If you happened to watch the introduction to Microsoft's E3 2017 conference, you might have noticed that Gears of War 4 characters were spotted in its montage of titles that will take advantage of the Xbox One X's capabilities. While it may have made Xbox One owners sad last year when The Coalition showed the title running in 4K with a NVIDIA GTX 1080 GPU at Gamescom 2016, they now have a chance to taste this kind of graphical fidelity with the Xbox One X. For those who own it, they will receive the game as a free upgrade in 2018.
In a pre-recorded session before flying out to E3 2017, The Coalition's Studio head Rob Fergusson sat down with Technical Director Mike Rayner to discuss what the Xbox One X affords for Gears of War 4. As should be expected, the game will run in true 4K with HDR, pointing out that the original textures and details were designed to be viewed at this resolution. Rayner also points out that there will be dynamic shadows, volumetric light scattering (i.e. "god rays"), increased anti-aliasing, and other features. In a separate article, he expounds on this further.
We also have other features like improved reflections, longer draw distances and higher poly counts to further bump up the fidelity of our world.An obvious concern is for those playing on television sets with lower resolutions, and Rayner confirms that they need not worry about these upgrades being pointless. Rather than remaining at 4K, the Xbox One X will detect the output and supersample the image down to the highest resolution beneath 4K, which will actually create even more details and anti-aliasing so the hardware taps into its full potential. However, while the multiplayer will run in 60 frames-per-second, the campaign will remain at 30 and instead be focused on increasing the image quality.
If you don't own Gears of War 4, you can download a free game trial until June 15. For Rayner's full discussion with Fergusson, watch the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AqRSKHpjQ4
If you want to know more about this and other announcements happening at E3 then be sure to check out our E3 2017 Coverage Hub.
It seemed pretty obvious that we would see an upgrade to Gears of War 4 on the "Scorpio," but what do you make of the finer details now that they've been revealed? Will you be playing it in 4K on the Xbox One X or have already done so on PC? Burrow into the depths of the comments section like the Locust Horde to let us know.
