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Fallout 4 is a game at odds with itself; an arresting open-world adventure with a staggering number of moving parts, but also one where its engine trembles under its demands. Having picked apart all three versions at length, it's fair to say PlayStation 4 and Xbox One each have unshakeable performance issues that can't be ignored. However, in visual terms they fall very close to one another - and at its top settings, PC adds some interesting touches over the console experience.Let's rattle off the basics first: the 1920x1080 checkbox is readily ticked for both consoles, and pixel-counting gives us the precise same return. It's a state of affairs that perhaps points to Xbox One as the focus for Bethesda at the start of Fallout 4's development, and visuals are almost entirely matched with PS4. We have an accomplished implementation of temporal anti-aliasing on each console too, while texture map quality, shadows and even the quality of specular mapping in rain are a direct match.
Introducing PC at ultra settings is very revealing here, and shows just how much PS4 and Xbox One retain on balance. As tested on the latest patch, 1.01, on each version, the good news for console owners is that you're getting the maximum quality in textures, alpha effects and geometry across the game. PC's take on this post-apocalyptic Boston setting is identical in its building blocks. To an extent, this might frustrate those looking to squeeze a radically overhauled visual setup on PC - but there remain three main areas of improvement.
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