Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Resident Evil devs tout PS5 Pro benefits - and a lot of them are still talking about using a Performance Mode

When the PS5 Pro was revealed, lead system architect Mark Cerny said the controversially expensive console is intended to remove the decision between fidelity and performance mode, but now it sounds like many games will still have two different modes to choose from.

On Wednesday, a new PlayStation Blog was published that includes a round-up of 14 major studios; some Sony-owned and others third-party; touting the visual and performance benefits of PS5 Pro. For example, Remedy communications director Thomas Puha said Alan Wake 2, a game in which "the mood and environmental story-telling are essential," will be more immersive thanks to the addition of ray tracing. 

Meanwhile, Assassin's Creed Shadows technology director Pierre Fortin similarly said the PS5 Pro version of the game will have "enhanced ray-traced global illumination technology" as well as "improved rendering systems and an increase in the photorealism and immersion of the game." 

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Capcom said the addition of 120 FPS gameplay to Resident Evil Village will "provide the best possible user experience" and make "the unique and memorable cast of characters [look] even more realistic, adding greatly to the scare factor, and the action scenes have more punch than ever before." Resident Evil 4 Remake will also benefit from "a higher framerate, making the dynamic action even more intense", and "ultra-high-resolution technology, painting vividly realistic imagery brimming with detailed environments and more natural and beautiful visual effects than ever before."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard technical director Maciej Kurowski said the upcoming sequel will have "upgraded image quality thanks to Sony's new AI-based upscalers, PSSR." BioWare also said it's "enabled Raytraced Ambient Occlusion (RTAO) in the 60FPS Performance mode, which previously was only available on the base PlayStation 5 with 30FPS Fidelity mode."

One common theme I noticed reading through all of the developer statements is that many of them confirm that fidelity and performance modes will still exist in their PS5 Pro ports, just with higher frame rates and resolutions than before. Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Alan Wake 2, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor are among them, while Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has a new PS5 Pro-exclusive "Enhanced" mode with 60 FPS and "a resolution on par with that of Graphics Mode."

Similarly, Insomniac said Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will all have a new default "Performance Pro" mode, which will have the ideal trifecta of 4K resolution, ray tracing, and 60 frames per second.

None of this is likely to change many minds about whether the PS5 Pro is worth $700, but it does blatantly fly in the face of Sony's existing messaging on the benefits of upgrading. 

Meanwhile, Sony says the PS5 Pro doesn't come with a disc drive because it's "giving players choices," like the choice to spend $80 extra to play the physical games "most players" have.