Setting aside the fact that this game looks spectacular, especially as a launch title, I have to ask this:
Why do so many people expect some kind of insane graphical jump over the previous generation from launch titles?
When I see comments like, "I expected more from next gen," is it from primarily people who are young, and have therefore never experience a console life cycle before in their lives? Or is it people that simply don't know how game development evolves over a console life cycle?
We see this kind of thing with pretty much every console, especially since consoles have gone to the 3D era. Year 1 PS1 titles paled in comparison to year 5 or 6 PS1 titles. Hell, year 2 PS1 titles blew launch PS1 titles out of the water. Year 1 PS2 launch titles are laughable in comparison to what came later (ie, MGS3, Shadow of the Colossus, Final Fantasy XII, etc). Resistance: Fall of Man at PS3 launch, to Resistance 3, or Killzone 2, or The Last of Us from later years.
Killzone: Shadowfall is a launch title. It looks spectacular. To take a launch title as a portent to what the console will be capable of in the future seems a little silly. We're already seeing some impressive year 1 titles in The Order 1886, and inFAMOUS: Second Son. I can't even imagine what we'll be seeing year 2, 3, 4, etc, etc.
To expect a gigantic leap at the start of the generation seems a little unrealistic. I never expected to be impressed at the PS4 and Xbox ONE launches. And yet, well, here we are. KZ looks amazing.
And as someone who saw it running in person at E3 this year, it looks absolutely stunning on an HDTV, running on hardware, and that was at E3. The game has undergone a lot of polish since then.
