Jedi: Survivor supports raytracing on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S

Respawn confirms that its new Star Wars action-adventure game will support real-time raytracing and other high-end optimizations on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles.

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Yesterday Respawn and EA announced Jedi: Survivor, the sequel to 2019's Jedi: Fallen Order. Set 5 years after the original game, Jedi Cal Kestis is on a desperate mission for hope while being hunted by the ruthless Empire. Apart from a gripping, "complex and mature" story, Respawn is building the game from the ground up for PS5 and Xbox Series systems.

The devs are thrilled about the new power limits and features offered by the consoles. In a recent interview with StarWars.com, Jedi: Survivor game director Stig Asmussen confirms the project will harness each system's power boost in various ways including real-time raytracing.

"So I think the biggest thing is ray tracing, or lighting," Asmussen said when asked about how the new consoles have expanded production.

"That's allowing us to do real-time lighting, all the time, at a fidelity that's well beyond anything that we've ever produced before. Since it's real-time, we get to see the changes as we tweak the lights - immediately, essentially.

"That means that we have more time to polish, that means that we can iterate more, and we can get better results that feel more filmic."

Respawn is also a big fan of the ultra-fast PCIe 4.0 SSDs included in both systems. The SSDs allow developers to deploy assets and on-screen visuals faster than ever before, which leads to potentially eliminating loading screens and increasing environment dynamism.

"Beyond that, we have these blazing fast drives on these consoles that are allowing us to load tons of content really quickly.

"I've always worked on streaming games - games that don't have load screens. The fact that these consoles have such fast storage has made it even easier. Those are probably the two biggest benefits. PlayStation 5 has some really interesting haptics on their controller that we're digging into, and it's just an easier process in general."

Jedi: Survivor is due out sometime in 2023 and will be part of EA's big FY23 release slate, so expect the game to launch before March 2023.