When speaking to Japanese gaming website Game Spark, Sony confirmed that Demon's Souls will not support ray tracing on the PS5. The translated statement reads, that the PS5 version of Demon's Souls "does not support ray tracing. In this remake, in addition to a significant increase in the number of polygons, object density, and texture size, adopting beautiful real-time lighting technique, and tessellation technology. We bring out the details and richness of the world to the maximum."
Gavin Moore, the creative director for Bluepoint Games, was also interviewed by a Spanish website Level Up, where he explained the reason why Demon's Souls doesn't support ray tracing. When asked as to why the game doesn't support ray tracing, Moore said, “It's not because we couldn't or because the PlayStation 5 couldn't do it, it's fully capable of doing it." According to Moore, the team left ray tracing aside as it was outside the ideal of the Demon's Souls project as a whole. Moore also explained that ray tracing comes at a cost and implementing this technology means leaving out other features. With limited development time on hands, the team decided to skip ray tracing.
When the Demon's Souls remake was initially announced, Sony said that the game will feature ray tracing along with 4K resolution. And, now fans may feel disappointed knowing that it isn't the case anymore. Nevertheless, it has to be understood that despite the fact that ray tracing can improve visual quality quite dramatically, having no ray tracing doesn't mean that the game will look bad. There have been games that have done a fantastic job in rendering near-accurate shadows and reflections without the need for technologies like ray tracing.
While Demon's Souls Remake isn't getting fancy graphics, the remake is getting improved gameplay features like eight-directional rolls, new attack animations, healing balancing, and more.
Demon's Souls is releasing on November 12 on PS5.
