Elden Ring was created using the proprietary in-house Dantelion engine. The engine makes use of middleware like Havok and Bink and as such is able to be compatible to a wide-range of devices, PC and console alike. The game is available on PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series’ and PC. But which is the best platform for Elden Ring?
To say that From Software’s Hidetaka Miyazaki ‘knocked it out of the park’ with Elden Ring would be an understatement. The latest in the widely polarising Soulsborne series, Elden Ring released in 2022 to “universal acclaim” according to Metacritic. The game has sold 20 million copies as of February 2023 and is still selling copies as we speak. It has been credited highly due to the open-world nature, George R R Martins help in writing, and welcoming Miyazaki himself back to the proverbial captain’s seat.
As with all Soulsborne games, Elden Ring takes place in a fictional nightmarish world, this time, that world is the ‘lands between’. During gameplay the player chooses a class and seeks to eliminate several demigods who rule over the ‘lands between’ in order to save the realm from corruption.
Elden Ring on PC
Elden Ring on PC is nothing short of a gamble. Players have reported texture popping, slowdowns, rubberbanding and worst of all, entire system crashes. The game has been provided a number of QOL updates and system stability updates since its 2022 release but is still in no way a ‘perfect experience’.
Elden Ring on Xbox One
Elden Ring on Xbox One has, well, it has frame-rate issues, not to mention due to the limited capability of the console, also not looking its best.
Again, texture issues and slowdowns plague the Xbox One version and serve to make the experience even more unhappy than the demigods themselves intend your in-game life to be.
Elden Ring on PS4
The PS4 is still one of the most powerful machines on the market, with production only just beginning to wind down on the first-party games in-house.
Having said that, Elden Ring certainly does look aged on the PS4, again due to limitations.
The PS4’s cooling system tends to struggle with the sheer amount of graphical information being processed and the audible level of the fan will alert you to this.
It’s essentially playable and looks great but you will definitely need headphones.
Elden Ring on Xbox Series’
The Xbox Series S and X are formidable consoles, they pack a fantastic graphics chip which is capable of 4K rendering and an on-board CPU.
That is more powerful than the vast majority of gaming laptops, which means there is no reason that they both can’t run Elden Ring right?
Wrong, unfortunately this is where the budget Series S starts to embody the old saying “you get what you pay for”, as – unlike the Series S – the Series X is capable of running the game at 2160p and 30fps, the tradeoff being framerate versus fidelity.
Elden Ring on PS5
It makes a great deal of sense that the game would run best on a Sony console and seems almost cosmically faithful as the Soulsborne series started life back in 2009 as a PS3 exclusive. The PS5 IS capable of running the game in 60FPS, the caveat however is that the game will run in checkerboard 1800p and not 2160p and you will need to use the PS4 Pro version to achieve these results.
So there we have it, technically, the PS5 is capable of running ER in the most enjoyable way but only through a handful of tinkering. The game has been optimised to run across a number of platforms and updates are still being made available to help with stability. All we can do is hope that one day soon, we can enjoy ‘the lands between’ in all it’s 4K glory, the way Miyazaki meant it to be.
