Update: Shannon Loftis also acknowledged the visual upgrades. In an interview with Larry Hryb she said, “We’re working with the original game code, but running it on an Xbox One, it just looks better, since the Xbox One is a much more powerful system. It looks more modern, the heart of the gameplay is the same, and the best part is, we’re adding Xbox Live, with all Xbox Live features. It’s an Xbox Play Anywhere game, it supports cross-play and cross-save, and best of all, achievements.”
There have been a lot of rumors flying around about Phantom Dust and how it runs at 480p on Xbox One. Despite what Shannon Loftis may have said all those months ago when the project was still in heavy development (and optimization hadn’t taken place from what I understand), that’s simply not the case in my opinion. New information provided by an individual directly working on the game states that the title looks better than before and is getting enhancements.
.@felixravn @XboxP3 Not new assets, but not just up-scaled either. A bit more technical wizardry is afoot.
— Adam Isgreen (@Ishmae1) January 30, 2017
Adam Isgreen, a creative director at Microsoft who has first-hand knowledge of games, answered questions surrounding Phantom Dust a few weeks ago on Twitter. At the end of last month, a customer asked him if Phantom Dust’s graphics were “remade in HD? Or just 480p upscaled”. Isgreen replied, “Not new assets, but not just upscaled either. A bit more technical wizardry is afoot”. I think this means that the game uses original textures but overall the visuals are crisper due to an increase in resolution when it comes to presenting the title on modern screens. Remember Turok Remastered which released a few months ago? It increased the resolution but kept existing low-quality textures. The game looked crisp but it was obvious that the textures were old. Unless Microsoft is using a new technique, maybe a form of checkerboarding to increase visual quality, that seems like the most likely explanation. Either ways, the game simply won’t be the default 480p presentation that it released with originally. The rumors floating around are false given this recent information.
A few days later Isgreen clarified his statement when answering another question. This time a customer asked him if Phantom Dust will be “coming with HD improvements”. To this Isgreen replied, “I won’t claim HD as we didn’t replace the assets, but the game looks much better than the original” and Xbox 360 backward compatible version (Phantom Dust was backward compatible on Xbox 360 for those who didn’t know). Judging by the statements made by Isgreen, it’s clear that Phantom Dust isn’t just a direct copy of the original Xbox game as there are visual improvements. For those caught up in the “480p controversy”, look no further than Isgreen’s comments that Phantom Dust on Xbox One is “not just upscaled”. Hopefully this puts the rumor to rest because the person directly in charge of the game, and who has more knowledge about the port than Shannon Loftis, said this. Phantom Dust, despite existing assets (there’s a difference between 480p assets and resolution), will look clear on Xbox One and work great on HD televisions.
.@FenixSupremo I won’t claim HD as we didn’t replace the assets, but the game looks much better than the orig. / BC version. #PhantomDust
— Adam Isgreen (@Ishmae1) February 2, 2017
Lastly, keep in mind that using Shannon Loftis’ comments about Phantom Dust which were made many months ago isn’t really a reasonable approach to extract information. She also gave conflicting statements during the Xbox Scorpio reveal for those who remember. Plans change constantly when it comes to in-development titles so you should always use the latest statements by the developers to discuss a project, especially when it comes to a contentious issue like resolution. Hopefully this will put the concerns to rest as well. It’ll look great on Xbox One and you’ll be able to enjoy it without it being a blurry mess.
Phantom Dust for Xbox One is still in development so even Isgreen’s comments could change given the complex nature of bringing an original Xbox game to Xbox One. Despite all that, as it stands now, Phantom Dust on Xbox One is getting visual upgrades so it looks “much better” on the latest machine and that is in direct contradiction to the 480p rumors. Apart from that, Phil Spencer recently confirmed in an Xbox Wire post that the game would feature a better frame rate. All of this points to a significant upgrade in my opinion.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.