Middle-earth: Shadow of War's 4K and 'Favor Quality' mode detailed for Xbox One X

By Asher Madan
last updated

We all know that Middle-earth: Shadow of War is getting updated for Xbox One X. Warner Bros. Interactive has showcased the title at numerous shows from E3 2017 to EGX 2017.

However, what does that mean? What exact enhancements will be part of the package once Xbox One X launches in November? Today we got the answer.

According to an infographic released by the publisher, Middle-earth: Shadow of War will feature two distinct modes on Xbox One X. The first, as expected, is the 4K mode which features native 4K resolution through dynamic scaling and this increases detail. There are also better textures on display and an optional pack to download 4K cinematics. The "Favor Quality" mode is potentially more interesting though.

The Favor Quality mode not only increases texture detail due to the high-quality assets, but it also increases draw distances, uses better shadows and lighting, adds more vegetation in certain scenes, enhances ambient occlusion, uses higher polygon counts, and uses better texture filtering. Get all that? You may have to read through that again. The changes are that extensive!

We initially started out thinking that Middle-earth: Shadow of War may look best in native 4K but the Favor Quality mode took us by surprise. It'll definitely be a treat to compare both modes when they launch with the Xbox One X (opens in new tab). Which mode will you play the game in? Let us know. Middle-earth: Shadow of War launched a few days ago on Xbox One so if you want to play it now be sure to check out the game at retailers. It's an Xbox Play Anywhere title as well.

Be sure to read our early impressions of Shadow of War right here.

Keep an eye on WindowsCentral.com/Gaming for all the latest in Xbox and Windows 10 gaming, accessories, news, and reviews!

Asher Madan
Asher Madan

Asher Madan handles gaming news for Windows Central. Before joining Windows Central in 2017, Asher worked for a number of different gaming outlets. He has a background in medical science and is passionate about all forms of entertainment, cooking, and antiquing.

10 Comments
  • That is really good for people that have 1080p monitor/TV
  • Exactly!
  • Aww, no favour FPS? Oh well, I'll likely go the favour quality option over the 4k, as resolution doesn't mean as much aa better draw distance and lighting (among the other improvements).
  • We initially started out thinking that Middle-earth: Shadow of War may look best in native 4K but the Favor Quality mode took us by surprise.
    Isn't that exactly what's supposed to happen? You are supposed to get a much higher quality on lower resolution.
  • Nice. Hope more games will do that in the future.
  • Yes I'd prefer better graphics. More polygons, better shadows and lighting. Than the 4k bump. I love that they are giving us options
  • This is where One X grounded PS4 Pro. It is so much more than 4K. Even on a 1080p TV the visuals are MASSIVELY enhanced. MASSIVELY. All the naysayers can eat massive crow. Just wait for Halo 6 next year. That is gonna blow everyone away. 
  • Exactly, I just read an article about how on Evil Within 2 on PS4 Pro you just get to run the same game on faster hardware, there are no designed enhancements. That's lazy. Sure, it's up to the developers, but in the end players will buy whichever console has power that is actually used to make a game better. Otherwise it's not worth it to buy a newer console, and if it runs the exact same game with no improvements, the hardware is wasted. All this does remind me a lot of PC world, where these things happen, you can have a cutting edge PC and then have unoptimized games or games that don't take full advantage of the hardware. So again consoles get to be more like PCs (having to configure quality? Caring about resolutions? Talking about hardware? Different performance levels?), which to my eyes defeats the point of buying a separate device to play, that's supposed to be worry free and "just work".
  • The problem for Ps4 Pro is the upgrade was pointless. They didn't increase the ram. The most important part. So things like improved textures, better lighting, bigger draw distances etc just won't and can't happen. It can't store this extra data. They may as well not have even brought the console out. Whereas the One X is able to pull off vastly superior visuals to the One S. As you can see by the list in Shadows Of War. And these are the first games. With less than a year Dev time. Imagine next years games. No wonder games like Crackdown 3 were delayed. State of Decay 2. MS are gonna completely obliterate Sony next year in visuals. Completely destroy them. Already this year Forza 7 on One X is going to crush GT sport visually. Here we can see Shadows Of War already has a HUGE advantage over PS4 Pro. HUGE. 
  • i have the pro and for the most part i am happy with it.  however i will be buying the x because i think the options available to choose from are very good for the consoles games.  i agree the pro should have had 12gigs of ram as without extra ram no extra assets can be added.  thats why they use checkerboard rendoring for dynamic 4k because it uses already available assets to fill in the missing parts which saves on space and ram but as you said most would prefer additional textures etc instead of a resolution boost.  i know ps4 has a ton of content but its all available for standard ps4 no need to upgrade to a different model to enjoy its exclusive games.  i got both shadow of war and the evil within 2 and cant see any difference in the 2 modes on shadow.  i havent started evil within 2 yet.