“Turns a dream into reality”: a Digital Foundry expert was impressed by the work of Bloodborne on PC via the shadPS4 emulator

The progress of the shadPS4 emulator in playing the cult gothic action game Bloodborne on PC has already amazed players, and now the ambitious utility has been tested by Digital Foundry specialist Thomas Morgan.

Image source: Nexus Mods (fromsoftserve)

Let us remind you that in almost 10 years since its release, Bloodborne has not received a patch that improves the game’s performance on PS5. Due to backward compatibility on the latest Sony console, the action movie still produces the same “nervous” 30 frames per second in 1080p resolution as on the PS4.

According to Morgan, in its current form, shadPS4 already allows you to complete Bloodborne from beginning to end with virtually no crashes. Performance most of the time reaches the coveted 60 fps.

The Vertex Explosion Fix mod will help you avoid such visual artifacts (image source: Digital Foundry)

Morgan tested Bloodborne in the latest (0.5.1) build of shadPS4 on a PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080. At 1152p resolution, the game produces the lion’s share of the time at 60 fps, but in difficult scenes the indicator regularly sags.

In Morgan’s tests, performance suffered due to the CPU, but in previous builds things were even worse. At the same time, on a Digital Foundry subscriber’s PC with an Intel Core i5-12600K and RTX 4080, the game runs at a stable 60 FPS.

«Reaching 60fps is an unfulfilled dream for Bloodborne fans. I’m happy to report that with major progress, emulation is already turning the dream into a reality,” Morgan said in a 12-minute Digital Foundry video.

In conclusion, Morgan called shadPS4 an incredible achievement for the team, but noted room for improving the technology and improving the game, including through mods like the ambitious Bloodborne PC Remaster Project from softserve.