God of War Ragnarök's four graphical options revealed
Including High Frame Rate Mode.
Sony has a range of graphical options for you to try in God of War Ragnarök, which essentially boil down to four settings.
First up, there are the ususal two modes which Sony here refers to as "Favour Resolution" and "Favour Performance".
The former sets your frame-rate and resolution to a targeted 30fps at 4K. The latter targets 60fps and uses a dynamic resolution upscaled to 4K.
Both of these settings can then be tweaked further by applying the separate High Frame Rate Mode. This ups the "Favour Resolution" offering to a targeted 40fps, or alternatively boosts "Favour Performance" beyond 60fps. For this, you'll need a VRR-capable TV.
How much further beyond 60fps? We've seen Press-Start describe Performance mode with HFR switched on as "targeting" 120fps. Our Digital Foundry team is still crunching the exact numbers - which may come out slightly less. Stay tuned for the official verdict.
This week has seen the existence (or not) of console game quality modes hit the headlines, after it emerged that new release Gotham Knights (out today!) would be locked to 30fps on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
God of War Ragnarök is, of course, a game entirely unlike Gotham Knights. Still, word of the latter's graphical settings being made public only days before launch raised eyebrows - and sparked The Callisto Protocol publisher Krafton to confirm a 60fps performance mode for its game (out on 2nd December).
Speaking to Eurogamer's Chris Tapsell this week as part of a deep dive into God of War Ragnarök's animation, Sony Santa Monica animation director Bruno Velazquez discussed how Ragnarök had been designed to be the "best PS4 game we can make" - with any extras from the PS5 version "just icing on the cake".
"Of course as an animator, I love a higher frame-rate - I want to see the smoothest motion possible," Velazquez said. "When it comes to Ragnarök, from the very get-go, we knew this was going to be a PS4 game because we wanted to support the fanbase - we had so many people that had enjoyed the game on PS4. So from the very beginning, we knew, this is going to be a PS4 game; we're going to make this the best PS4 game we can make. Our goal was to surpass God of War 2018 in every way possible. Having the PS5 version, that's just icing on the cake.
"So our goal is let's make the best PS4 game; push on fidelity, content, bring the story to a close that we started - that was our primary goal. PS5, it's just like haptic feedback, 3D audio, higher frame-rate and better graphics and textures. That's just like the icing on the cake. So of course the PS5 version is going to be the best way to experience it, but the PS4 [version] is going to be one of the games that pushes the PS4 to the max. Taking that philosophy and approach into it helped us to set the goalposts for ourselves, that we want to make a great PS4 experience and an even better PS5 experience."
Ragnarök was initially announced by Sony back in September 2020 as a PlayStation 5 game only, though it later transpired the title would also be released for PS4. Sony's first mention of a dual console release came via an interview with PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst in June 2021, when a PS4 version was mentioned alongside a delay to the project into this year.
"God of War Ragnarök feels like everything you'd expect - but is there more?" Chris Tapsell asked in Eurogamer's freshly-published hands-on impressions of the game. "A Loki start teases giant action to come."