The Switch finishes up it's hyper successful debut year with the highly anticipated Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It's a massive game that gives players a beautiful world to explore. Too bad the Switch can’t keep up.
Playing docked
Digital Foundry carried out their usual in-depth technical analysis of XC2 and came away with news that is both good and terrible. XC2 runs on an upgraded version of the engine that was used for Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U. Digital Foundry reports that the new version of the engine produces improved collision detection, ambient occlusion, draw distance, reflections, lighting effects, motion blur, specular highlights, and foliage density and detail. That’s quite a list, and when everything works the way it should, it makes XC2 a markedly better-looking game than its predecessor. (If some technical terms are unfamiliar, check out this guide.)
One thing that hasn’t changed with the upgraded engine is screen resolution. XC2 runs at a steady 720p while docked which is the same resolution as the screen on both the Switch and the Wii U. However, when you’re playing in docked mode, you’re looking at your TV screen, not the small screen on the Switch. It would have been nice if XC2 rendered at higher resolutions based on the expectation that people would play the game in docked mode.
The obvious problem with looking at a 720p image on a large screen is that diagonal and curved lines are aliased or jagged-looking. XC2 combats this with a heavy dose of temporal anti-aliasing which solves the jaggies problem at the cost of a blurrier image.
Performance in docked mode stays at, or close to, 30 fps until a nasty bug makes an appearance. In some locations frame rate drops to lows near 20 fps, and it stays there even when you return to areas where the game previously ran at a locked 30 fps. Closing and restarting the game solves the problem, but if you return to the place where frame rate tanked, it happens again. Digital Foundry noted that the problem exists whether you play the digital version of XC2 from the Switch’s internal drive or a MicroSD card.
Playing undocked
Undocked is where XC2 crashes and burns. Unlike the docked mode which is locked at 720p, undocked uses dynamic resolution scaling. Dynamic scaling is a good move to counter the Switch’s loss of power when undocked, but the resolutions achieved by XC2 range from bad to embarrassing.
XC2 never comes close to 720p when undocked. The game generally plays out between 552p and 432p. That’s not good but it gets worse. Digital Foundry reported undocked resolutions as low as 368p. The low-resolution problem is exacerbated by the heavy use of a sharpening filter which introduces a rippling effect along edges called edge ringing. Digital Foundry characterized XC2 undocked as having the worst image quality of any Switch game seen thus far, and one of the lowest resolutions they’ve documented since the days of the Playstation Vita.
Digital Foundry was unable to gather frame rate data in undocked mode. Eyeball tests led them to conclude that undocked performance was similar to docked.
Conclusion
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a good game let down by technical problems. When docked, it doesn’t look bad but it would look better if it rendered higher than the Switch screen’s 720p. Performance is hurt by a bug that causes frame rate to tank and can only be fixed by closing and restarting the game.
When undocked, XC2 is a mess with dynamic scaling dropping resolution to lows that haven’t been seen in years. This is a real shame as the ability to play on the go while undocked is one of the Switch’s strongest selling points.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 looks like a game that is built for a more powerful console than the Switch. It would be great to see the game on an Xbox One or a Playstation 4, but Nintendo is unlikely to let that happen.
