Dragon’s Dogma: a PC and console comparison

Let’s not beat around the bush, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen for PC offers a massively improved experience over the original console release.

That might not initially seem like something to write home about, but the quality of the port probably is. Capcom has had a spotty past with PC ports, and a good deal of you have no doubt held off on purchasing the PC release, waiting on impressions and reviews first.

The good news is that they seem to have cracked Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, and the results are significant improvements to frame rate, image quality and the overall feel. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to convey that without a direct comparison to the original release – kudos Digital Foundry.

Feast your eyes on these eye morsels:

We’d recommend you pay particular attention to texture detail as well as shadow resolution, both of which received huge improvements in the transition to the PC.

It’s more than a much improved anti-aliasing technique, though that’s clearly in effect given the large reduction in jaggies, but as you’ll see below, world detail has also been given a large boost.

The best example of that can be seen by comparing the rock outcropping on the mid-right of each image, or rather, the lack of an outcropping on the PS3 version.

And that anti-aliasing we talked about before. The technique used in the PC port greatly reduces the blur on textures caused by the console approach, which improves fidelity quite a bit.

Colours do seem a little washed out in the PC version, but dynamic lighting means that there is more than likely a darker hue in effect, courtesy of the time of day lighting mechanics.

Overall then, LOD as well as general draw distance, character detail, lighting, shadow resolution and anti-aliasing have received large bumps in quality.

The best comparison, however, comes from Digital Foundry’s video analysis.

If you don’t have the time to watch the whole thing, all you need do is watch the first few minutes. The difference in frame rate and its result on the smoothness of gameplay is immediately apparent.