhere near as bad as the Xbox Series X, after all.
1440p @ 30FPS with Dynamic Resolution. No video because noone at the office owns a Series S, sorry!
— THQ Nordic (@THQNordic) May 20, 2021
The takeaway here is that the studio is completely open about the situation before the game’s release next week. They didn’t opt not to disclose it, or only release footage shot in a certain way and then left people with the impression that there would be parity between the two consoles.
Also, it’s worth remembering that 1080p/60 FPS upscaled isn’t that bad. That’s the native resolution for Returnal, a game exclusively built for a next-gen console, and nobody has complained about the quality of the visuals there. It’s a completely different game with a totally different aesthetic, for sure, but it’s worth calling out because an entertaining game can still be entertaining even if the resolution isn’t the highest number imaginable.
What the Biomutant team are doing here, if you’re super cynical, isn’t good business. This disclosure isn’t likely to help Biomutant sales. But it’s the sort of openness and transparency that communities have always asked for. I just hope, at least this time, fans follow through and reward them for it.
Biomutant comes out on May 25/May 26 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, with backward compatibility for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. More info on the PS5/Xbox Series X optimised version will be revealed “soon”, according to the devs.
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