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[SlimySnake]

Also, I had a self-imposed 30 day ban from GAF to get a break from the internet, and I missed this thread the most. Happy to be back!

Thats not a bad idea. A lot of regulars got permabanned recently over politics and culture wars. Its probably best to take a step back instead of getting banned over nongaming things.

2026 is probably not the year where you want to risk another possibly lame girlboss protagonist now that the pendulum is in full swing, if you havent noticed, ubisoft writing has gone down the hill even compared to stuff like odissey, witch was ok/decent at best, so i have no much faith in them writing a good female protagonist in 2026.

Speaking of culture wars, i think the fact that games take 6+ years to make nowadays kinda fucked over these devs who started back in 2020 when everyone was getting brownie points for being as woke as ever. But to me, TLOU2 put an end to it. Abby and even Ellie just put people off of female protagonists forever and devs simply ignored those reactions as incels online instead of a full on mass market correction. And now they are paying for it in sales as online backlash turned out to be more than just a couple of incels.

I feel bad for the devs because clearly there was a lot of backlash within these studios. Ex-ND devs recently said that ND was split down the middle on killing off Joel. We have to assume that other studios also went through this. I remember the lead Character Artist over at ND was a very pretty woman who showed off this model of Drake and said OF COURSE we made him handsome, the protagonist has to be attractive. Then literally a year later, they made Chloe and Nadine ugly and of course Abby and Ellie a few years later. I refuse to believe that the same character lead artist is responsible for that bald monstrosity in Interstellar.

Now Jason is reporting that Sony is mad at Naughty Dog as well. He reasons that its because they have not shipped a game this gen, but i bet you anything, people at Sony are looking at those 90% dislikes on the Intergallactic trailer and wondering why their new $300 million 7 year in dev game is bombing before it even launches. TLOU2 basically sold 1/3rd of what TLOU1 sold so they are already not happy about that.

 

[Bitstream]

Dark Messiah (2006)

Game used pixel shaders more impressively than Half Life 2 (and Episodes). I loved this game.

That's shockingly current gen looking for 2006

 

[archangelmorph]

Before you continue, many of my goty or gotg have a female protagonist and i liked cassandra well enough, always picked her in my 3 attempts of finishing odissey, i briefly tried the dude but he speak like a 80s porn actor...

But you forgot to mention that odissey also had a male protagonist and the data showed that majority of players picked him so my point stand, personally a female protagonist is not a problem at all, i was talking more broadly.

2026 is probably not the year where you want to risk another possibly lame girlboss protagonist now that the pendulum is in full swing, if you havent noticed, ubisoft writing has gone down the hill even compared to stuff like odissey, witch was ok/decent at best, so i have no much faith in them writing a good female protagonist in 2026.

So no more females at all for a while because of pendulum swing!

Course bro!

Gotcha!

Fuck dem hoes!

Bros to the front right?

They should replace Lara as the lead in the new Tomb Raider game too right, just to be careful, to make sure modern audiences like us can feel comfortable and be able to sleep at night without our diapers right!

Totally aligned!

 

[SlimySnake]

IDK how much Man of Medan does, but 8020 uses full hw lumen with almost every lumen feature enabled, it does more than Hellblade 2 for example, it has nanite tesselation, the same light res (16x downsample) also full res reflections with translucency allowed (not sure if hellblade does at Epic settings as i mightve overriden it there anyway so my logs cant be relied upon)

I think its the most feature-full/packed UE5 game so far unless ive missed some, but doubt it.

Man of Medan only does RT reflections and AO.

I think Supermassive just didnt do a lot with this game despite using every single UE5 feature. It's a very mid looking game. Especially by their standards.

 

[GymWolf]

So no more females at all for a while because of pendulum swing!

Course bro!

Gotcha!

Fuck dem hoes!

Bros to the front right?

They should replace Lara as the lead in the new Tomb Raider game too right, just to be careful, to make sure modern audiences like us can feel comfortable and be able to sleep at night without our diapers right!

Totally aligned!

I'm glad when can have adult, well thought discussion on gaf once in a while

 

[archangelmorph]

I'm glad when can have adult, well thought discussion on gaf once in a while

Is there anything else here?

Love you fam!

 

[GudOlRub]

But to me, TLOU2 put an end to it. Abby and even Ellie just put people off of female protagonists forever and devs simply ignored those reactions as incels online instead of a full on mass market correction. And now they are paying for it in sales as online backlash turned out to be more than just a couple of incels.

I feel bad for the devs because clearly there was a lot of backlash within these studios. Ex-ND devs recently said that ND was split down the middle on killing off Joel. We have to assume that other studios also went through this. I remember the lead Character Artist over at ND was a very pretty woman who showed off this model of Drake and said OF COURSE we made him handsome, the protagonist has to be attractive. Then literally a year later, they made Chloe and Nadine ugly and of course Abby and Ellie a few years later. I refuse to believe that the same character lead artist is responsible for that bald monstrosity in Interstellar.

Now Jason is reporting that Sony is mad at Naughty Dog as well. He reasons that its because they have not shipped a game this gen, but i bet you anything, people at Sony are looking at those 90% dislikes on the Intergallactic trailer and wondering why their new $300 million 7 year in dev game is bombing before it even launches. TLOU2 basically sold 1/3rd of what TLOU1 sold so they are already not happy about that.

I was pretty vocal about not liking what TLOU2 was doing back then but the funny thing is, I ended up loving the first half of TLOU2, playing as an enraged Ellie, killing anyone and everyone was grim as fuck, it got so dark that I actually liked it because it honestly felt kinda unique. It was the overall story of the game and Abby's half that I didn't really care about but the gameplay and graphics made up for it.
But I was pretty unamused when I first found out about Joel dying in the beginning of the game so I only bought it at a discount so Sony did lost out on me as well and I'm not one of those people hates that game with a passion so I can't even imagine the kinds of damage those leaks did to the game's sales.

I do think Jason's report sounds dumb as fuck though, unless Sony had no part in Naughty Dog's decision to have a go at live-service games because if they did then they only have themselves to blame for ND's lack of output this gen.

And personally speaking I don't understand the drama around Intergalactic, we know jackshit about that game, makes no sense to make a fuss because a woman is bald. Sounds as dumb as the people who complained about Ripley being bald in Alien 3...

 

[Victhemic]

Getting Uncharted vibes.

And I love it.

 

[SlimySnake]

I was pretty vocal about not liking what TLOU2 was doing back then but the funny thing is, I ended up loving the first half of TLOU2, playing as an enraged Ellie, killing anyone and everyone was grim as fuck, it got so dark that I actually liked it because it honestly felt kinda unique. It was the overall story of the game and Abby's half that I didn't really care about but the gameplay and graphics made up for it.
But I was pretty unamused when I first found out about Joel dying in the beginning of the game so I only bought it at a discount so Sony did lost out on me as well and I'm not one of those people hates that game with a passion so I can't even imagine the kinds of damage those leaks did to the game's sales.

I do think Jason's report sounds dumb as fuck though, unless Sony had no part in Naughty Dog's decision to have a go at live-service games because if they did then they only have themselves to blame for ND's lack of output this gen.

And personally speaking I don't understand the drama around Intergalactic, we know jackshit about that game, makes no sense to make a fuss because a woman is bald. Sounds as dumb as the people who complained about Ripley being bald in Alien 3...

The MP game was being done by a small team over at ND who used to do MP modes for TLOU1 and Uncharted. The main team has been working on Intergallactic since 2020. Neil said 200 people have been working on it for the past four years back in 2024. there was a small team that took over VSG's remake in 2020, those guys are now making the Uncharted spinoff.

Sony's mad because Neil went away to shoot two seasons of TLOU in canada. he was a showrunner so he was involved in virtually every aspect of pre and post production. They had made by the Studio head after TLOU2 but he went and made a c-tier tv show anyway. Watch the TLOU2 documentary. Nothing got done without his input on that game. Cutscene directors would wait for him to sign off on editing and camera placement. Animators and level designers would get mad because he wouldnt show up for meetings because he was held up somewhere else in the studio. now imagine if hes not even in the studio for four years.

Intergallactic's backlash is simple. The trailer showed nothing except for an ugly protagonist. A bald boss bitch type who players rejected in TLOU2. If they had gameplay or some actual story beats or even next gen visuals, people would talk about them. But ND didnt give them any of that. So if you didnt like the bald lead, you were bound to dislike the trailer. I said it back then but it was a terrible reveal for a game 4.5 years in development. You and I know ND will deliver best in class cutscenes, storytelling, combat and thats enough for us, but the masses have moved on which is what Gymwolf was trying to say.

Neil and now Nolan have both misread the room, and while I will be there day one for intergallactic, horizon 3, Female God of War, and Odyssey, a large part of their fanbase have decided that they've gone too far.

 

[SlimySnake]

DF posted a summary of their tech interview with James Bond devs.

2. Software-based ray tracing for global illumination is a key Glacier engine feature: While some modern titles rely on hardware-accelerated ray tracing, IO developed a custom software ray tracing pipeline for its real-time global illumination probes. By tracing against distance fields and using voxels for material data entirely in software, the team achieved a highly optimised system that scales across all target platforms without requiring specific RT hardware for its base lighting.

3. The Smolder volumetric system is critical for the more chaotic firefights in First Light versus Hitman: Another significant advancement in the Glacier Engine is a new unified volumetric system internally called Smolder. Unlike the purpose-built clouds or fog seen in other engines, Smolder integrates seamlessly with the game's lighting and order-independent transparency systems, allowing every light source in the scene to cast dynamic shadows through and from volumetric effects, such as smoke grenades.

4. Real-time level streaming was retrofitted to suit the continuous nature of gameplay: Historically, the Glacier Engine was designed for discrete, level-based loading (as seen in Hitman). For 007 First Light, the team retrofitted the engine with fully dynamic brick loading and unloading. This allows the game to transition seamlessly from a static manor house to a high-speed driving sequence and onto a moving plane without loading screens, all while maintaining a 60fps target.

5. Transitioning to motion matching animation was key: To move away from the binary feel of previous interactions, IO Interactive replaced its old middleware with a custom, engine-integrated animation system using Motion Matching. This technology allows James Bond to move with much higher fluidity and contextual variety; for example, the character uses around 100 different animations just for walking at a gala, compared to about 10 in previous titles.

6. Advanced clustered lighting allows for massive light counts: The engine has moved from the 2D tile-based light culling used in Hitman to a modern 3D clustered lighting system. This allows artists to place upwards of 1,500 lights in a single environment. The system utilizes wave intrinsics to efficiently cull these down to a manageable 100–200 lights per frame, enabling much more complex and dense lighting setups than previously possible.

7. Hitting 60fps on PS5 and Series X was tricky: Beyond the usual mix of downgraded settings and lower resolutions, hitting 60fps on consoles relies on the Glacier Engine's aggressive use of async compute, ensuring the GPU is fully saturated at all times. The core renderer was also modernised with a frame graph system that manages resource dependencies, allowing the engine to schedule individual rendering passes efficiently. CPU optimisation was also key, with expensive tasks like physics simulations, AI and animation moved off the critical path and onto parallelisable worker threads.

007 Tech Secrets From Our First Light Deep Dive: Why Series S Is 30fps, How It Hits 60fps Elsewhere and Much More

Highlights from our big discussion with Io Interactive's tech team.

www.digitalfoundry.net

I think lack of Hardware RT probably allowed them to hit 60 fps on consoles especially with the physics and NPC counts they are pushing. Just bought the game on PC. Really excited to try it out. First Uncharted like game in almost a decade.

 

[SlimySnake]

What you don't realize is that the problem with UE5, is that because all the features have huge overhead costs with them, when you toggle all the features, it makes it impossible to actually create the same kind of game that you see being created by other game studio engines, games like Star Wars Outlaw, Alan Wake 2, Avatar, GTA 6, Resident Evil 7. You're not gonna be able to create these games in UE5 at similar performance levels. But if you constrain the levels to be very small like Hellblade 2, then you absolutely can. But all of the issues with UE5 are real.

?? Graphics cost of Software Lumen, Nanite and VSMs are pretty much the same as what you see in those other games.

Almost every single UE5 game has shipped with a 1440p 30 fps mode. Upscaled to 4k using TSR. Other games below use FSR.

1. Star Wars Outlaws - 1440p 30 fps.
2. Avatar - 1440p 30 fps
3. GTA6 PS5 trailers - 1440p 30 fps
4. Alan Wake 2 - 1440p 30 fps
5. AC Shadows - 1440p 30 fps
6. Starfield - 1440p 30 fps
7. Plague's Tale Requiem - 1440p 30 fps
8. Kingdom Come Deliverence - 1440p 30 fps
9. RE9 - 1080p 60 fps. No 30 fps mode, but effectively the same pixel budget as a 1440p 30 fps game reconstructed to 4k using FSR or TSR.
10. Crimson Desert - 1440p 30 fps.

Thats 9 different engines. All with roughly the same performance profile as UE5. Now some games like Alan Wake 2, RE9 and Plague's tale use baked lighting. Some like Starfield, James Bond and KCD2 use software GI like Software Lumen. While Star Wars, Avatar, and AC Shadows use Hardware RT albeit with 1/4 res RT effects whereas hardware lumen is full res. Crimson Desert uses 1/16 res.

But UE5 also brings Nanite and VSMs. They are also able to do 1080p 60 fps whereas most other games drop to 720p in 60 fps modes. AC shadows skipped RT for its 60 fps mode altogether.

TLDR; There is no inherent defect in UE5's lumen and nanite implementation. these things have the same overhead as every other engine on the planet. The issues it had (traversal stutters, single threaded CPU utilziation etc) have since been resolved.