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[SlimySnake]

Would you say Konami’s Professional Baseball Spirits is the best looking sports game this generation?

Definitely. I would say Fifa and Madden look really good during cutscenes as well, but the animations are just trash. The character models here could be better but the trailer used PC footage and face skin shaders looked better in that trailer so its possible the ps5 version is using medium settings. But lighting, materials, presentation, and animations are all best ive seen this gen.

 

[SlimySnake]

My point exactly. Creation engine improved upon many things since Skyrim and Fallout 4, mostly in graphics and lighting. There are aspects of Starfield that look legit next-gen, but the game engine seemingly had to sacrifice in other areas(Limited interactivity, no dismemberment ect). UE5 is clearly a massive issue for developers. UE5 games are having problems that UE4 games didn't

And I'm not sure how real a game Kingmakers is. It looks like a massive asset flip. Did some quick Google of the developer and can't find much on them. It is supposed to release Q1 of this year. That was last known info about this game that I could find


Don't pre-order!

lol There was a new trailer recently. All gameplay.

 

[GymWolf]

My point exactly. Creation engine improved upon many things since Skyrim and Fallout 4, mostly in graphics and lighting. There are aspects of Starfield that look legit next-gen, but the game engine seemingly had to sacrifice in other areas(Limited interactivity, no dismemberment ect). UE5 is clearly a massive issue for developers. UE5 games are having problems that UE4 games didn't

And I'm not sure how real a game Kingmakers is. It looks like a massive asset flip. Did some quick Google of the developer and can't find much on them. It is supposed to release Q1 of this year. That was last known info about this game that I could find


Don't pre-order!

Dude i quoted you in another topic and showed you the newest trailer with the release window.

About starfield, i sincerely doubt they dumbed down the entire game because they improved the graphic, i see no technical correlation, cyberpunk is way, way more better looking and it has way more destruction and interaction with ncps, at the very least you can kill them with gore etc and they are more reactive than starfield npcs.

And these dudes switched to ue5 for their next big ass open world, even in a time period where everyone and their mother hate ue5 and everyone think they already had one of the best engine in the business, there was literally no reason to change engine unless they thought ue5 was better than their current engine, but you know better than them i guess.

 

[SlimySnake]

Dude i'm playing the game maxed out and you know i don't trust gifs, everything look flawless in gif format.

If you zoom on all of that the materials\geometry are just fine, nothing miracolous or incredible about them, while i was playing i never thought "wow look at this super realistic wood or metal or rocks", not once.

Do you think that an asset man like doesn't zoom on everything to check the details in every damn game i play?

Well, it may not look realistic, but its not supposed to. Game has a very non-photorealistic slightly cartoonish art style like Dragon Age veilguard. I was talking about materials, lighting, shadows and geometry being a cut above other games out there. Specifically KCD2 and AC Shadows.

And while last gen games might fare better in smaller compressed gifs, I think modern games especially UE5 games look far worse. This particular gif was a bitch to capture because my gif maker kept adding jaggies to all the ropes on the boats so I had to settle for capturing just one boat. Last gen games and cross gen-ish games like KCD2 dont have this issue because they dont push near as much geometry in every scene.

I also had to put it through a gif optimizer utility to reduce the size by 50% which means compressing it by 50% so literally half of the detail is lost. What you can still see is the shadowing on the barrels. Different barrels have different materials. Same goes for the wood on the dock vs the wood used on the board. I wish it was targeting a photorealistic art style like KCD2 so we could do a 1v1 comparison but its clear to me that the game is far ahead of KCD2 in terms of lighting and asset quality.

 

[SlimySnake]

Dude i quoted you in another topic and showed you the newest trailer with the release window.

About starfield, i sincerely doubt they dumbed down the entire game because they improved the graphic, i see no technical correlation, cyberpunk is way, way more better looking and it has way more destruction and interaction with ncps, at the very least you can kill them with gore etc and they are more reactive than starfield npcs.

And these dudes switched to ue5 for their next big ass open world, even in a time period where everyone and their mother hate ue5 and everyone think they already had one of the best engine in the business, there was literally no reason to change engine unless they thought ue5 was better than their current engine, but you know better than them i guess.

Starfield has the same physics engine. Only cranked up to 10 thanks to the new CPUs offering them a lot more horsepower.

They just dont utilize it because they are buffoons. Entire game has a lot of absolutely idiotic design decisions. Todd himself admitted that he wanted this to be a dialogue focused game. Like what? its space exploration you idiot. The gameplay director talked about why they added 1000 planets. Because it was easy due to procedural creation. Shouldnt you focus on creating a few planets and making them as fun to explore as Skyrim was? Or even Fallout 4 which itself was a massive downgrade from Skyrim's fantastic open world? especially considering you took 8 years to make that game?

I dont get it. its just so silly what they did with starfield, but it has nothing to do with the engine or the focus on graphics. All of these were design decisions made by dinosaurs who have lost that edge. They should resign and pass the torch to the new generation. Maybe the CoD generation creates worse games but they cant be any worse than Starfield and Veilguard.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Definitely. I would say Fifa and Madden look really good during cutscenes as well, but the animations are just trash. The character models here could be better but the trailer used PC footage and face skin shaders looked better in that trailer so its possible the ps5 version is using medium settings. But lighting, materials, presentation, and animations are all best ive seen this gen.

Oh god tell me about it

EAFC players move like fucking string puppets, and people lap it up.

I’d play Efootball over it any day despite the live service bullshit.

 

[GymWolf]

Well, it may not look realistic, but its not supposed to. Game has a very non-photorealistic slightly cartoonish art style like Dragon Age veilguard. I was talking about materials, lighting, shadows and geometry being a cut above other games out there. Specifically KCD2 and AC Shadows.

And while last gen games might fare better in smaller compressed gifs, I think modern games especially UE5 games look far worse. This particular gif was a bitch to capture because my gif maker kept adding jaggies to all the ropes on the boats so I had to settle for capturing just one boat. Last gen games and cross gen-ish games like KCD2 dont have this issue because they dont push near as much geometry in every scene.

I also had to put it through a gif optimizer utility to reduce the size by 50% which means compressing it by 50% so literally half of the detail is lost. What you can still see is the shadowing on the barrels. Different barrels have different materials. Same goes for the wood on the dock vs the wood used on the board. I wish it was targeting a photorealistic art style like KCD2 so we could do a 1v1 comparison but its clear to me that the game is far ahead of KCD2 in terms of lighting and asset quality.

Gif format give to everything that clean cg look, real games don't look like that on my huge tv, you notice all the artifacts, the round edges, the subpar assets etc.
Horizon fw look like a pixar movie in gif format but we know that asset wise is faaar from perfect, and no game has perfect assets everywhere except maybe hb2 (until you zoom)

It is true that gifs hide microdetails, they also hide small and huge flaws and no game on the market is perfect, not even ue5 games.

About avowed, sorry, i prefer a fully realistic style so i'm really not impressed by the cartoony one and i zoomed on the assets, you still have round edges and imperfections and the wood look like the wood in many other games, i really don't see it, they are not good enough to make me say wow more than something like stalker 2 (and i wasn't wowed with that one neither).

It looks nice from afar because the art design of the locations is nice (like veilguard) but i'm not really impressed by anything else.

The lights look pretty realistic when i'm in the dark but you know i can't recognize good lights to save my life so...

 

[GymWolf]

Starfield has the same physics engine. Only cranked up to 10 thanks to the new CPUs offering them a lot more horsepower.

They just dont utilize it because they are buffoons. Entire game has a lot of absolutely idiotic design decisions. Todd himself admitted that he wanted this to be a dialogue focused game. Like what? its space exploration you idiot. The gameplay director talked about why they added 1000 planets. Because it was easy due to procedural creation. Shouldnt you focus on creating a few planets and making them as fun to explore as Skyrim was? Or even Fallout 4 which itself was a massive downgrade from Skyrim's fantastic open world? especially considering you took 8 years to make that game?

I dont get it. its just so silly what they did with starfield, but it has nothing to do with the engine or the focus on graphics. All of these were design decisions made by dinosaurs who have lost that edge. They should resign and pass the torch to the new generation. Maybe the CoD generation creates worse games but they cant be any worse than Starfield and Veilguard.

Todd is full of shit and you can't believe him, if the game was dialogue focused it would not have inferior npcs chitchat tech than fucking mass effect 1.

They spended exactly zero time trying to improve their dialogue and digital acting tech (and fucking npcs rendering) and then you have 2 heavy combat focused action rpgs like horizon and cyberpunk that mop the floor with starfield.

I don't believe one word of what that dude say, he has a history for bullshit let's not forget the 34x times the detail of f76, cmon...
Dude is trying his best to cover the flaws of the shitty ancient engine they use.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

lol There was a new trailer recently. All gameplay.

My bad, I meant to post trailer from 2 months ago. Kingsmaker looks completely off to me. We should know by end of March, as it has a Q1 release date. Excited to see what it actually looks like at launch


Also, New trailer. All gameplay

I'm not giving some unknown developer the benefit of the doubt here. This looks like a scam to me, but IDK.

 

[GymWolf]

My bad, I meant to post trailer from 2 months ago. Kingsmaker looks completely off to me. We should know by end of March, as it has a Q1 release date. Excited to see what it actually looks like at launch


Also, New trailer. All gameplay

I'm not giving some unknown developer the benefit of the doubt here. This looks like a scam to me, but IDK.

We will wait and see, i hope it's real because the game looks like a lot of mindless fun.

 

[SlimySnake]

Gif format give to everything that clean cg look, real games don't look like that on my huge tv, you notice all the artifacts, the round edges, the subpar assets etc.
Horizon fw look like a pixar movie in gif format but we know that asset wise is faaar from perfect, and no game has perfect assets everywhere except maybe hb2 (until you zoom)

It is true that gifs hide microdetails, they also hide huge flaws and no game on the market is perfectl not even ue5 games.

About avowed, sorry, i prefer a fully realistic style so i'm really not impressed by the cartoony one and i zoomed on the assets, you still have round edges and imperfections and the wook like the wood in many other games i really don't see it, they are not good enough to make me say wow more than something like stalker 2 (and i wasn't wowed with that one neither).

Im assuming you are playing at 4k dlss quality?

I always find that my gifs look far worse than what Im seeing on screen. I also play on a 65 inch OLED. Especially now that I am using Steam to capture stuff and it adds a really bad black crush to every video.

One thing that stood out to me in Avowed was the tessellation on buildings. Demon Souls still has the best tesselation in games so far this gen, and this is the first game since DS that has bricks sticking out of walls without looking fake.

 

[GymWolf]

I

Im assuming you are playing at 4k dlss quality?

I always find that my gifs look far worse than what Im seeing on screen. I also play on a 65 inch OLED. Especially now that I am using Steam to capture stuff and it adds a really bad black crush to every video.

One thing that stood out to me in Avowed was the tessellation on buildings. Demon Souls still has the best tesselation in games so far this gen, and this is the first game since DS that has bricks sticking out of walls without looking fake.

I did noticed some nice tesselation in the square stones that compose the ground of the city (sorry i don't know the word).
Not as impressive as demons tesselation but still nice.

 

[geary]

 

[SlimySnake]

Really like the dusk lighting in this game too.

But that grass man. I love how they just went nuts with the grass rendering and draw distance in this game. This is what I wanted from HFW on the PS5. Just an insane draw distance for foliage and trees.

 

[RavionUHD]

The game has absolutely beautiful visuals, here some more Screenshots in 4K Ultrawide DLDSR, Reshade and RenoDX HDR:

 

[analog_future]

Started Spider-Man 2 yesterday, maxed out on PC.

Gotta say, not very impressed. Visually it's okay; a moderate leap over the last two games. It's immediately noticeably less polished than the first two games though. And I'm not talking about the failings of the PC port. Little attention-to-detail things are missing, like when Peter "sinks" into a pile of sand, there's no actual effect to show he's sinking. He just slowly clips down into the pile of sand until he disappears.


Just one little example of several I've already noticed that makes the game feel less impressive.

 

[DanielG165]

Avowed’s been impressing me so far, mainly in its density, and how well the usage of nanite has helped to pretty much negate any texture pop-in. The lumen implementation looks rather nice here too.

 

[SlimySnake]

Started Spider-Man 2 yesterday, maxed out on PC.

Gotta say, not very impressed. Visually it's okay; a moderate leap over the last two games. It's immediately noticeably less polished than the first two games though. And I'm not talking about the failings of the PC port. Little attention-to-detail things are missing, like when Peter "sinks" into a pile of sand, there's no actual effect to show he's sinking. He just slowly clips down into the pile of sand until he disappears.


Just one little example of several I've already noticed that makes the game feel less impressive.

Remember, the Insomniac hack showed that they made the decision to dial back graphics on purpose. They asked themselves if improving the graphics would even be something most people notice, especially since it would come at a significant development cost, and clearly decided against a generational leap.

they not only reused the city which is simply unforgiveable for a full price sequel, but also targeted native 4k just like the previous spiderman game. im surprised they managed to make it look better than the first despite targeting a resolution that high.

Sony has made $12 billion in profits this gen. Up from 4 $billion last gen. the game was the fastest selling playstation game at the time. (beaten only by helldivers last year) so clearly they are swimming in money, and its coming at the expense of not just graphics, but also their prestige. the games are still given 90s by critics, but they are no longer the cream of the crop when it comes to graphics. dont think sony cares though even if devs do.

 

[analog_future]

Remember, the Insomniac hack showed that they made the decision to dial back graphics on purpose. They asked themselves if improving the graphics would even be something most people notice, especially since it would come at a significant development cost, and clearly decided against a generational leap.

they not only reused the city which is simply unforgiveable for a full price sequel, but also targeted native 4k just like the previous spiderman game. im surprised they managed to make it look better than the first despite targeting a resolution that high.

Sony has made $12 billion in profits this gen. Up from 4 $billion last gen. the game was the fastest selling playstation game at the time. (beaten only by helldivers last year) so clearly they are swimming in money, and its coming at the expense of not just graphics, but also their prestige. the games are still given 90s by critics, but they are no longer the cream of the crop when it comes to graphics. dont think sony cares though even if devs do.

Yeah, that's a shame. I'm personally finding the actual game to be pretty milquetoast as well, and I loved SM1 and Miles Morales. So far SM2 is just more of the same but with new stuff piled on top.

 

[SlimySnake]

Avowed’s been impressing me so far, mainly in its density, and how well the usage of nanite has helped to pretty much negate any texture pop-in. The lumen implementation looks rather nice here too.

DF direct had a segment that i believe was directly in response to this. someone asked them why so many youtubers are making videos about games looking worse than before, and they brought up that Uncharted 4 prologue room, and Avowed. Finally some common sense from them as they talked about how that prologue room was a one off room looking exceptional thanks to baked lighting, and Avowed and other modern games are literally trying to get there with realtime lighting solutions and nanite.

Sadly, most people wont get it. Also, graphics discourse has now turned insanely political and gamers are trashing AC and Avowed for stuff every modern game is doing. Cant shoot NPCs in Avowed hub worlds? Garbage. Meanwhile HFW, Ghost of Tushima and virtually every single game the last 10-15 years doesnt let you do that. Destroy shrines in AC Japan? garbage. Turns out every single AC game has let you destroy items in churches, rise of ronin and sekiro let you destroy objects in Japanese shrines.

I have been waiting for gamers to rise up and give these devs some shit over mid graphics upgrades, but they are too obsessed with politics, or performance, completely ignoring UE5 and Snowdrop games because they dont do 60 fps at higher resolutions.

Cant rely on anyone these days.

 

[DanielG165]

but they are no longer the cream of the crop when it comes to graphics.

Not even close anymore. I’d argue Microsoft has more graphical showpieces that push the latest tech this gen now than Sony does. We literally just saw Indiana Jones utilize RTGI to unbelievable levels, Stalker 2 bring lumen and nanite forward in a massive open world setting, and Hellblade 2 cement itself as the best looking game currently ever made. And now, just two months into this year, Avowed is out here showcasing how well nanite works (and it’s used everywhere in this game), extensive software lumen on console, and hardware lumen on PC. Basically, the full UE5 suite.

Then, you have studios like Remedy with Alan Wake 2, Ubisoft with Avatar, Game Science with Black Myth Wukong etc. that have comfortably usurped PlayStation’s current first party line-up in fidelity. The only upcoming thing they have that has thoroughly impressed is Death Stranding 2.

Otherwise, outside of Horizon: Forbidden West, they’re not the top dogs in visuals anymore.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

I finally played The Order: 1886 for its 10-year anniversary, and I can't help but wonder where a scrapped sequel could have gone

Now Playing | 10 years later, I finally tried The Order: 1886 and I was pleasantly surprised by its myth-laden Victorian setting

www.gamesradar.com

 

[SlimySnake]

Not even close anymore. I’d argue Microsoft has more graphical showpieces that push the latest tech this gen now than Sony does. We literally just saw Indiana Jones utilize RTGI to unbelievable levels, Stalker 2 bring lumen and nanite forward in a massive open world setting, and Hellblade 2 cement itself as the best looking game currently ever made. And now, just two months into this year, Avowed is out here showcasing how well nanite works (and it’s used everywhere in this game), extensive software lumen on console, and hardware lumen on PC. Basically, the full UE5 suite.

Then, you have studios like Remedy with Alan Wake 2, Ubisoft with Avatar, Game Science with Black Myth Wukong etc. that have comfortably usurped PlayStation’s current first party line-up in fidelity. The only upcoming thing they have that has thoroughly impressed is Death Stranding 2.

Otherwise, outside of Horizon: Forbidden West, they’re not the top dogs in visuals anymore.

100% agreed.

I think HFW was the best looking game when it was released, but i think several games have topped it. None by other sony studios.

If i had to rate top ten this gen, i think i would still put hfw, and demon souls in the top 10.

1) hellblade
2) avatar
3) black myth
4) silent hill 2
5) star wars outlaws
6) alan wake 2
7) jedi survivor
8) hfw
9) starfield
10) demon souls

honestly, not sure where to put hfw since it looks so dated in spots, but when it looks good, it looks really good. i am also partial to Forza 8, but i cant put racing and sports games above other games. still, its another really solid effort by ms studios that is not getting its due because of all the nonsense around xbox this gen. i really hope the anti-wokesters stay away from Fable later this year.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

Another UE5 L. Delta Force: Black Hawk Down campaign is a beautiful unoptmized mess at launch

The popular PvP multiplayer version of Delta Force is built on UE4. Developers upgraded to UE5 for the campaign

 

[GymWolf]

Started Spider-Man 2 yesterday, maxed out on PC.

Gotta say, not very impressed. Visually it's okay; a moderate leap over the last two games. It's immediately noticeably less polished than the first two games though. And I'm not talking about the failings of the PC port. Little attention-to-detail things are missing, like when Peter "sinks" into a pile of sand, there's no actual effect to show he's sinking. He just slowly clips down into the pile of sand until he disappears.


Just one little example of several I've already noticed that makes the game feel less impressive.

That is the common opinion of everyone that doesn't have a sony mark on their ass.

 

[analog_future]

While I'm still not overly impressed with Spider-Man 2, I will say that the character models and texture detail are still great. Particularly with DLSS 4 providing all that fine detail:

 

[SlimySnake]

Another UE5 L. Delta Force: Black Hawk Down campaign is a beautiful unoptmized mess at launch

The popular PvP multiplayer version of Delta Force is built on UE4. Developers upgraded to UE5 for the campaign

The timestamp doesnt really show any performance metrics though.

The game ran fine on my 3080. 60 fps at 4k dlss quality. Same as KCD2 which i have to set to dlss balanced at times.

The game looks absolutely insane. its a shame there is no controller support so i literally cant play it. Tried a few minutes with KBM and it felt like i was handicapped so stopped there. But from the opening few minutes it didnt feel unoptimized and looked jaw dropping.

 

[SlimySnake]

While I'm still not overly impressed with Spider-Man 2, I will say that the character models and texture detail are still great. Particularly with DLSS 4 providing all that fine detail:

The problem with Spiderman 2's cutscenes is that they didnt have enough time for a proper final lighting pass. Some scenes look great. Others look horrendous. The first game had no such issues.

The game was rushed by Sony for launch. The director actually went on record saying he cut out a big chunk of the game in order to ship it for the holiday season. Its no surprise that its one of the most janky sony releases ive played with some of the worst cutscene lighting in some areas

Like wtf is this? These are worse than some PS3 quality skin shaders.

But then sometimes the skin shaders look rather good.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

The timestamp doesnt really show any performance metrics though.

The game ran fine on my 3080. 60 fps at 4k dlss quality. Same as KCD2 which i have to set to dlss balanced at times.

The game looks absolutely insane. its a shame there is no controller support so i literally cant play it. Tried a few minutes with KBM and it felt like i was handicapped so stopped there. But from the opening few minutes it didnt feel unoptimized and looked jaw dropping.

I'm just going by user reviews. Buggy unoptmized mess is what I keep reading. No doubt UE5 graphics are insane

 

[analog_future]

The problem with Spiderman 2's cutscenes is that they didnt have enough time for a proper final lighting pass. Some scenes look great. Others look horrendous. The first game had no such issues.

The game was rushed by Sony for launch. The director actually went on record saying he cut out a big chunk of the game in order to ship it for the holiday season. Its no surprise that its one of the most janky sony releases ive played with some of the worst cutscene lighting in some areas

Like wtf is this? These are worse than some PS3 quality skin shaders.

But then sometimes the skin shaders look rather good.

Yeah, the game is extremely inconsistent. Probably even moreso on PC with the half-baked launched it received.


Honestly just eager to get through this one as this is the first game I picked to show off with my 5090 and I probably could've picked something better in hindsight.

 

[SlimySnake]

Yeah, the game is extremely inconsistent. Probably even moreso on PC with the half-baked launched it received.


Honestly just eager to get through this one as this is the first game I picked to show off with my 5090 and I probably could've picked something better in hindsight.

lol They did add some fancy ray tracing features to this game for the Pro and PC. i think distant RT shadows do make a difference. IIRC, they also have RTAO and some global illumination passes as well.

The problem is that they designed the game from the start to be a cross gen game. Like the hack showed, they purposefully kept the graphics last gen to avoid costs from blowing up and when you have last gen assets and lighting, no amount of RT is going to save you.

Id recommend you try some of the path traced games like Black Myth, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars outlaws. I couldnt run them on my 3080. Even at 30 fps. So those games will be the first ones i try out when i do upgrade.

 

[analog_future]

lol They did add some fancy ray tracing features to this game for the Pro and PC. i think distant RT shadows do make a difference. IIRC, they also have RTAO and some global illumination passes as well.

The problem is that they designed the game from the start to be a cross gen game. Like the hack showed, they purposefully kept the graphics last gen to avoid costs from blowing up and when you have last gen assets and lighting, no amount of RT is going to save you.

Id recommend you try some of the path traced games like Black Myth, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars outlaws. I couldnt run them on my 3080. Even at 30 fps. So those games will be the first ones i try out when i do upgrade.

Yeah I think Outlaws is next. The open world in that game looks beautiful from what I've seen.

 

[SlimySnake]

I love how dynamic this scene feels with the fire, lightning and smoke effects. I need to upgrade my GPU before this game comes out. I am not playing it without path tracing. It ruined Indiana Jones for me.

I'm just going by user reviews. Buggy unoptmized mess is what I keep reading. No doubt UE5 graphics are insane

Play it yourself.

I heard a lot of nonsense about Avowed's poor performance which basically amounted to some frametime spikes on older shitty zen 2 CPus which have struggled with virtually every next gen only game that pushes CPUs. I think gamers should just expect big CPU hub worlds to have issues. Starfield, Jedi Survivor and other games did run like shit in hub worlds, but outside of that, they ran just fine during the open world and especially during the combat missions. Even I found myself wondering just why I was so pissed at Koboh in Star Wars running so poorly when it runs at a locked 60 fps everywhere else in the game. Starfield actually ran so well outside of those city worlds that they simply unlocked the framerate on the xsx and virtually every single indoor area/ship/dungeon ran at a locked 60 fps. The hub worlds dont have any shooting or combat, and the game takes place almost entirely indoors so its just one of those things where the outrage was for nothing.

Now those frametime spikes shouldnt be there, especially since they were fixed in UE5.4 and the game ships on UE5.3, but from what i played, its a fairly polished release but everyone online is trashing it like the worst game.

I think SH2 is the truly the worst performer, but Black Myth, Hellblade 2 and now Avowed are mostly fine. They are heavy on the GPU but they are pushing visual features so thats expected.

 

[SlimySnake]

I would like to extend my apologies to RE Engine. DF just reviewed Monster Hunter and apparently its not even using the RTGI from Dragons Dogma. It's straight up baked lighting, which would be ok but its super expensive and results in poor interiors, poor textures, and some really odd shadows. The game is overly bright and runs at 720p in performance mode using FSR1 which makes no sense considering the fact that Avatar with RTGI, reflections and shadows, along with that insane foliage also runs at 720p using FSR2 which has a pretty significant cost of its own whereas FSR1 is largely free.

Just poor developer expertise this. Not an engine issue.

That said, Obsidian has made a lot of ugly looking games and UE5 enabled them to make a pretty pleasant looking game so maybe thats where we can blame the RE Engine. They were not able to make these PSP/3DS/Switch developers produce something that looks current gen.

 

[RavionUHD]

Some more KCD2 screenshots in 4K Ultrawide DLDSR, Reshade and RenoDX HDR:

Hopefully more developers will use Cryengine in the future, it is pretty rare nowadays.

 

[SlimySnake]

Some more KCD2 screenshots in 4K Ultrawide DLDSR, Reshade and RenoDX HDR:

While the interiors can look great at times, I feel like they are missing something. Either the asset quality isnt high enough or the RT implementation isnt as strong. I know its using something akin to software ray tracing which mostly works well indoors, but I wish some of the objects had their own reflections. Though it could just be a lack of metallic/reflective surfaces back in the day.

It's definitely better than other baked lighting solutions we have seen this gen. Especially Rebirth, HFW and GOW.

 

[SlimySnake]

Played some Black Hawk Down again. Getting better with KBM but my mouse sucks and im pretty sure i need a mousepad to be able to turn quickly.

Still, finally got back outside and holy fucking shit. The game feels just like the movie. It is insane how much is going on at one point. Soldiers being dropped off by black hawks while you provide covering fire, enemy jeeps with turrets rushing in to open fire on landing zones, other soldiers firing from cover like their lives depend on it. It's like you are just an NPC in a big war around you. If you are a big fan of the movie like I am, you will notice all the chatter from the movie is in the game. The movie took the comms chatter straight from the reallife mission so it feels incredibly authentic.

I didnt realize you can view the landing from different helicopters depending on your character selection. They all get dropped on the same building, but take different routes and you can see dozens of other choppers and balck haws\ks landing where they did in real life, or doing strafing runs, or avoiding RPGs while the real life comms chatter plays in the background.

The city is full of detail. Even during the fly by. There might be a couple of instances of pop-in but the level of detail is unlike anything ive seen this gen. it's not photorealistic like the Matrix, and they use a pre-rendered CG video right before the chopper intro which diminishes the quality of the ingame graphics a little bit, but overall I wasnt just impressed by the graphics, but also just how alive the warzone feels with dozens of choppers doing their own runs, dropping their own soliders, and hundreds of somali militia just firing at every direction. Absolutely remarkable stuff.

 

[SlimySnake]

I am going on record. This is the best looking game of the generation for me. Just stunning level of detail, beautiful lighting and art design. I cant find a single flaw in this.

 

[Kaiserstark]

I am going on record. This is the best looking game of the generation for me. Just stunning level of detail, beautiful lighting and art design. I cant find a single flaw in this.

The visuals look great but the combat snippets look very rough, the animations clearly need more work.

I don't know how they could have thought of releasing the game in 2025.

 

[T4keD0wN]

The visuals look great but the combat snippets look very rough, the animations clearly need more work.

I don't know how they could have thought of releasing the game in 2025.

The dodging, along with weapon unsheathing and to a smaller degree blocking look terrible, not sure why theyd want to show that footage off, its the opposite of flattering, if those animations dont end up being placeholder itd be bad enough for me to skip the whole game.

On the other hand the attack animations look very solid already, thing looks very close to the reveal trailers, too bad the video quality is so damn bad.

 

[GymWolf]

I think it looks pretty good for a pre-alpha graphically speaking

 

[GymWolf]

While I'm still not overly impressed with Spider-Man 2, I will say that the character models and texture detail are still great. Particularly with DLSS 4 providing all that fine detail:

Characters and costumes had barely any upgrade from sp1.

This is from sp1 on ps4, and like slimy said, some characters in sp2 look worse than morales\sp1.

 

[SlimySnake]

The dodging, along with weapon unsheathing and to a smaller degree blocking look terrible, not sure why theyd want to show that footage off, its the opposite of flattering, if those animations dont end up being placeholder itd be bad enough for me to skip the whole game.

On the other hand the attack animations look very solid already, thing looks very close to the reveal trailers, too bad the video quality is so damn bad.

They need to get some chinese and japanese developers to do animations. Western especially european studios are completely trash at animations for some reason.

This random korean game has some of the best animation work ive ever seen.

 

[GymWolf]

They need to get some chinese and japanese developers to do animations. Western especially european studios are completely trash at animations for some reason.

This random korean game has some of the best animation work ive ever seen.

It's also a pre-alpha build...

I doubt they wanted to show this if they are not sure to deliver better animations in the final game.

Also, you are generalizing, the 2 gow games have great animations, horizon and spidey have great animations tlou2 has great animations, cmon.

 

[SlimySnake]

It's also a pre-alpha build...

I doubt they wanted to show this if they are not sure to deliver better animations in the final game.

Also, you are generalizing, the 2 gow games have great animations, horizon and spidey have great animations tlou2 has great animations, cmon.

There are always exceptions. Especially Sony studios. Ninja Theory and Rockstar are great too.

But ive played A LOT of western games with excellent graphics the last couple of years and man they all lack in animations. Most recently Avowed and KCD2. Especially Avowed. Avatar, Star Wars Outlaws, Starfield, Dead Space, Silent Hill 2. Even the good looking games dont have the same great animations. meanwhile even mid games from japan have great animations.

 

[intheinbetween]

I just received my MSI 5090 Gaming Trio OC. So far it seems it has all of the expected ROPs (176), now time for keeping my fingers crossed I don’t need a fire extinguisher

 

[GymWolf]

There are always exceptions. Especially Sony studios. Ninja Theory and Rockstar are great too.

But ive played A LOT of western games with excellent graphics the last couple of years and man they all lack in animations. Most recently Avowed and KCD2. Especially Avowed. Avatar, Star Wars Outlaws, Starfield, Dead Space, Silent Hill 2. Even the good looking games dont have the same great animations. meanwhile even mid games from japan have great animations.

I think it's harder to make believable realistic animations than weeb action animations that have no counterpart in reality so you can only judge how cool they are without considering weight, physics etc., and you know what majority of japanese games are...

Not sure if i'm clear enough.

I don't think japanese devs would be able to make a game like rdr2 in the same way european\us devs can't make a game with dmc5 level of fancy animations, but europeans\americans can get somehow close with some of their action games like gow where japanese realistic games don't even get close to the weight and realism of something like rdr2 or max payne 3 or tlou2, even stuff like re4r or death stranding are not close, they always have that weightless\arcadey feeling.

 

[Neo_game]

Sadly, most people wont get it. Also, graphics discourse has now turned insanely political and gamers are trashing AC and Avowed for stuff every modern game is doing.

I am not sure about Avowed, may be it looks good in some instances just like every other game and it is true every game has some part worse than others. But I agree regarding AC. People simply love to hate Ubisoft. IMO shadows looks great and I am sure it will sell game as there are many AC fans like myself out there even though ratings wise I think it will mid 80's at best.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

It's also a pre-alpha build...

I doubt they wanted to show this if they are not sure to deliver better animations in the final game.

Also, you are generalizing, the 2 gow games have great animations, horizon and spidey have great animations tlou2 has great animations, cmon.

They can call it pre-alpha, but these clips are not what developers traditionally call pre-alpha. All the visual features seem completed. Unfair or not, I'm not giving a studio that has never developed a non-racing game the benefit of the doubt

I agree with Slimy, very few Western studios properly animate hand to hand combat. The recent God of War games are the only example that do an amazing job, imo. Hopefully the combat in Fable is competent. Expecting anything more is setting yourself for failure


This is Ghost of Tsushima 2 years before release. Developers should have animations locked down by this period of development

 

[GymWolf]

They can call it pre-alpha, but these clips are not what developers traditionally call pre-alpha. All the visual features seem completed. Unfair or not, I'm not giving a studio that has never developed a non-racing game the benefit of the doubt

I agree with Slimy, very few Western studios properly animate hand to hand combat. The recent God of War games are the only example that do an amazing job, imo. Hopefully the combat in Fable is competent. Expecting anything more is setting yourself for failure

Yeah i don't expect anything more than decent in the combat departement, hopefully they nail everything else.