The Red Dead Redemption PS4 port was controversial from the outset for a few reasons, which mainly revolved around its high $49.99 price. Rockstar Games has seemingly not assuaged those fears after footage of the game has come out since technical analyses have pointed out its relative lack of upgrades on PS4, PS4 Pro, and PS5.
The Red Dead PS4 port is a “bare-bones effort”
The technical experts at Digital Foundry broke down the PS4 version. It gives players the option to use FSR 2 (AMD’s upscaling tech) for anti-aliasing, but also has an FXAA (fast approximate anti-aliasing) option, which the outlet noted was inferior. It runs at native 4K and 30 frames per second on PS4 Pro and PS5. The base PS4 runs the game at 1080p at 30 frames per second.
The PS5 port does not bump the frame rate up to 60 frames per second when played in backwards compatibility mode like some other PS4 games. This long list of enhanced PS4 games includes Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part II, Assassin’s Creed Origins, 2018’s God of War, 2016’s Ratchet & Clank, and the Destroy All Humans remake, just to name a few. We’ve reached out to Rockstar and asked if a patch to enable 60 frames per second on PS5 is in the works and will update this story if we get an answer.
The actual visuals in this Red Dead Redemption PS4 port haven’t been updated much, either, according to Digital Foundry, and the textures are essentially untouched. The PS4 version has higher shadow quality, but, as the outlet noted, the outlines are rather sharp and some might prefer the old softer look. The user interface, aside from the button prompts, has also not been redrawn and each element still runs at 720p, meaning the menus can look a little blurry.
Because of these limitations and the lack of a PC version, there still isn’t an official way to play Red Dead Redemption at 60 frames per second. However, Digital Foundry released a video in July about the emulated Xbox 360 version running at a higher frame rate on PC. Digital Foundry’s Alex Battaglia praised this higher frame rate since he claimed it made the open-world cowboy epic feel smoother.
