When we started working on PS4 Pro, we knew the Infamous titles were going to be an amazing showcase for HDR and 4K resolution. If you played either of the games, you know that Infamous Second Son and Infamous First Light were a spectacle of vibrant superpowers and explosions inside a rainy Seattle cityscape.
It all started with Second Son where we first introduced our incredible particle effects as Delsin discovers his own set of powers. Then in First Light (which is still one of my favorite projects we’ve made at Sucker Punch), Fetch had a style all her own, fast and deadly, with incredible neon powers. With our new patch to take advantage of the PS4 Pro, those effects have never looked better. There are numerous reasons to return to First Light and Second Son with PS4 Pro, but let me dial into the three big ones.
First up is HDR. When we re-worked our engine to create Infamous Second Son for the PS4, we had a strict focus on realistic lighting and exposure. We wanted the art direction and tech to reflect realism in a way that immerses players in the damp, rainy streets of Seattle. We did a lot of work to ensure our sky, sun, and light sources felt like the real thing. So why is HDR such a big deal now? This patch, along with an HDR capable TV, pushes those crazy bright values even further.
Yes, that means looking at the sun or sky in our game feels extremely bright, providing a level of contrast I’ve never seen in our game before. The vibrancy of the sky and lighting creates some really striking and beautiful moments. Furthermore, this particular feature will work on the standard PS4 as long as you have an HDR capable TV.
The second reason is in the smaller details. In both games, the Seattle city streets are filled with incredible art from our hard working art team. Signs, coffee cups, puddles, fall leaves — this world is filled with little touches waiting to be noticed. With PS4 Pro’s increased resolution, those touches are even more crisp. You can see detail on bricks and signs that previously went unnoticed. When we created the Seattle landscape, we had a goal to make everything wet. That means reflections of those details on every surface. It also meant a fair amount of specular aliasing. The increased resolution improves this and many other alias issues. And if you don’t have a 4K TV, you’ll still see a smoother image as the PS4 Pro will scale down to match your 1080p display.
The third — and best — reason to revisit the Infamous games on PS4 Pro is simple: the powers look amazing. Delsin’s smoke powers and Fetch’s neon powers are particularly impressive. Watching the original effects now in 4K and HDR, I notice details I didn’t even know existed. For example, when Fetch does a ground pound, waves of brilliantly flickering particles erupt in all directions. We even improved photo-mode to let you pause on powers. My favorite is winding up Fetch’s ultimate neon bomb and then quickly activating photo-mode to pause and observe the thousands of emissive particles bits forming around her.
As a developer, it’s great to see games that we released two years ago come to life in more dazzling ways than ever before. The increased power, resolution, and HDR capabilities of the PS4 Pro breathe new life into every corner of the game.
If you’re into lighting, rendering, or VFX, I would encourage you to check it out. Second Son and First Light are beautiful games on PS4, but on PS4 Pro, they’re an exciting window into the future.
Won’t be coming back to these as I have the platinums but I’ve very excited to take advantage of these features and the Pro in your next project!
i think it’s pretty sad not to replay this game just because you got platinum on this. Trophies are a waste of time tbh.
Trophies are a waste of time? Ya, like play games in general is not a waste of time…….
I will also not be going back to the games I have already got the platinum trophy in.
lethal that is a very xbox attitude… “yea i got 1000 out of 1000 so this game is garbage now”
so you only play games for trophys thats lame
ah how I miss the days there weren’t any trophies and people bragging about their platinums like it’s some big achievement in life. Pathetic, that’s what it is.
I’ll be playing this game on PRO again when it releases! Such a fantastic game. I wish there was a sequel with COLE though.
Game looked amazing already, love infamous period, and got a plat on this one as well as infamous 2, we def replay and i hope some day it’s free for ps plys so millions of others can see how great it is also
If you have an HDR TV, I would definitely fire up Second Son or First Light just to get a glimpse. If you’re anything like me, you’ll likely spend a bunch of time just looking at the effects and lighting improvements.
What about infamous for ps vita !?
Anyway, Nintendo Switch is on the way..
finaly AAA games on the Go !!!!!
It’s never happening. Give up on expecting first-party titles for Vita.
Blame SCEA, there was an Infamous game for Vita being made. It got cancelled after Vita sales took a dive in the US. They stopped supporting it, unlike SCEJ who is still giving Vita love.
Also blame consumers for saying Vita was too expensive ($250 at launch, same launch price as PSP). Then following that up with complaints about expensive proprietary Memory Cards. Two very poor reasons to not buy such a great handheld (because sales don’t exist apparently).
You really think people are going to spend $400, and then $50-60 per game, on the worst version of a game, just to play the games on a portable device?
Not gonna happen. We know the switch isn’t going to be $300 or less because if it were they would have dropped the Wii U price so that they could drive up sales of their games this holiday season and get people to buy Breathe of the Wild. No AAA games are going to come out for a device that costs $400, and has a 3-4 hour battery life, because the sales of the Switch will be as low as the Vita, and without sales, there’s no interest in 3rd parties. Especially not on Nintendo platforms where we know for a fact that 3rd parties struggle.
Blame consumers for saying that a product that was literally too expensive was too expensive? That’s ridiculous. How about you get on the right team and blame Sony for the ridiculously overpriced proprietary memory cards that only work in the Vita and nothing else when they should have used micro SD cards? $250 for the Vita + $20 for a decent sized micro SD card would have been perfectly reasonable. $250 for the Vita + $100 for a decent sized Vita memory card puts the entire bundle at $350, which is absolutely too expensive.
Oh, and “because sales don’t exist apparently”? Really? Did it ever occur to you that maybe people were waiting for sales, but instead of having sales, Sony just dropped all support in the west? Sony never even gave the Vita a chance in the US, and they never tried to turn it around like they turned the PS3 around.
Consumers who are anti-consumer disgust me to no end.
MakaiOokami, Breath of the Wild isn’t out until March 2017. There is literally nothing Nintendo could do this holiday season to sell more copies of a game that isn’t on store shelves.
And so the wait for a game with boosted framerate continues. All this HDR and 4K is nice I guess, but they’re not really selling points for me.
Thanks for pointing this out JamzDance. I failed to mention in the post above, but we did include a performance option. You can choose either “Better Frame Rate” or “Higher Resolution”. Default is set to the higher resolution option.
^YES!!!^ Higher frame rate FTW! I have a 4k TV, which up scales HD to 4k quite well already. But both of these titles look their best when they are hitting higher FPS – something that trumotion can’t accurately replicate. Can’t wait to replay and try out the new framerates!
I think the messaging for the PS4 Pro has been a lot of wrong and very little right. Most people have 1080p TVs. The primary thing that the PS4 Pro should promote are the improvements for 1080p TVs. If you’re one of those few with a low lag HDR capable 4K TV, that’s great, but you’re a part of a tiny minority. Most of us want to hear about increased FPS and more details in a 1080p image rather than a prettier 4K image.
Would be nice if those pics had regular PS4 pics side by side cause right now Im thinking “Looks nice but it already looked nice to begin with soooo this doesnt really look different to me”
Unless you are looking at this website on a 4k HDR TV then any comparison pictures they could post are not going to show you most of the differences they are talking about because your computer monitor, tablet, phone, etc.. won’t have the additional colors and brightness provided by HDR. So old style side by side comparisons are not really good anymore.
Give us a Cole Magrath game. I want to see the beautiful blue or dark lightning!
Maybe you could showcase the difference between PS4 and PS4 Pro on a standard 1080p HDTV.
I am beginning to believe that the difference is so small that a comparison will only show that there is not a very big difference at all.
These 4k screens don’t to anything for the majority of people who still have 1080p HDTV’s except to mislead them.
showcasing really does no justice. they would literally have to zoom each particle just to show you the difference. it’s subtle but at the same time, it’s not. i can’t really explain it.
just so im not really crazy, im gonna connect my old led tv tonight then switch back to my 4K/ HDR
and if you have a old 1080p tv, it’s not misleading. doubt any company would go through the effor tot advertise a feature on a tv then have all these devs gassing everyone up as well….i just think it would b too much work just to cover up a lie…
everything is not a conspiracy, they dont want your money.
@YungShep
That is exactly my point…the difference between PS4 and PS4 Pro on a standard 1080p HDTV must be very small. There are zero comparisons and if there is a difference at all, it will show on a 1080p display.
Maybe if these blog post would stop saying “far greater” or “big increase” in the difference between PS4 and PS4 Pro on a 1080p display, I would stop asking for a comparison.
They are the ones that are stating there is a big difference, I am only asking for proof of this difference. Is that really a lot to ask as a consumer when they use all these buzz words describing the difference, but have yet to show the difference?
The way resolution works is that far away on a big screen you can’t tell much of a difference between close up on a small screen. Based on how far you are, the pixels are too small to differentiate. You can hope for better detail and stuff to come through on bigger screens, and you can see improvements.
Then there’s HDR, which is amazing. It is gorgeous and does a LOT for gaming. I bet if you saw a 1080p Infamous and 1080p Infamous with HDR you’d go “Oh wow this is awesome! I need this t.v.”
The problem is though, that unless you have an HDR t.v. or a 4k t.v., all they can really show you is, slight differences. HDR will look blown out if they try and show it to you, because the camera, and the pixels can’t replicate what your eye will see, so they can’t really show you how good it looks.
But to pretend that they are lying somehow?
That just means you have no imagination what so ever. Though to be fair, you have to have an idea of what to imagine, and imagining things accurately you’ve never experienced, is a bit difficult.
Any idea when the patch will drop? I might fire up First Light on the old PS4 to check out the HDR impact while I wait for stuff to d/l on the PS4 Pro!
it’s out already.
Oh, that’s awesome, thanks! (I don’t have either currently installed, which is why I didn’t realize.)
BothIinfamous: Second Son and First Light were amazing graphically from day one but your HDR versions need work. You have a brightness slider in the game settings but you also need a CONTRAST slider. On a properly calibrated TV your games are crushing black badly. Even changing the HDMI black level doesn’t help much. Samsung JS9500 1000 nit will full array backlighting and HDR looks fine with NBA 2K17, Forza Horizon 3 and The Last of Us Remastered. Didn’t get a chance to thoroughly check out Uncharted 4. Something is wrong with your two games. Please investigate. I look forward to playing them when your HDR is perfected.
“On a properly calibrated TV your games are crushing black badly. ” Yep, I have the same problem. I too am experiencing black crush in the HDR version of the Infamous games. All of the other HDR enabled games I’ve trired on my PS4 pro and Vizio P55c1 look perfect.
Looks great but can we get DLC or even a game based on Eugene? I loved First Light but Eugene’s powers are probably my favorite.
new 4k/ HDR member right here. and i did test out First Light on HDR last night…took a while to configure my tv (total user error) so i only tested it for about 5-10 min. looks great, but i know it’s gonna look even better on ps4 pro.
ill check out second son tonight.
Thanks YungShep! HDR is a new feature for everyone, including us. We’re glad you were able to find the right settings on your tv to showcase the visuals as best as possible. Have fun in Second Son… those TV powers look crazy good in HDR.
Such an underrated game. When I first played it for an hour, I didn’t think it was great for some reason. Months later I went back to it, and while playing through it I realized that it’s easily one of the top PS4 games and played all the way to the Platinum. The game simply looks incredible on standard PS4 with some of the best effects in any game period regardless of platform. Glad I still haven’t played First Light, because now I’ll get to play it on PS4 Pro with a much higher resolution and with HDR. I hope my eyes don’t melt from the Awesomeness you guys created.
There are some great moments in First Light. Exciting that you’ll get to experience that with the Pro. Be sure to let us know what you think about Fetch’s story!
Will definetly check it out. But please Sucker Punch; make another game!
Do you guys plan on any PS3 remasters for PS4? I would be open to see them.
I tryed both infamous second son and First light in hdr yesterday. While the color look really more natural, the screen become incredibly dim ( Similar to lowering the backlight to 5 or so ). I have put the game brightness to max and it still too dim. So overall, the screen is really less impressive to watch. I am not alone with this issue. I know that hdr isnt supposed to have a dim screen. I have watched samsung demo on usb drive and those look fantastic. I hope this get resolved in the futur or i dont see myself getting much benefits from hdr on playstation.
I have the same problem. Vizio P55 C-1, Last Light and Second SOn have crushed blacks when HDR mode is enabled. I know my settings are correct, and my TV displays ALL of the other HDR enabled PS4 games I’ve tried Perfectly. Please look into the HDR problem Sucker Punch, I will be holding off playing through the games until this is fixed.
I hope that a remaster for Infamous 1+2 and Festival of Blood are in the works. They were three of the BEST games to come out last generation and I would LOVE to play them again on PS4.
I own a 4K TV Set, 50 inches to be exact in screen size. Although mine isn’t equipped with HDR.. did I future proof too early?? :/
If you have an 8-bit panel, then yes you’re too early. Need a 10-bit panel to really experience HDR. There is also Dolby Vision(12-bit), and most those tv’s also do HDR10.
Give every game 2 options:
1. 1080p stable 60fps
2. “4K” Version
And everybody would be happy
But nooo, sony makes a sony decision.
Like this stupid “no advantage vor PS4 Pro games in multiplayer”.
But then they license this strange Mouse and Keyboardlike thing for PS4. GENIUS SONY IS GENIUS.
Every PC gamer has a different setup, nobody complains.
As a note that I forgot to mention in the blog post above – we did include a performance option. You can choose either “Better Frame Rate” or “Higher Resolution” with the default being the higher resolution option.
How is playing a game with an advantage make it fun? I’d much rather play a fir game where everyone plays by the same rules and has the same chances based on skill.
Agreed 100%. If every PS4 Pro game does not have a “1080p 60 FPS” option, or just a “60 FPS, whatever resolution it ends up being” option (like all existing PS4 and Xbox One and Wii U games should have), then the PS4 Pro is pretty useless to me and it’s going to fail in Andrew House’s stated goal of keeping me from leaving the PlayStation ecosystem for PC.
It’s nice to see that inFamous will have this option, but what about the other games?
Well when Pro is out I’ll give it a go and finish the game (bad side) as well as fetch & that paper gal left it on part 5 almost there
I have a 4K tv with HDR, but HDR adds pretty significant input lag. Can HDR features be turned on and off?
This is due to to you display, some TV’s don’t jump much from HDR.
Yes, HDR settings are in the ps4 “settings” menu, and can be unchecked.
I may be able to justify upgrading to a PS4 Pro, but not a 4K HDR screen as well. Is there more you can tell us about the benefits of playing these games on a Pro with a 1080p display? 60fps? More effects? Thanks. :)
PS: I sooooo would buy Infamous 1 & 2 remastered for PS4/Pro… just as so as you know… ;)
Based on the post, it sounds like the game is super sampled, which means it’s running at a higher resolution, and being down sampled to 1080. This technique generally sharpens everything, and reduces the “shimmer” effect seen on edges when in motion(such as when a fence looks shimmery while you turn the camera in many games).
Sounds like 60fps is also an option. So for 1080 you are getting to choose either the super-sampling or 60fps, it seems.
Lol gotta laugh on Sony for promoting Pro as if it was PS5.And gotta laugh even more on those amazed by this cash-grabber.
I’m one to stay hours just gazing at the game details,lighting,physics,animation and graphics when they’re impressive.Second Son and 1st Light are stunning already.Sorry but Pro won’t make any difference…its a useless crap,these Pro advertisement are the same thing as cosmetics advertisement LMAO.
People…give up on being alienated.
Pretty disappointed there isn’t any news of a 60 FPS lock after the upgrade in the hardware. While it’s nice to have the option of an unlocked frame rate I was kind of expecting a locked 60 FPS option. Unless more games start pushing for 60 FPS on PS4 Pro I’m never getting one. I have no interest in slightly different colors and a clearer image when the games already look good.
Step 1) Go look at pictures already available from Second Son’s and First Light’s launches in 2014. Standard PS4 quality on your 1080p TV/monitor.
Step 2) Look at these images of Second Son and First Light on your 1080p TV/monitor. That’s exactly what you would get, a downsampled image from the higher resolution image being created by the PS4 Pro.
Step 3) You now have your side-by-side comparison.
I’d imagine a big part of the difference in performance will be in motion. Second Son and First Light already looked amazing on 1080p displays. I doubt static images will be able to show just how much better the game will look “IN MOTION” with a 4K/HDR display running on PS4 Pro.
I never finished the plat on First Light, so I’ll definitely go back to do that. And now I’ll need to grab Second Son off the PS Store just to mess around with it. Can’t wait to see how great these look.
So you can’t have higher frame rate and higher resolution at the same time?
Peasant boxes. I wish Sony would give up on these crap consoles and go PC. The only market that can do 60+ god and 1080p+ resolutions at all times.
Nobody is stopping you from going PC.
When are we going to hear about the studio’s next game??
Can’t wait to see what you guys at Sucker Punch are working on.
Greetings Jason Connell. Thank you for the awesome updates. I noticed in PS Meeting videos that Infamous Last Light packs more and denser particle effects on PS4 PRO. Are those by default in any mode on PS4 PRO or just for a certain mode? What are the other improved or added graphical effects? Will Infamous Second Son benefit from it too? Thanks.
So the HDR patch is also going to look this good on the standard PS4 (minus the higher resolution)?
Also, does the HDR make the snapshots and shared video look better as well?
I see the screens here showing off HDR do look more robust as far as the lighting goes.
If that’s the case I think they should always turn on HDR for sharing regardless if the user has a compatible TV or not.
Yep, “better framerate” option for me all the way. Super excited to play this!
If i have 65 oled 4k tv but no hdr will the ps4 pro still produce good visual and resolusion
I have a 4k TV, so I’ll probably get the Playstation Pro, and choose a higher frame rate over a higher resolution since it’s only being upscale anyway. Then I’ll run it through the TV input on my Xbox One S to give me the 4k resolution. Seems like the best setup to me.
It is not being upscaled, it is native 4K, and that is the whole point of these PS4 Pro patches for games. I suspect you don’t really understand what upscaled actually means, or you didn’t read the PS4 Pro FAQ. There are a number of people spreading incorrect information about the Pro.
Paraphrased from the FAQ:
1) The Pro will upscale games that do not support native 4K.
2) Games that are patched or support the Pro at release have the option of supporting 4K natively. (If you read this article, you’ll see that the Infamous games support 4K)
Running your PS4 through your XBone TV input is a very bad idea, as the XBone tv input introduces a lot of input lag.
BLACK CRUSH SOLVED!!!!
Ok, I have made some progress. My HDR picture was too dark and unacceptable. It was crushing Black. After messing with various combinations of settings on the PS4 and my Samsung JS9500 I found something that works. On the PS4, the RGB Range must be set to “Full”. On my TV the HDMI Black Level must be set to “Normal”. I set my Gamma to +2 and Dynamic Contrast to “Medium”. In the game I set the Brightness slider to 8 out of 10. Black crush gone for the most part with beautiful color with lots of pop and all associated HDR goodness intact.
But I must say this is the first game that necessitated me changing RGB and HDMI black levels. The Last Of Us Remastered, NBA 2K17, Uncharted 4, Forza Horizon 3, Gears of War 4 and Shadow Warrior 2’s (On PC) HDR modes worked fine with Limited HDMI Black levels on the consoles, PC and TV.
Sucker Punch, you have to give consumers the info on how to set there consoles and TVs properly so that your gorgeous games get to shine in HDR because they require different settings. There are MANY people out there complaining that the picture is too dark RIGHT NOW.
Sucker Punch, you could also fix your games so that they work properly in Limited RGB Range being that the console recommends Auto and the TV recommends Auto. All of the OTHER games that have HDR support work properly with Limited.
Your settings are all wrong. By setting your PS4 to full range and your TV to normal, you are crushing both blacks and whites at the upper ends of both.
You shouldn’t need to adjust your settings lke that to get it to display correctly. Now when you go to play your other games, you’ll need to change the settings back. The problem is not solved. HDR needs work!
You guys are like a bunch of nagging old women. Apparently if you don’t have a 4k or care about frame rates the ps4 pro is not for you. IF ITS NOT FOR YOU QUIT COMPLAINING! For those of us with a quality 4k, HDR capable of true 60 fps, well we will be enjoying the hell out of the Pro. I cannot wait to see some of my favorite games in 4k HDR; infamous, BLOPS 3, the Last of Us, fifa 17 and BF1. All titles look amazing and its really unfortunate that if you don’t have the tv or the money that you have to bash it. No one’s saying regular ps4 isn’t awesome still but ps4 pro will be the new standard of UHD gaming.
@TheTrainJob:
Hey Mr. Snarky, on Samsung TVs,
Normal = 0-255 (Full)
Low = 16-235 (Limited)
I thought someone as informed as you would know that different TV manufacturers use different names for the same features.
They all could just call it Full and Limited….but they don’t. See that’s why I specifically named the Brand and model number of my 4K TV. Now you are even smarter. No thanks necessary.
Where is the new Infamous ?
I believe Sucker Punch is working on the new Spider-Man game. So, we may not see a new Infamous game for quite a while unfortunately.
Wow I can’t wait to try these out. I came late to the Infamous party (I bought both of them fairly recently) and I haven’t played First Light yet because I’m still working on Second Son. So, I get to see the better graphics in both games without having to revisit games I’ve already beaten.
I hope a few of my other favorite games get patches too. I saw The Last of Us got one so I’m really looking forward to that as well. IMO anything that makes the games look better is a good thing. I’m glad to see the improvements. Thanks for supporting your games this late after they released!
Hi,
I play many of my games through Playstation TV to a 1080p TV via remote play from my PS4. Will the PS4 Pro improve my remote play experience of your game?
Thanks
You guys need to try this on LG latest 4K OLED HDR TV
That would be ridiculously beautiful. I almost purchased that TV. It was just a wee bit too small for me, and my 4 year old does not care how expensive something is.
Hi Sucker Punch, I have a question.
What’s the resolution on “Better Framerate” mode? 1080p native? Or it will be supersampled in a 1080p TV just like the “High Resolution” mode?
First light is jaw droppingly pretty on the Pro. The image is so clean. I will purchase the core game today. Great job, and thank you for the free patch!!!
PLaying through infamous second son on my ps4 Pro. I thought the game looked amazing before… This game is STUNNING on PS4 PRO with the upgrades from 4K/HDR. Very impressed Sony and SuckerPunch! Platinums in every infamous Title. Really would love to hear news on a new game. This series is very much one of my favs! Make it happen Sony/SuckerPunch!?! Need New game. Second Son 2 be nice