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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

Don't play the game at 640x480, man!
4k dlss performance with Path Tracing, running on a 5080, the second most powerful card ever made:

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Found my clip from launch. This was maxed out 1440p with lumen, no upscaling. Obviously wasn't usable so I played with only SSR. But I assume you're using it and that it's been fixed.


lol thats awful. how can devs release games in that state.

One cool thing about lumen reflections is that they capture the projectiles enemies throw at you. really cool to see reflections like that. RT reflections in earlier games this gen left out particles for performance reasons.

they even have enhanced lighting now, im guessing thats hardware lumen. turning both lumen reflection and enhanced lighting made the game go from ok to stunning.
 
lol thats awful. how can devs release games in that state.

One cool thing about lumen reflections is that they capture the projectiles enemies throw at you. really cool to see reflections like that. RT reflections in earlier games this gen left out particles for performance reasons.

they even have enhanced lighting now, im guessing thats hardware lumen. turning both lumen reflection and enhanced lighting made the game go from ok to stunning.
Yeah, your shots look really nice. I'll revisit at some point.
 
While playing Ghost of Yotei, the constant rain and gloomy weather start to feel less like atmosphere and more like a visual downgrade. It's baffling that developers invest so much in lighting, color, and world detail only to bury it under endless gray skies, especially when the rare moments of clear weather instantly transform the game into something genuinely breathtaking on an OLED display.

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While playing Ghost of Yotei, the constant rain and gloomy weather start to feel less like atmosphere and more like a visual downgrade. It's baffling that developers invest so much in lighting, color, and world detail only to bury it under endless gray skies, especially when the rare moments of clear weather instantly transform the game into something genuinely breathtaking on an OLED display.

Y1DEKkK.jpeg

pRremqE.jpeg
I felt the same way with the first game.
 
4k dlss performance with Path Tracing, running on a 5080, the second most powerful card ever made:
Good that DF told me it looks excellent because I´d have thought it looks like shit otherwise.....
Okay that may be a bit too harsh, but that game definitely doesn`t deserve to be part of any "best graphics" lists at least.
 
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If anyone of you want to replay days gone on pc you should use these 3 mods:

Human threat ai enhancement
Even more gore mod
Melee more gore


I have no idea how modders can fix enemy ai but devs can't.
 
I felt the same way with the first game.
You could change the weather with the flute in the first game tho.

This boggles my mind even more... A quality of life feature that was in the first isn't in the new one.
Same for the holding square stronger attack, it's simply gone and nothing replaced it. Of course they added stuff like the very simplistic throwing weapons mechanic, but it is so superficial...

Anyway, as other surely said the only way to enjoy sunny weather in Yotei is to never ever silently assassinate an ennemy or use ghost weapons... Very smart design choice from guys who spend 3 and a half year sitting on their thumbs before remembering they had a game to make (i see no other explanation for the dev time).
 
You could change the weather with the flute in the first game tho.

This boggles my mind even more... A quality of life feature that was in the first isn't in the new one.
Same for the holding square stronger attack, it's simply gone and nothing replaced it. Of course they added stuff like the very simplistic throwing weapons mechanic, but it is so superficial...

Anyway, as other surely said the only way to enjoy sunny weather in Yotei is to never ever silently assassinate an ennemy or use ghost weapons... Very smart design choice from guys who spend 3 and a half year sitting on their thumbs before remembering they had a game to make (i see no other explanation for the dev time).
Wait...so assassinating people changes the weather?
 
Wait...so assassinating people changes the weather?
  • Ghost Playstyle (Stealth/Assassination): Accumulating stealth kills and using Ghost abilities increases the probability of storms, rain, and darker, fog-filled conditions.
  • Samurai Playstyle (Honorable Combat): Engaging in standoffs, honorable duels, and direct fights encourages clearer, sunnier weather.


Basically if you use any of your ghost skills. Just goes to show the retards running this industry.

This is why 99% of the time my game world looked like this.

EeUHGLwWsAAuZBU
 
Wait...so assassinating people changes the weather?
It was already the case for the first one.
Ghost type gameplay (ie silent assasinations, ghost item use, everything "ninja-like" stuff) would change the weather to stormy.

Contrary to slimy alternative facts tho, you could easily change it back to sunny, foggy or rainy using the flute, which meant you could use any type of gameplay you wanted and still enjoy the weather type you like.

In Yotei, the galaxy brained devs that took over cut the weather changing feature, meaning that if you want to play the assassin/ninja type gameplay you are doomed to play with the visually worst overall weather type. Isn't that smart ?
 
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I would bet if you would post obscure screens from a bunch of different UE5 games with different art styles mixed together with other engines that use similar ray/path tracing techniques, very few would figure it out.
I have done this several times. Couldnt be bothered to do it again.

UE5 hate is hilarious at this point. There have been several threads posted here saying how UE5 is killing gaming. Meanwhile ignoring the fact that the GOTY of last year was built on it. And devs themselves credited it for helping them achieve their vision they otherwise wouldnt be able to. They also ignore extremely popular best sellers like Arc Raiders selling 12 million copies in mere weeks and becoming a viral sensation among gamers. But sure, killing gaming. Harry Potter was built on UE4 which was literally the best selling game of 2023.

Anyone who actually plays these games knows there is no unified UE5 look. Some games do feature photorealistic textures, lighting and models, but thats a good thing. there are plenty of games going for a completely different look.

The performance issues are obviously not ideal, but we've had great running UE4 and UE5 games, and terribly optimized ones. Also, they magically get fixed after a few weeks so clearly the issue was not the engine, but the devs.

UE5's release just happened to coincide with a period where the devs just began phoning in game releases, and since most games run on UE5 nowadays, it just felt like a UE5 problem. When in fact, Dead Space Remake had huge issues at launch on PC with traversal stutters that still havent been fixed, and on consoles, it shipped with arguably the worst image quality ever in a video game. The original Boiling effect. When Monster Hunter Wilds came out and ran like shit because devs literally do dumb shit like 5,000 checks for DLC every minute, no one points to RE Engine and goes, what a terrible engine. Whenever Spiderman games release on PC and have terrible CPU optimization, no one complains. Baldur's Gate 3 ran like shit in cities, won hundreds of GOTYs. And as much as I love Anvil engine, lets face it, they had to drop ray tracing on consoles to get it to run at 60 fps. Lumen and nanite have been running at 60 fps since day 1 on consoles.

When HFW came out and had arguably the worst shimmering and pixel crawl on foliage, DF simply said, play the 30 fps mode. No one else complained except for one youtuber who kept releasing videos after each patch forcing GG to go back to the drawing board. 4 months later, they eventually came up with a brand new algorithm to fix the upscaling issues because 11 patches werent enough to fix such a broken image.

Not to mention how 5 years into this generation and Decima doesnt even support ray tracing let alone virtualized geometry. Sucker Punch's ray tracing implementation is so bad, DF said that ray tracing doesnt apply to NPCs leading a very butthurt technical director to interject and disagree. Well, if your ray tracing solution is so bad that even people who know the markers cant tell then dont fucking get butthurt over it.
 
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i keep forgetting that they built it on their own engine. i will edit that part out.
It's ok. It is a most excellent post otherwise.

It wasn't really their own engine though. It's from Autodesk and was used in other games (Darktide, iirc). Although I'm sure Arrowhead customized it for their own needs especially since it's discontinued.
 
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It's ok. It is a most excellent post otherwise.

It wasn't really their own engine though. It's from Autodesk and was used in other games (Darktide, iirc). Although I'm sure Arrowhead customized it for their own needs especially since it's discontinued.
Darktide is a great looking game. Extremely detailed interiors and modeling. Gorgeous baked lighting too with some excellent volumetric effects. Its a shame that the game is coop only or i would've played it more.

Though it had issues on both pc and consoles at launch. I didn't see them though since i had a 3080 and a decent cpu, also played it a year after launch so maybe thats why.
 
Darktide is a great looking game. Extremely detailed interiors and modeling. Gorgeous baked lighting too with some excellent volumetric effects. Its a shame that the game is coop only or i would've played it more.

Though it had issues on both pc and consoles at launch. I didn't see them though since i had a 3080 and a decent cpu, also played it a year after launch so maybe thats why.
Yeah, I played a little and was impressed, but couldn't get a group together to commit to it. And didn't want to play with randoms.
 
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The asset quality combined with this lighting is genuinely amazing. If Spider-Man 3 manages to deliver this level of texture detail and lighting across its cities, I'd be more than satisfied.
 
I have done this several times. Couldnt be bothered to do it again.
UE5 hate is hilarious at this point. There have been several threads posted here saying how UE5 is killing gaming. Meanwhile ignoring the fact that the GOTY of last year was built on it. And devs themselves credited it for helping them achieve their vision they otherwise wouldnt be able to. They also ignore extremely popular best sellers like Arc Raiders selling 12 million copies in mere weeks and becoming a viral sensation among gamers. But sure, killing gaming. Harry Potter was built on UE4 which was literally the best selling game of 2023.

Anyone who actually plays these games knows there is no unified UE5 look. Some games do feature photorealistic textures, lighting and models, but thats a good thing. there are plenty of games going for a completely different look.

The performance issues are obviously not ideal, but we've had great running UE4 and UE5 games, and terribly optimized ones. Also, they magically get fixed after a few weeks so clearly the issue was not the engine, but the devs.

UE5's release just happened to coincide with a period where the devs just began phoning in game releases, and since most games run on UE5 nowadays, it just felt like a UE5 problem. When in fact, Dead Space Remake had huge issues at launch on PC with traversal stutters that still havent been fixed, and on consoles, it shipped with arguably the worst image quality ever in a video game. The original Boiling effect. When Monster Hunter Wilds came out and ran like shit because devs literally do dumb shit like 5,000 checks for DLC every minute, no one points to RE Engine and goes, what a terrible engine. Whenever Spiderman games release on PC and have terrible CPU optimization, no one complains. Baldur's Gate 3 ran like shit in cities, won hundreds of GOTYs. And as much as I love Anvil engine, lets face it, they had to drop ray tracing on consoles to get it to run at 60 fps. Lumen and nanite have been running at 60 fps since day 1 on consoles.

When HFW came out and had arguably the worst shimmering and pixel crawl on foliage, DF simply said, play the 30 fps mode. No one else complained except for one youtuber who kept releasing videos after each patch forcing GG to go back to the drawing board. 4 months later, they eventually came up with a brand new algorithm to fix the upscaling issues because 11 patches werent enough to fix such a broken image.

Not to mention how 5 years into this generation and Decima doesnt even support ray tracing let alone virtualized geometry. Sucker Punch's ray tracing implementation is so bad, DF said that ray tracing doesnt apply to NPCs leading a very butthurt technical director to interject and disagree. Well, if your ray tracing solution is so bad that even people who know the markers cant tell then dont fucking get butthurt over it.
I wanted to do this with screens from games with 3 different engines that look so similar, but I figured it's pointless, whoever has their mind stubbornly set on something, it's just that, set in stone.

Hell, the DF guys made the mistake of saying a game uses Unreal when in fact it didn't, I think it was a Plague Tale 1.
These 2 games share some similarities, sure, obviously, but to me it isn't like "oh these look so alike, they're practically the same game".









And of course games with UE5 that aim for realistic visuals will share similar stuff, but, Jesus it's just one engine. There are plenty out there from the big players.

But, you know, UE5 has performance issues so it's crap, Anvil and Snowdrop are from Ubi so it's crap and so on.
For someone who is set on a particular style or has a favourite platform or dev that they're so fond of you'd think it's their child or they own it, everything is crap beyond that.
 
I wanted to do this with screens from games with 3 different engines that look so similar, but I figured it's pointless, whoever has their mind stubbornly set on something, it's just that, set in stone.

Hell, the DF guys made the mistake of saying a game uses Unreal when in fact it didn't, I think it was a Plague Tale 1.
These 2 games share some similarities, sure, obviously, but to me it isn't like "oh these look so alike, they're practically the same game".









And of course games with UE5 that aim for realistic visuals will share similar stuff, but, Jesus it's just one engine. There are plenty out there from the big players.

But, you know, UE5 has performance issues so it's crap, Anvil and Snowdrop are from Ubi so it's crap and so on.
i know hellblade 2 looks better but jesus christ those silent hill 2 screenshots blew me away. simply gorgeous.
For someone who is set on a particular style or has a favourite platform or dev that they're so fond of you'd think it's their child or they own it, everything is crap beyond that.
i first joined forums back in 2000. gamespot had a forum called system wars where all the fanboys congregated and talked shit nonstop. it made the regular forums like General Gaming Discussion a lot more manageable to browse. the problem with forums like gaf, era and twitter is that all of the discussion is dominated by those system warriors and all of that happens on the main board. twitter in general always boosts the loudest mouths and normal voices get drowned out. its sad that internet discourse is worse than it was 25 years ago.

this is when we need media like DF to tackle these subjects with a little more nuance but they too are chasing clicks and end up going with rage bait titles more often than not.
 
I would bet if you would post obscure screens from a bunch of different UE5 games with different art styles mixed together with other engines that use similar ray/path tracing techniques, very few would figure it out.

The challenge here wouldn't be telling the screens apart - it would be finding games on other engines with visuals worth a damn.
 
i know hellblade 2 looks better but jesus christ those silent hill 2 screenshots blew me away. simply gorgeous.
Maybe, though Hellblade 2 could look even better, these screens are from the Enhanced version I played recently. And although some things like shadows are in some places better, overall there is little improvement. Some sliders for the CA and blur would have been nice and would have made the game look better.
But yeah SH2 is gorgeous.
i first joined forums back in 2000. gamespot had a forum called system wars where all the fanboys congregated and talked shit nonstop. it made the regular forums like General Gaming Discussion a lot more manageable to browse. the problem with forums like gaf, era and twitter is that all of the discussion is dominated by those system warriors and all of that happens on the main board. twitter in general always boosts the loudest mouths and normal voices get drowned out. its sad that internet discourse is worse than it was 25 years ago.
This one is my most visited and most of my posts are here, I rarely go into threads here, mainly because of the fanboism and console wars. But it's a ton of ways better here, as a matter of fact, I don't post anywhere else gaming related.
Twitter and Reddit are cesspools and Era, well, fuck, might as well chop my hands.
this is when we need media like DF to tackle these subjects with a little more nuance but they too are chasing clicks and end up going with rage bait titles more often than not.
Yeah, these guys should have been one of the few to steer us the right way, sadly they caved, like most.
 
The challenge here wouldn't be telling the screens apart - it would be finding games on other engines with visuals worth a damn.
Sure, but there are these 2 from Ubi that I said, Anvil and Snowdrop that can and IMO they are holding their own against UE5.
There could have been also REDengine from CD.

Then there are the rest, I also like Decima, IMO it has unrivaled cloud tech.
 
Fable is getting a proper reveal in two days. I think the game looks absolutely amazing. That engine is doing lord's work. Have not seen a game this dense with detail, and have this CG look this gen.

 
DF's 2025 best graphics of the year btw...
Well the year was pretty scarce in terms of new games with advanced graphics.
Between this and AC Shadows and a bunch of UE5 projects all of them were rather mediocre graphics wise.
But hey at least all of them are hitting (almost, kinda) 60 on a 10TF console from 2020.
 
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