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Alan Wake 2 is the best looking game released this year?
Fbh
Member
While I haven't played it, from what I've seen it might the most impressive looking game this year on PC. Though I still think maxed out Cyberpunk on PC looks more impressive given the scale of the world.
The console version seems meh, the image looks soft and is full of shimmering even in the "quality" mode.
I don't get people saying FFXVI though. Like some areas look nice and the cutscenes look great, but during gameplay I wasn't particularly impressed by the visuals.
Personally I'll take the visuals of Ragnarok with a nice sharp image and awesome 60-80fps any day over something like Alan Wake with softer looking image and 30fps with drops.
But if we are talking about pure graphics there's no doubt Alan Wake 2 looks nicer. Ragnarok definitely shows it was primarily designed for Ps4, and IMO it's also rather uneven (some locations looks great, other not so much. Some characters like Kratos looks great but then Freya looks a gen behind him for some reason)
The console version seems meh, the image looks soft and is full of shimmering even in the "quality" mode.
I don't get people saying FFXVI though. Like some areas look nice and the cutscenes look great, but during gameplay I wasn't particularly impressed by the visuals.
Personally I'll take the visuals of Ragnarok with a nice sharp image and awesome 60-80fps any day over something like Alan Wake with softer looking image and 30fps with drops.
But if we are talking about pure graphics there's no doubt Alan Wake 2 looks nicer. Ragnarok definitely shows it was primarily designed for Ps4, and IMO it's also rather uneven (some locations looks great, other not so much. Some characters like Kratos looks great but then Freya looks a gen behind him for some reason)
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MMaRsu
Member
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
God stop I cant take this
???
This game is gorgeous. Watch this in 4K and tell me what fighting game looks this good. This definitely looks better than 99% of console offerings right now to boot.
Just because it isn’t some open world game doesn’t mean these visuals aren’t praise worthy.
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Hawking Radiation
Member
Hard disagree.
Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty on PC with path tracing and everything else on max
Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty on PC with path tracing and everything else on max
MMaRsu
Member
The characters and models, textures look crisp af.
But the stages are boring, static images basically where nothing is happening.
I dunno, I can't say that a game like that has the best graphics.
TheDarkPhantom
Member
If you haven't played AW2 you're in no position to compare it to GoW, read my first post about ALL the factors that contribute to a games overall visual fidelity. Ragnarok has it beat when it comes to animations, character models, environments, particle effects, physics, unique assets and overall *technical consistency* of it's delivery.
To answer the original topic title of best looking *this year* AW2 is absolutely way up there though I haven't played Phantom Liberty yet and I'm pretty sure it has it beat. Spider-Man 2 likewise has me more impressed with certain aspects than AW2.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
The stages are boring ? Living Forest, Wu Shi Academy, Shang Tsung’s Lab, just to name a few. MK1 has the best looking stages in any fighting game ever made. wtf are you in about ?
There is stages with characters moving in the background , smoke , fire, trees moving and faces moving, and lots more. Day and night variants of stages.
You clearly haven’t played it or looked into the stages because it is filled with bangers.
Edit:
Hard to find videos focusing on stages specifically but this is a solid one:
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onnextflix5
Member
At times Alan wake looks next gen, I know pc fanboys love Cyberpunk, for me even with raytracing, everything looks fake and plastic.
Still waiting something that feels next gen like the matrix demo and the first ps5 ue5 demo.
Still waiting something that feels next gen like the matrix demo and the first ps5 ue5 demo.
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MMaRsu
Member
Aw yea some of those do look nice better than the ones you posted earlier.
Even so, I still can't say it's THE BEST LOOKING GAME on consoles.
Wouldnt that be Cyberpunk 2077 still?
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
For console ? No. Cp2077 on PC is easily the best but on console isn’t as impressive. Games like Spider-Man 2, Horizon, and MK1 trump it for sure.
Heck even facial animations and detail in MK1 look better than what console cp2077 cooks up for example :
Pan around throughout this video to watch the single player for a bit. It’s very impressive stuff.
EverydayBeast
ChatGPT 0.001
Graphics every year get better and so every day they’re pushing the limits, different styles.
tmlDan
Member
It looks good, but not the best looking this gen.
HFW still looks better, the creepy plastic faces are still in AW2, especially in town walking near NPC's
A lot of games struggle with facial animations and despite Aloys being the worst of her crew the rest of the people look way better than anything in Alan Wake 2. The environments are just okay too, nothing spectacular.
HFW still looks better, the creepy plastic faces are still in AW2, especially in town walking near NPC's
A lot of games struggle with facial animations and despite Aloys being the worst of her crew the rest of the people look way better than anything in Alan Wake 2. The environments are just okay too, nothing spectacular.
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tmlDan
Member
I thought you had high standards, cause this does not look amazing at all.Yes.
Mortisfacio
Member
If it came out last gen, maybe, but last gen indie UE4 looking character models are hilariously bad.
Ev1L AuRoN
Member
Phantom Liberty is still my favorite, but I need more time with the game, no doubt it's up there with CDPR, amazing effort.
SimTourist
Member
AW2 looks great but it's hard to compare it to openworld games with lots of world simulations going on like traffic, pedestrians, police, etc. The world in AW2 is static and NPCs are scripted to play out one animation loop, there's rarely more than a few enemies to fight against. No dynamic time of day/weather as well which saves a lot of performance. Also important to remember that it's not as high budget as some of those AAA games, but through smart choices Remedy is able to compete. They've applied a lot of learnings from Control as to how to make a game longer by reusing locations in a smart way, saving on facial animations by having conversations being telepathic in the mind place, etc.
DanielG165
Member
The beginning alone of Alan Wake 2 surpasses anything outside of Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) in graphical prowess. It’s unbelievable how good that entire sequence looked, and that’s only the first of many I’ve seen so far in my play through.
Mister Wolf
Member
It's the best looking game that's ever released.
Kataploom
Gold Member
Well, art style apart, I'd say yes... I like it artistically a lot but I'll always favor something like Xenoblade more, so Xenoblade 3 is the best looking game for me this gen.
For realistic art style, yes it defintinely is the best looking game by far, nothing is even close to it. TLOU P1 just looks great in cutscenes but in game it's just pretty standard looking game aside from its art style.
For realistic art style, yes it defintinely is the best looking game by far, nothing is even close to it. TLOU P1 just looks great in cutscenes but in game it's just pretty standard looking game aside from its art style.
AnotherOne
Member
My vote goes to.
DanielG165
Member
As a Kaiju fan, it’s both sad and a little humorous that Peter Jackson’s King Kong tie-in video game unironically looks better than this.My vote goes to.
sertopico
Member
I agree, Alan Wake 2 is the best you can find right now, at least when compared to similar games. Asset quality is top notch, everything is modelled with great care and you basically see no sharp edges around objects, unless they have to be, that is. This mesh shading helps greatly. Lighting on PC is crazy good if you have the horsepower, AW2 not being an open world allowed Remedy to push path tracing further. What else, pp effects are also excellent, pbr materials and textures are top tier, and it has the best implementation of dlss and ray reconstruction so far. Even at my res, 1440p DLSS Q, you really see nothing flickering or shimmering, no ghosting whatsoever. I just needed to use a little bit of sharpening though.
Cons: npc animations are not that great, they look quite lifeless, talking about the town folk in bright falls. There are too many (in)visible barriers, in my playthrough saga clips through vegetation. That's it so far.
Cons: npc animations are not that great, they look quite lifeless, talking about the town folk in bright falls. There are too many (in)visible barriers, in my playthrough saga clips through vegetation. That's it so far.
Sir Vilhelm
Member
Yup
rofif
Can’t Git Gud
It’s far from best looking ps5 game. Not with this terrible image quality, shimmering, fsr breakup and grainy ssr that doesn’t reflect anythingYes. Playing on console and it's the best looking ps5 game imo.
Balducci30
Member
Many parts of Alan Wake look legitimately cgi. What did Ragnarok and spider man do physics wise that Alan wake isn’t doing?Asset quality is roughly the same. On PC obviously RT and performance are better than either of them. The only place you could say they’re empirically better is animation? It’s not open world I guess which makes it easier.
It’s got bad shimmering and no reflections on PS5 at 30fps. But I assume we’re talking about the best version of each game.
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Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
Now the game is out and it does lot of interesting things with its multi media direction and all you guys can talk when it comes to AW2 is graphics?.....seriously?
before release all conversation is about graphics because PC requirements and now after the game got released most people played and finish the game and still all the conversation is about graphics.
Not just this game most every game comes out these days, most you people ever want to can talk about is graphics as if thats there is to gaming.
before release all conversation is about graphics because PC requirements and now after the game got released most people played and finish the game and still all the conversation is about graphics.
Not just this game most every game comes out these days, most you people ever want to can talk about is graphics as if thats there is to gaming.
MidGenRefresh
*Refreshes biennially
This, 100%. Alan Wake 2 looks spectacular but is not the best showcase of path tracing due to static lighting.
Represent.
Represent(ative) of bad opinions
why the hell do you hate graphics so much, lmao
the first thing remedy even talks about in this game are the graphics
the graphics help enhance the atmosphere 10x than if it looked like some crap ass Switch game.
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
To me there is more to games than just graphics, there is nothing wrong with liking pretty eye candy but some you guys just obsess with it and thats all you want talk about.....to me thats fucking boring.
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Yeah and its not even close. If this was a sony exclusive, all the people laughing would be screaming yes from the mountain top.
I'm sorry but that looks like a wax model compared to Plague's:
MidGenRefresh
*Refreshes biennially
I'm sorry but that looks like a wax model compared to Plague's:
Different race, different lighting conditions.
I dont disagree but what do you mean by static lighting? It has pathtracing and gi with 3 bounces.
MidGenRefresh
*Refreshes biennially
Time of day is static. Path tracing works wonders when it’s dynamic.
Fair enough but it's a linear tailored game so a day and night cycle wouldn't make much sense for it honestly. The lack of day and night cycle is no technical deficiency or limitation really for their tech, as on technical merit their lighting tech is right up there with cyberpunk but the game design just didn't showcase it well.
That being said I agree considering cyberpunk is doing so much more due to the open world its more impressive, also this might sound crazy but I have not been impressed by alan wake 2 to the point I can defacto say it is the visual benchmark from the media I have seen.
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MidGenRefresh
*Refreshes biennially
I never said otherwise. Alan Wake’s game design is simply limiting the possibilities to showcase path tracing tech, that’s it.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Yes. Easily. It looks absolutely bonkers on my PC and the amount of effects is staggering. Full motion video over graphics and the shadow, light effects, fogging, smoke, raytracing. The whole shabbang. When I walked out onto the street as Alan my jaw hit the floor.
Not had that feeling in years.
Not had that feeling in years.
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MidGenRefresh
*Refreshes biennially
Just one example of random NPC that you can't even interact with. This is a back-drop. This level of detail is what makes Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty number 1.
Black_Stride
do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Mortal Kombat 1, Callisto Protocol and Phantom Liberty are top 5.
Along with Alan Wake 2 which looks offline rendered at times.
Probably its biggest weakness is the skin shader, near everything else is top tier.
^The lighting and materials are so correct.
Along with Alan Wake 2 which looks offline rendered at times.
Probably its biggest weakness is the skin shader, near everything else is top tier.
^The lighting and materials are so correct.
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MidGenRefresh
*Refreshes biennially
Mortal Kombat 1, Callisto Protocol and Phantom Liberty are top 5.
Along with Alan Wake 2 which looks offline rendered at times.
Probably its biggest weakness is the skin shader, near everything else is top tier.
^The lighting and materials are so correct.
This game has photo mode? How to access it???