Just as the drool begins to pool in my mouth, the 4K HDR switch gets flicked, and I have to swallow. All of a sudden, I spot so many subtle details, as if somebody has cleared a blob of Vaseline from my eye. The individual stitching in Aloy's eccentric clothing pops out, and the wider spectrum of colour reveals that she has the sort of pinkish hue that George Costanza might go for. The strands of her hair go from amorphous clumps to bands of strands, and the rocky outcrop behind me changes from what I assumed was a cliff polished to nothingness by centuries of rain to a pock-marked surface popping with cracks and grit.
Impressed, I turn my scrutiny from the micro to the macro. We make a quick pan to the sun, which moments ago was offering par-for-the-course lens flare; now there are God rays slashing toward the camera through a sea of cumulonimbi of much richer depth. I physically get out of my chair and plant my face against the screen and.... yep, I'll be damned... though they have absolutely no business being animated, the wind is gently tussling the leafy canopy of a mountain a number of kilometres away. I can also just make out flocks of robobirds out in that wild blue yonder, and there's even a distant valley featuring a stray tallneck plodding about (think: a Dinobot version of a brontosaurus, but with the saucer part of the USS Enterprise for a head).
A few days ago, I flew all the way to this London “Future of Play” event with one thought in my head: my current PS4 and my you-beaut 1080p telly give me what I need: how much better could this new business really be?
Today, I'm going home with a different thought: How can I legally get away with selling one of my children to acquire a PS4 Pro and a 4K TV? Because it has to happen.