It's enough to say that Pro acts in a similar manner to the Xbox One X but does so with a little more stability and no screen-tearing at all. BioWare has indeed capped the game now, with particularly pleasing results on the base PS4 and the Pro's 4K output mode.
Our suggestion at the time was to add a 30fps cap to the game's video options menu (which includes the ability to disable effects like motion blur, chromatic aberration and camera shake). However, what it did add was unwelcome judder to a game that otherwise stood a pretty good chance of sustaining a fairly consistent 30 frames per second. The demo ran with frame-rates completely unlocked on PS4 and PS4 Pro, which could see some interesting results - especially on Sony's enhanced console. The PlayStation builds have also changed slightly since Anthem's demo phase, but the adjustments here may cause some controversy. Throughout our normal gameplay sessions though, gameplay locked to 900p - but the unfortunate reality is that Anthem is yet another multi-platform game that struggles to perform well, disproportionately so compared to every other console version of the game.
What caused the problem is unknown - and we've not seen it again since - but the enforced, continual hit to performance may have caused a dynamic resolution scaling effect to kick in. This was a pretty serious bug (resolved by restarting the console) but throughout the duration here, rendering resolution was definitely 720p.
Interestingly, we had an issue with the Xbox One S version during one session, where the code ran at between 10-15 frames per second with v-sync engaged. Stacked up against the PC version, however, Xbox One X effectively delivers an experience on par with the game's medium preset, albeit with ambient occlusion quality equivalent to the PC's HBAO setting and shadow quality setting to high.
Resolution on the two Xboxes remains at the same full 4K and 900p seen during the demo phase, with the X delivering improved shadow quality, pushed out LODs and what the developers describe as 'enhanced terrain rendering'. Too much of the game operates in the mid to low 20s, with only internal stages set in the cave system showing anything like a target 30 frames per second. Xbox One X spends much more of the time at its target frame-rate now - which is a relief - but the overall improvement to vanilla and S consoles is minimal. Occasional screen-tearing remains (limited to the top portion of the screen - a latency saving measure that gives a little bit of extra per-frame rendering budget), but the 30fps cap seen in the demo was thankfully re-introduced.
On Thursday last week, the day one patch dropped, offering significant improvements. The experience wasn't really improved much from what we'd sampled before, screen-tearing was introduced (unseen in our VIP demo tests) and for some baffling reason, BioWare unlocked the frame-rate on base Xbox models, which combined with constant tearing, produced an ugly experience. We started looking at this as soon as it was available, but quickly decided to hold fire on publishing any conclusions - not only was the experience highly buggy, but in some respects, performance was actually worse than the VIP demo. Our first port of call after our demo testing was the Xbox build, which arrived in the hands of users ahead of its PlayStation counterpart courtesy of EA Access. But does Anthem on any system deliver an experience anything like that E3 reveal? The answer is no, but it's still a visually arresting game. Meanwhile, if you're playing on PC, be prepared for an experience that really pushes your hardware, but undeniably provides impressive enhancements over the console experience. Yes, Anthem's day one patch has indeed addressed many of the performance issues and oddities found in the console versions of the game, but despite undeniable improvements and optimisations, there's the sense that BioWare's latest epic still requires work.