Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most critically acclaimed games of the year, an electronic version of a great D&D campaign without the scheduling challenges that also features an incredible amount of flexibility and an engaging player-driven story. This kind of game doesn’t always translate well to consoles, but its PS5 outing from September worked quite well, absent some quibbles with the gamepad controls and occasional performance issues. Now the long-awaited Xbox version has finally arrived on Series X and Series S, so how does it hold up against the patched PS5 version – especially on the entry-level Xbox Series S?
Before we delve into the Xbox Series machines then, I wanted to provide a quick refresher on the PS5 version. It’s been three months since we last looked at the PS5 code, and the game has seen a dozen updates since then. Initial impressions suggest limited visual changes, with slightly more diffuse and realistic shadows that could be the result of a change to shadow filtering, plus higher-res blood decals and water with more prominent specular effects.
Image clarity looks similar between the two patches, with a 1440p-like resolve and slight FSR 2 artefacts evident, but the actual resolutions are different in the latest patch as dynamic resolution scaling has been added. Performance mode now comes in at 1080p internally, up from a fixed 960p at launch, while quality mode remains at 1440p but drops below this are now possible in extremely demanding scenes.
