Videos by ComicBook.com
If you’ve ever played the original Dark Souls, you’ll know that Blighttown is the dreaded area in question that’s been plagued by poison, toxicity, and FPS hangups. Taking a trip to the dark and hazardous area meant that you had to stock up on both Purple Moss Clumps and Blooming Purple Moss Clumps while praying that your system held up well enough for you to navigate the area. In Dark Souls Remastered, however, it appears that the in-game hazards will be all you have to worry about now that the area has finally been optimized to prevent framerate issues.
Proof of this improvement is seen in the Digital Foundry video above that shows what Blighttown looks like in the remastered version. The opening scenes show gameplay from a PlayStation 4 Pro version that’s running smoothly at a locked 60 FPS. The same applies to the base PS4 as well, according to Eurogamer’s companion article for the Digital Foundry video, an impressive feat considering the changes that have been made in this newest version of Dark Souls that’s releasing on these consoles for the first time.
For those who never did play the original, you can see some of the horror that you thankfully missed out on back when the game was made available for the last generation’s consoles. Xbox 360 gameplay seen just after a minute and a half in shows choppy framerates that made navigating through Blighttown even more of a headache than it should’ve been. The overlay that shows the real-time FPS appears soon after to show that even though the game played at 30 FPS on those older consoles, it plummeted to 15 FPS at times once players entered Blighttown. The backwards compatible version of the game on the Xbox One X is currently the best way to play until the remastered version is released, but even that console can’t maintain the game’s cap of 30 FPS throughout the entirety of Blighttown.
While preview videos like this one are showing up more and more this week to give players a look at the game’s most troubling area, it won’t be long before everyone can test it out for themselves. Dark Souls Remastered is scheduled to launch for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC later this week on May 25, so prepare to check out Blighttown and everything else Lordran has to offer.
