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[01011001]

There’s a place for every genre, just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean it should die out…

that is not a genre, these are sequences found in every genre, made because the developers are being pretentious.

stuff like this is bad game design. the developers wanted a sequence but have no idea how to implement it with systemic game mechanics, and so they just say "fuck it" and restrict your movement, restrict your abilities, restrict your camera at times and then let you basically act out a Quick Time Event like sequence that also usually doesn't even need any reaction time from the player, so it's more like following orders that take no skill.

what gameplay value do scenes like some of the ones in God of War 4 have, like after the first fight against Baldur where you are asked to walk fowards slowly, and it doesn't even matter which direction you press the stick in, every direction is forward in that sequence.
you are literally holding the Play button on a broken VCR at that point... that is essentially what this comes down to.
the same happens later when you carry Atreus, every stick direction makes you walk forward in a completely scripted path. what value does this have?

in the eyes of the developers it's supposed to be "dramatic", well guess what... it isn't. holding the play button down for a badly shot cutscene that is way too long as well is not "dramatic" it's not of any value. it's game devs being pretentious. "Atreus is badly wounded, he's dying! Feel the pain of a father afraid for his child's life!!!" is what they want you to feel I assume... all I felt is "fuck, how long do I have to hold this damn stick forward?", also because it was so crystal clear that he's gonna be ok, there was never a moment where the player actually believes that anything will actually happen to Atreus, not for a second. It was so clear from the start that you gonna bring him to Freya and she will fix him up.

so again, what's the value of such a sequence?

this is not a genre, this shit is in Action Adventures, in Open World games of any kind (stealth, shooter, RPG, you name it), Horror games, Platformers...
this is almost more overused and worse than the Ubisoft Open World formula.

 

[64bitmodels]

This is a bad take, some games are ok as sandbox with total freedom, but some games need a structure if they have a story, sense of progression, introduction of new gameppay elements etc.

You have the fucking tlou as an avatar dude, that thing is the opposite of what you want.

I want a rich, paced story from horizon, not some shitty narrative like zelda botw where going into the final boss after 2 hours doesn't break nothing because you have nothing to break to begin with.

Thank god majority of games have a solid structure, botw was just one different way of doing things, not the only correct one.

Nah its a perfectly valid take. It's been 15 years and we've hardly seen any evolution when it comes to the structure of video games. You guys talk about how games should have amazing narratives yet almost all the games ive played wasting their time doing that stuff still don't have the narrative genius of the terminator, back to the future, the matrix, the thing, the shining, princess mononoke, The original star wars trilogy, etc. All of these movies have better stories than every video game ever made point blank period. There is nothing you can say to prove otherwise and most of the people who have watched them will agree. And it's because of the inherent limitations of video games as a medium.

Video games are a great medium but movies will always have the better storytelling. That's their forte and that's what theyve curbstomped the gaming industry at for the past 50+ years. Making games centered around narratives is pointless because a movie allows you to do the same thing but with a better narrative. We should focus on what makes video games a unique medium from movies to begin with- the interactivity. what you can do in the worlds. A good story can only take you so far. Its why i think both TLOUs are quite overrated and why games from the 2000s that focused more on gameplay are what gaming should strive to be.

 

[ChiefDada]

what gameplay value do scenes like some of the ones in God of War 4 have, like after the first fight against Baldur where you are asked to walk fowards slowly, and it doesn't even matter which direction you press the stick in, every direction is forward in that sequence.
you are literally holding the Play button on a broken VCR at that point... that is essentially what this comes down to.
the same happens later when you carry Atreus, every stick direction makes you walk forward in a completely scripted path. what value does this have?

in the eyes of the developers it's supposed to be "dramatic", well guess what... it isn't. holding the play button down for a badly shot cutscene that is way too long as well is not "dramatic" it's not of any value. it's game devs being pretentious. "Atreus is badly wounded, he's dying! Feel the pain of a father afraid for his child's life!!!" is what they want you to feel I assume... all I felt is "fuck, how long do I have to hold this damn stick forward?", also because it was so crystal clear that he's gonna be ok, there was never a moment where the player actually believes that anything will actually happen to Atreus, not for a second. It was so clear from the start that you gonna bring him to Freya and she will fix him up.

so again, what's the value of such a sequence?

I thought these slowdowns for GoW 2018 were due to the no camera cut approach in order to compensate for slow streaming speed of PS4?

It was necessary for the type of game they wanted to make within the hardware parameters. In hindsight it was pretty annoying, but the benefits of continued shot far outweighed during my playthrough.

 

[Negotiator101]

Making an actual game look like that isn’t difficult…thats the point…you already saw a sneak peak in real time over and over again since 2020…you even got to play one yourself with The Matrix Awakens…now we wait…until cross gen games die out and UE5 is utilized for games releases in the future. Hellblade two trailer looks similar already…

I know but it's time and a lot of money, but I agree we will get this level of fidelity over the next few years but it's certainly not going to be all developer's that's for certain.

 

[GymWolf]

Nah its a perfectly valid take. It's been 15 years and we've hardly seen any evolution when it comes to the structure of video games. You guys talk about how games should have amazing narratives yet almost all the games ive played wasting their time doing that stuff still don't have the narrative genius of the terminator, back to the future, the matrix, the thing, the shining, princess mononoke, The original star wars trilogy, etc. All of these movies have better stories than every video game ever made point blank period. There is nothing you can say to prove otherwise and most of the people who have watched them will agree. And it's because of the inherent limitations of video games as a medium.

Video games are a great medium but movies will always have the better storytelling. That's their forte and that's what theyve curbstomped the gaming industry at for the past 50+ years. Making games centered around narratives is pointless because a movie allows you to do the same thing but with a better narrative. We should focus on what makes video games a unique medium from movies to begin with- the interactivity. what you can do in the worlds. A good story can only take you so far. Its why i think both TLOUs are quite overrated and why games from the 2000s that focused more on gameplay are what gaming should strive to be.

Nobody expects,stories from vidogames that are on par with cult movies, dah,people is okay with decent\acceptable stories aswell, a LOT of trash serial and movies that have worsts stories than many games, i'm italian and 99% of comedy and serious films from my country are worse than your average yakuza game and i can't even count how many shitty scifi serials from the sify network have worse scifi stories and lore than many games.


And many people love to have a strict narrative structure in their games, it may be pointless to you, but not for everyone.

Of course gameplay is king, but you can have good gameplay and good stories.

Also if you read my post, it was not only about having a story.

Me and a fuckload of people got bored with botw and his non-existent narrative, when you realize that killing enemies is not rewarding, exploration is not rewarding and the gameplay is not that technical or hard or nothing special really, a good gripping story could have been the reason to continue the game, but after 40 hours of unrewarding sandboxy gameplay i was onestly done, i had zero reasons to keep playing.
Who gives a fuck if i can go to ganon after 5 minutes? Who the fuck buy an open world game to do that? It was always a bullshit positive point of the game if you ask me, i very much prefer having a structure with a story if botw is the future of gaming...

At least elden ring has a good gameplay,good loot, kinda interesing lore, good dungeons, good enemies, good bosses, good skills etc.

Botw wish it was like ER.

 

[64bitmodels]

Me and a fuckload of people got bored with botw and his non-existent narrative, when you realize that killing enemies is not rewarding, exploration is not rewarding and the gameplay is not that technical or hard or nothing special really, a good gripping story could have been the reason to continue the game, but after 40 hours of unrewarding sandboxy gameplay i was onestly done, i had zero reasons to keep playing.
Who gives a fuck if i can go to ganon after 5 minutes? Who the fuck buy an open world game to do that? It was always a bullshit positive point of the game if you ask me, i very much prefer having a structure with a story if botw is the future of gaming...

i can super agree with this. ER is far more interesting and fun to play than BOTW so far and i enjoy it way more. But i think that BOTW's structure is very good for what it is and i like the freedom the game gives you of being able to do whatever the fuck you leave the temple which ER doesnt have
im just very sick of the overall cinematic push this industry has had and how its killing off more expirimental game experiences that push the medium forward structurally

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

i can super agree with this. ER is far more interesting and fun to play than BOTW so far and i enjoy it way more. But i think that BOTW's structure is very good for what it is and i like the freedom the game gives you of being able to do whatever the fuck you leave the temple which ER doesnt have
im just very sick of the overall cinematic push this industry has had and how its killing off more expirimental game experiences that push the medium forward structurally

There’s room for ALL genre’s…lets also stay on topic guys!

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

Remember the demo I posted earlier..? Its now in REAL TIME!! Not offline like the previous version…this is awesome!!!

 

[SlimySnake]

Nobody expects,stories from vidogames that are on par with cult movies, dah,people is okay with decent\acceptable stories aswell, a LOT of trash serial and movies that have worsts stories than many games, i'm italian and 99% of comedy and serious films from my country are worse than your average yakuza game and i can't even count how many shitty scifi serials from the sify network have worse scifi stories and lore than many games.


And many people love to have a strict narrative structure in their games, it may be pointless to you, but not for everyone.

Of course gameplay is king, but you can have good gameplay and good stories.

Also if you read my post, it was not only about having a story.

Me and a fuckload of people got bored with botw and his non-existent narrative, when you realize that killing enemies is not rewarding, exploration is not rewarding and the gameplay is not that technical or hard or nothing special really, a good gripping story could have been the reason to continue the game, but after 40 hours of unrewarding sandboxy gameplay i was onestly done, i had zero reasons to keep playing.
Who gives a fuck if i can go to ganon after 5 minutes? Who the fuck buy an open world game to do that? It was always a bullshit positive point of the game if you ask me, i very much prefer having a structure with a story if botw is the future of gaming...

At least elden ring has a good gameplay,good loot, kinda interesing lore, good dungeons, good enemies, good bosses, good skills etc.

Botw wish it was like ER.

Nah its a perfectly valid take. It's been 15 years and we've hardly seen any evolution when it comes to the structure of video games. You guys talk about how games should have amazing narratives yet almost all the games ive played wasting their time doing that stuff still don't have the narrative genius of the terminator, back to the future, the matrix, the thing, the shining, princess mononoke, The original star wars trilogy, etc. All of these movies have better stories than every video game ever made point blank period. There is nothing you can say to prove otherwise and most of the people who have watched them will agree. And it's because of the inherent limitations of video games as a medium.

Video games are a great medium but movies will always have the better storytelling. That's their forte and that's what theyve curbstomped the gaming industry at for the past 50+ years. Making games centered around narratives is pointless because a movie allows you to do the same thing but with a better narrative. We should focus on what makes video games a unique medium from movies to begin with- the interactivity. what you can do in the worlds. A good story can only take you so far. Its why i think both TLOUs are quite overrated and why games from the 2000s that focused more on gameplay are what gaming should strive to be.

I know we are discussing a post i made almost 5 months ago but since HFW has come out since that was made, i think its probably time to revisit it.

First of all, I am a BOTW hater so i dont want BOTW anywhere near Horizon. What i was trying to say was that narrative shouldnt supersede game design. If the dev has to make a choice between cutting a cool gameplay mechanic vs a cutscene or a narrative thread then I would want the gameplay mechanic to win out.

I hate to disagree with 64bitmodels because he liked four of my posts in this thread lol but I think video games might actually be the best medium to tell stories. Unlike, movies, tv shows and books where you are an passive viewer/reader, games are far more interactive and when done right are capable of an active form of storytelling. I know the player wasnt given a choice to kill the surgeon in tlou1's operating room, but i didnt even think twice about it after seeing ellie in that bed about to be cut open 'for the good of mankind'. I went in there and slaughtered everyone. Then they do a callback to the opening where Joel carries his daughter and it floored me. I was a wreck until Joel goes nuts and executes Marleen, and im like damn, i dont know if i wouldve gone that far, and then he lies to Ellie which left in an even bigger bitter taste in my mouth. All of a sudden, I felt like Joel had betrayed me as well as Ellie, and that kind of conflict is something you would never experience in a movie because for the longest time I thought I was Joel.

TLOU2's whole meta 'can you forgive Abby' game within the game is also something that can only be done in video games. I dont think Neil pulled it off as well as he could've but i still appreciate him trying to be ambitious instead of just doing a simple linear passive storytelling where ellie goes on a revenge spree and then learns to forgive Abby. By letting us play as Abby, then letting us fight Ellie, and finally making Ellie go back for revenge a second time was a stroke of genius because by the end not even the biggest Abby haters like me wanted revenge. But Ellie wasnt mentally there yet and it resulted in one of the most conflicted boss battles ive ever played. It's brilliant and you can only do that in video games.

TLDR; I am all for narrative driven games, I just dont want to hear excuses like we cant have destruction because it would break linear corridor storytelling or we cant have flying because it would break narrative structure. HFW keeps players from flying until the second to last level for story or exploration purposes and delaying the one new feature in the game until the very end made it feel far too samey and dated. No combat during flying either. no real game changing mechanics. HFW is more like Horizon Forgotten West despite the fact that they really went all in on storytelling animating and mocapping every single cutscene/dialogue tree in the game.

 

[SlimySnake]

Remember the demo I posted earlier..? Its now in REAL TIME!! Not offline like the previous version…this is awesome!!!

There’s room for ALL genre’s…lets also stay on topic guys!

I think that demo while impressive actually ties into this topic. We cant just have fancy static environments anymore. I want every single tool in that shed to have its own physics in next gen games. Black on PS2 was trying to do stuff like this. Half Life 2 in 2004. We are almost 18 years later still playing in this static sandbox where nothing feels organic.

Hell, let me grab an axe or a hammer or a saw or a screwdriver and use that as a weapon. let me throw a chair at someone. or throw a chair through a window. i feel like games have only one input nowadays, press R1 to shoot and thats it. No other way to interact with the environment. that needs to change next gen and that is part of the graphical fidelity.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

I think that demo while impressive actually ties into this topic. We cant just have fancy static environments anymore. I want every single tool in that shed to have its own physics in next gen games. Black on PS2 was trying to do stuff like this. Half Life 2 in 2004. We are almost 18 years later still playing in this static sandbox where nothing feels organic.

Hell, let me grab an axe or a hammer or a saw or a screwdriver and use that as a weapon. let me throw a chair at someone. or throw a chair through a window. i feel like games have only one input nowadays, press R1 to shoot and thats it. No other way to interact with the environment. that needs to change next gen and that is part of the graphical fidelity.

^^^
This guy gets it.

Add in NPC behavior that is unpredictable but also realistic.
- People camping in the woods
- Taking out umbrellas when it starts raining or seeking shelter from the rain
- Two thugs fighting on a street corner
- Someone walking their kids to school etc. etc.
Have no idea how taxing all this will be on current hardware but attempts have to be made.

Watch Dogs 2 is the only game where the NPC's have such these random behavior patterns.

 

[Lethal01]

^^^
This guy gets it.

Add in NPC behavior that is unpredictable but also realistic.
- People camping in the woods
- Taking out umbrellas when it starts raining or seeking shelter from the rain
- Two thugs fighting on a street corner
- Someone walking their kids to school etc. etc.
Have no idea how taxing all this will be on current hardware but attempts have to be made.

Watch Dogs 2 is the only game where the NPC's have such these random behavior patterns.

I'm not here for physics sandboxes in every game, Many games would be worst if they tried to force in mechanics of being able to pick up and attack with everything.

 

[Lethal01]

by the end not even the biggest Abby haters like me wanted revenge. But Ellie wasnt mentally there yet and it resulted in one of the most conflicted boss battles ive ever played. It's brilliant and you can only do that in video games.

At that point I hated her more than ever and Ellie not killing her felt like a bigger betrayal than anything in the first game so I just stopped caring about her and thus the game managed to get rid of every character I was interested in, Good think it wasn't trying to entertain I guess.

But I do agree that video games are the best medium for story telling, I sometimes hear people saying how much better movies are but usually they are just as bad as mediocre game stories.

 

[Polygonal_Sprite]

Isnt it depressing that a mother fucking solo dev is able to do this while entire AAA studios that cost tens of millions to run every year have yet to produce anything that looks even remotely that look?

If it wasnt for hellblade and the matrix demo, we wouldnt even know if these visuals were actually possible. How can the entire industry be asleep at the wheel? Wtf has happened to Sony studios. We are 19 months in and we dont have a single next gen game that looks remotely that good for these so-called best devs in the industry.

Absolutely pathetic. I would be ashamed if i was a dev working in one of those studios making cross gen games or jerking around doing whatever the fuck they have been doing since April 2019 when Cerny first revealed devkits were being sent out. I would quit in disgust. Do these devs even take pride in what they do anymore?

No offense to insomniac but ratchet looks last gen compared to this and the matrix. And why? VRR shows they can hit 60 fucking FPS in ratchet and average 50 at native 4k. WHY are you wasting so much of the GPU on rendering pixels and hitting 60 fps? Target 1440p 30 fps and push the visuals like you always have. You can get HALF of the GPU back by reducing resolution to 1440p and another half targeting 30 instead of 60. That's 4x more power in the palm of your hands and they are wasting it on more pixels.

Spiderman PS5 doesnt look anything special either and its aiming for native 4k. People actually think it might also be cross gen. What the fuck is going on at these studios where they are being shown up by a dude who made this in less than month.

It took the industry the entirety of 2020 to build a work from home development environment and to finish already deep in development games. Next gen game development started for most AAA studios in early 2021. This summer we should start to see the fruits of their labour (at least the current gen only projects).

I agree about 4k but not 30fps. In most cases games will be fine targeting 60fps because of the CPU leap. I've heard it's a 6-8x CPU leap over PS4/XB1 in real World performance. I'll take 1440p and fidelity over native 4k any day of the week.

 

[SlimySnake]

It took the industry the entirety of 2020 to build a work from home development environment and to finish already deep in development games. Next gen game development started for most AAA studios in early 2021. This summer we should start to see the fruits of their labour (at least the current gen only projects).

I agree about 4k but not 30fps. In most cases games will be fine targeting 60fps because of the CPU leap. I've heard it's a 6-8x CPU leap over PS4/XB1 in real World performance. I'll take 1440p and fidelity over native 4k any day of the week.

Tbh, I can see covid affecting production of games like Starfield and Avatar which started dev around 2017 as next gen only titles aiming for a 2021-2022 release. I can live with those delays. Delays due to games starting dev in 2020 right in the middle of the pandemic I dont have much sympathy for because lets face it, those games werent gonna be done before 2024-2025 anyway. My biggest problem is that devs, especially first party devs did not plan ahead in 2017 and 2018, and chose to waste their time on last gen games.

As for the CPU, we have seen the graphical fidelity one could expect from 60 fps games. Demon Souls and Ratchet have 1440p 60 fps modes and while they look great, they still dont look as good as UE5 stuff like the Matrix. As good as the CPUs are this gen, the GPU still has to do the heavy lifting when running games at twice the framerate, and the moment you have target 60 for a 1440p game, the 10.2 tflops GPU essentially becomes a 5.1 tflops GPU. You are literally wasting half of the GPU power on rendering the frames twice instead of adding more detail in those frames. It's really no different from choosing native 4k over 1440p. it's wasting half of the GPU power rendering 2x more pixels instead of adding more details in those pixels.

I do think we will see far more 60 fps modes this gen due to the 6-8x CPU leap you mentioned. Hopefully, devs will release 1080p 60 fps modes with paired back settings compared to 1440p 30 fps fidelity modes. Maybe they can use FSR 2.0 performance to eek out more performance but 1080p FSR doesnt seem to work too well. Still, if people really want 60 fps, i think they would be fine settling for 1080p with further downgrades to visual fidelity. If not, we will all have to settle for Demon Souls caliber visuals for the rest of the gen and Matrix would be a distant memory.

 

[Johnny Concrete]

Remember the demo I posted earlier..? Its now in REAL TIME!! Not offline like the previous version…this is awesome!!!

He says in the description that it took 4 hours to render? Hows that realtime?

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

Tbh, I can see covid affecting production of games like Starfield and Avatar which started dev around 2017 as next gen only titles aiming for a 2021-2022 release. I can live with those delays. Delays due to games starting dev in 2020 right in the middle of the pandemic I dont have much sympathy for because lets face it, those games werent gonna be done before 2024-2025 anyway. My biggest problem is that devs, especially first party devs did not plan ahead in 2017 and 2018, and chose to waste their time on last gen games.

As for the CPU, we have seen the graphical fidelity one could expect from 60 fps games. Demon Souls and Ratchet have 1440p 60 fps modes and while they look great, they still dont look as good as UE5 stuff like the Matrix. As good as the CPUs are this gen, the GPU still has to do the heavy lifting when running games at twice the framerate, and the moment you have target 60 for a 1440p game, the 10.2 tflops GPU essentially becomes a 5.1 tflops GPU. You are literally wasting half of the GPU power on rendering the frames twice instead of adding more detail in those frames. It's really no different from choosing native 4k over 1440p. it's wasting half of the GPU power rendering 2x more pixels instead of adding more details in those pixels.

I do think we will see far more 60 fps modes this gen due to the 6-8x CPU leap you mentioned. Hopefully, devs will release 1080p 60 fps modes with paired back settings compared to 1440p 30 fps fidelity modes. Maybe they can use FSR 2.0 performance to eek out more performance but 1080p FSR doesnt seem to work too well. Still, if people really want 60 fps, i think they would be fine settling for 1080p with further downgrades to visual fidelity. If not, we will all have to settle for Demon Souls caliber visuals for the rest of the gen and Matrix would be a distant memory.

I'd sooner play a game at 30 fps than suffer through playing next gen caliber games at 1080p. Unless it has some A+ upscaling, i.e. something like Returnal which uses a 1080p base I believe.

Man I wish these consoles were just a bit more powerful. I don't see how they are going to stay relevant, performance wise, as the generation goes into the second half of 2020. It's going to be a bloodbath compared to your average PC. For all this hype of how powerful the systems are they sure do struggle to handle next gen visuals at 60 fps.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

Tbh, I can see covid affecting production of games like Starfield and Avatar which started dev around 2017 as next gen only titles aiming for a 2021-2022 release. I can live with those delays. Delays due to games starting dev in 2020 right in the middle of the pandemic I dont have much sympathy for because lets face it, those games werent gonna be done before 2024-2025 anyway. My biggest problem is that devs, especially first party devs did not plan ahead in 2017 and 2018, and chose to waste their time on last gen games.

As for the CPU, we have seen the graphical fidelity one could expect from 60 fps games. Demon Souls and Ratchet have 1440p 60 fps modes and while they look great, they still dont look as good as UE5 stuff like the Matrix. As good as the CPUs are this gen, the GPU still has to do the heavy lifting when running games at twice the framerate, and the moment you have target 60 for a 1440p game, the 10.2 tflops GPU essentially becomes a 5.1 tflops GPU. You are literally wasting half of the GPU power on rendering the frames twice instead of adding more detail in those frames. It's really no different from choosing native 4k over 1440p. it's wasting half of the GPU power rendering 2x more pixels instead of adding more details in those pixels.

I do think we will see far more 60 fps modes this gen due to the 6-8x CPU leap you mentioned. Hopefully, devs will release 1080p 60 fps modes with paired back settings compared to 1440p 30 fps fidelity modes. Maybe they can use FSR 2.0 performance to eek out more performance but 1080p FSR doesnt seem to work too well. Still, if people really want 60 fps, i think they would be fine settling for 1080p with further downgrades to visual fidelity. If not, we will all have to settle for Demon Souls caliber visuals for the rest of the gen and Matrix would be a distant memory.

I'd sooner play a game at 30 fps than suffer through playing next gen caliber games at 1080p. Unless it has some A+ upscaling, i.e. something like Returnal which uses a 1080p base I believe.

Man I wish these consoles were just a bit more powerful. I don't see how they are going to stay relevant, performance wise, as the generation goes into the second half of 2020. It's going to be a bloodbath compared to your average PC. For all this hype of how powerful the systems are they sure do struggle to handle next gen visuals at 60 fps

At that point I hated her more than ever and Ellie not killing her felt like a bigger betrayal than anything in the first game so I just stopped caring about her and thus the game managed to get rid of every character I was interested in, Good think it wasn't trying to entertain I guess.

But I do agree that video games are the best medium for story telling, I sometimes hear people saying how much better movies are but usually they are just as bad as mediocre game stories.

Thanks for spoiling that for me

 

[CamHostage]

Tbh, I can see covid affecting production of games like Starfield and Avatar which started dev around 2017 as next gen only titles aiming for a 2021-2022 release. I can live with those delays. Delays due to games starting dev in 2020 right in the middle of the pandemic I dont have much sympathy for because lets face it, those games werent gonna be done before 2024-2025 anyway. My biggest problem is that devs, especially first party devs did not plan ahead in 2017 and 2018, and chose to waste their time on last gen games.

Well, maybe we'll see tomorrow, if they show Avatar or a new UE5 project or something else exclusive and that game really delivers an undeniably next-gen experience in 2022... but I don't share your opinion that PS5/XSX games would have been generationally different if major developers had committed to exclusively developing for their power levels in 2020/2021 titles.

I honestly think developers didn't have the tools to do a lot extraordinary with these machines which couldn't be scaled down to some degree on past platforms at launch (aside from using the loading speed for asset density and/or swapping tricks ala R&C Rift Apart,) unlike most past generations. Nanite and Lumen were not mature (and still have some kinks to work out). They didn't have a handle on Mesh Shaders in interactive experiences or Raytracing in high volume usage. There's AI and ML techniques for simulating physical characteristics or melding motions, but that's has been going on independent of the hardware requirement until capacity is really strained (and deployment can either still be scaled and/or dropped on unsupported consoles to rely on fallback techniques.) And then yes, a developer could do more physics and faster transitions and other things that take advantage of the greater horsepower, but what's the game that requires that, when we have full worlds realized as is? At some point, your engine and understanding of how to manage new levels of complexity-on-complexity can mature well enough to take you beyond what was possible before, but especially with the way modern machines and structured systems work on these iterative machines, I really believe we weren't ready for that generational leap in graphics or game complexity this time. Especially given the original timelines of many of these games which are analyzed for their cross-gen roots (where Horizon and GT7 were planned to come in 2021, and so was Ragnarok although probably it really would have landed in that March/April post-Christmas spot that GoW has always occupied,) I do believe those are the games that would have shipped in those timelines whether for example Sony "believed in generations" or not.

We'll see, if Avatar Frontiers of Pandora really looks like that and pushes new boundaries of physics or flora/fauna simulation and micro/macro transitions from crawling through the jungle to high-speed flights all in an open world... if all that all happens the same year Horizon FW had only a "cross-gen" level of improvement over its previous game, then that will be quite a feat and indicator maybe there was more juice to squeeze from these fruits if commitment to next-gen-exclusive came earlier. You're hot on that game as a teeter-totter title that will demonstrably shift everything to next-gen; I'm not personally so convinced that's game-quality footage, and reading between the lines on what the developers say about it, I'm not as confident as you are that what they're doing is a generation beyond what everybody else has been doing. (It all sounds great in the convo, but there's a wide sense of scale there between this being wholly radical/mature next-gen technology versus the approach we've mostly seen elsewhere of scaled-up improvements with next-gen layered on top.) Hopefully we'll see tomorrow or on June 9 whether it really is a next-gen revolution or plays out more like a Snowdrop Plus with a nice next-gen sheen but some visible roots of the same engine under past-gen The Division at work in this next-gen title.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

He says in the description that it took 4 hours to render? Hows that realtime?

He had to render CAMERA pans…that took 4 hours…

 

[Johnny Concrete]

He had to render CAMERA pans…that took 4 hours…

Yea. I don’t know why it would take 4 hours. Maybe if he rendered it in 4K in EXR with some extra passes to a slow HDD it could take a while.

 

[alloush]

 

[Haggard]

what exactly do you post this for?
That´s an offline render......

 

[TheRedRiders]

I hate to disagree with 64bitmodels because he liked four of my posts in this thread lol but I think video games might actually be the best medium to tell stories. Unlike, movies, tv shows and books where you are an passive viewer/reader, games are far more interactive and when done right are capable of an active form of storytelling.

Agreed, I always describe games as interactive and immersive storytelling, especially the ones I play. Compared to film, there's much more opportunity to flesh out stories and characters, and add a layer of depth. Another important aspect games can push compared to movies is decision making, how the choices you make as a character effect the story and the ending, The Witcher 3 does an excellent job at this.

As for the CPU, we have seen the graphical fidelity one could expect from 60 fps games. Demon Souls and Ratchet have 1440p 60 fps modes and while they look great, they still dont look as good as UE5 stuff like the Matrix.

You keep comparing everything to that Matrix demo, which if I'm honest looks pretty ugly, (maybe it's the art direction or lack thereof, the weird artifacting around the charcters, or the blurry 30 FPS mess) sure it's pushing things like micro-polygon rendering and dynamic lighting, for me these things are more impressive on a technical level than a visual one.

I'll be more impressed with UE5 when we actually start getting full triple A titles that can actually take advantage of the engine in many ways beyond the rendering systems it uses.

I think games like R&C and Demon's Souls look perfectly fine in terms of the visuals they were trying to achieve, and in fact raised the bar in some respects.

 

[alloush]

what exactly do you post this for?
That´s an offline render......

So? I don't get it, even if it is an offline render I just thought it looked hella good

 

[winjer]

So? I don't get it, even if it is an offline render I just thought it looked hella good

You can expect that graphical fidelity for this gen.
Probably not even for the next.

 

[alloush]

You can expect that graphical fidelity for this gen.
Probably not even for the next.

Honestly I am no technical expert on graphics but so far we haven't seen any game close to this in terms of photorealism but I hope you're right but it says path tracing in the title and as far as I know path tracing is still a while away?

 

[Haggard]

So? I don't get it, even if it is an offline render I just thought it looked hella good

you realize that this thread is about the graphics in games this gen, not cutscenes?

 

[alloush]

you realize that this thread is about the graphics in games this gen, not cutscenes?

Then what is that trainstation cutscene doing here? Man I post for the first time ever on here and you on me like a hounding dog

 

[Haggard]

Then what is that trainstation cutscene doing here? Man I post for the first time ever on here and you on me like a hounding dog

The trainstation scene can actually be run in real time at ~30fps.....
I´m not "on you", I´m just saying that your video is simply off-topic.
Anyways, enough with this. Don`t wanna spam the thread.

 

[winjer]

How about some excellent water physics for our games?

 

[alloush]

The trainstation scene can actually be run in real time at ~30fps.....
I´m not "on you", I´m just saying that your video is simply off-topic.
Anyways, enough with this. Don`t wanna spam the thread.

Lol it is not off-topic I simply posted a link of a video made in UE5, I wasn't even aware it wasn't real time but even if it wasn't no big deal dude countless videos were posted over here that weren't in real time.

Having said that, I agree let's not derail the topic, this is the most interesting thread on Gaf currently, let's keep it going.

 

[alloush]

How about some excellent water physics for our games?

We need some proper water physics honestly, this one looks ace

 

[VFXVeteran]

How about some excellent water physics for our games?

Yea, we got a long way to go on FX such as fire, water, smoke, etc.. but it does look better than any water rendering to date.

 

[RoyBatty]

How about some excellent water physics for our games?

This plugin is amazing

 

[alloush]

 

[alloush]

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

 

[op22]

I think this gen peaked early. I don't expect any major leaps over Cyberpunk on a 3080 as far as environments are concerned. If chat technology similar to LaMBDA can be incorporated this generation, a leap in the quality and range of facial expressions and other body language components might happen to make choosing missions/paths more emotional and immersive.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

I think this gen peaked early. I don't expect any major leaps over Cyberpunk on a 3080 as far as environments are concerned. If chat technology similar to LaMBDA can be incorporated this generation, a leap in the quality and range of facial expressions and other body language components might happen to make choosing missions/paths more emotional and immersive.

Don't the UE5 matrix demo and land of nanite demo surpass Cyberpunk environments?

Edit regards the tweet above about the clothes, I sure hope we finally get rid of sticker clothing and get moving clothing, sticker clothing is so out of place with today's realistic characters.

 

[op22]

Don't the UE5 matrix demo and land of nanite demo surpass Cyberpunk environments?

Edit regards the tweet above about the clothes, I sure hope we finally get rid of sticker clothing and get moving clothing, sticker clothing is so out of place with today's realistic characters.

I thought areas in Cyberpunk 2077 like the parade were far more impressive.

 

[Portugeezer]

Cyberpunk graphics are not worthy of this thread.

 

[Lumpyoatmeal]

The Coalition is the best in the video game industry right now when it comes to black character models; Shout outs to the responsible artists and programmers.

Black Steel Del is the first video game model that gave me the sense I was playing as a black male. TC actually rendered his hands correctly, rendered his overall skin correctly, the hair is on point and the movement of the feet even if it's unintentionally immersed me into the gameplay.



This is the GOAT black character model in a video game.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

I wish every open world game looked as good as Cyberpunk 2077

 

[rofif]

I wish every open world game looked as good as Cyberpunk 2077

yeah it looks good until you realize how static and fake it all is.
And by the end of the game, I still had trouble navigating from memory. Its so busy

 

[MidGenRefresh]

yeah it looks good until you realize how static and fake it all is.
And by the end of the game, I still had trouble navigating from memory. Its so busy

Sadly barely any game these days is not static. Open world or not.

It's busy by design.

 

[PUNKem733]

I think this gen peaked early. I don't expect any major leaps over Cyberpunk on a 3080 as far as environments are concerned. If chat technology similar to LaMBDA can be incorporated this generation, a leap in the quality and range of facial expressions and other body language components might happen to make choosing missions/paths more emotional and immersive.

I wonder how can a generation peak early when 99% of it has been cross gen?

 

[ZywyPL]

I wonder how can a generation peak early when 99% of it has been cross gen?

And those cross-gens don't even run at 4K60, tells you everything you need to realize how little power there is in those consoles aside from very few unused features. Before cross-gen period is even over a low-end RTX 4050 will be doing circles around PS5/XSX.