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[Hunnybun]

Just because Ratchet and HFW/HBS run at 4k30 (and therefore obviously would look better at 1440p30 or whatever, does NOT mean that they're not super fucking impressive and big leaps from anything last gen.

Anyone who doubts this should go back and compare Ratchet 2021 to Ratchet 2016 (which was really great looking at the time). The difference is HUGE. Not in resolution, or frame rate, but just overall fidelity. It's a "generational" leap, whatever that even means anyway.

And personally, I think 60fps is one of the most important components of visual fidelity, so imo somewhere between 1080p and 1440p at 60 is about the right choice for this gen. And this is what Sony have given us.

The real puzzle is why seemingly every other developer is just SO FAR behind Sony's. What the hell is going on? It wasn't anything like this stark last generation.

 

[SlimySnake]

Okay the final fight was next gen but that was the only section that didn't look like a PS4 launch title.

Buuuuut every other aspect of the game rose in my estimation to the point where I bought it. My gf was watching and got sucked into the story. Surprisingly well written and acted. It ain't TLOU1 but it's good. And the combat I started liking more and more! Hopefully I see more graphically impressive areas though

Same. The Titan fight and the engrossing story made it an insta buy for me too.

The destruction is all scripted and precanned, with some minor cuts here and there you can definitely do that on ps4.

You people forgot that we had total destruction on a fucking ps2 with stranglehold and red faction, and that was real time.

And as a personal preference i take the humanoid, hard boss fights in gow over the all spectacle zero substance fights in ff16 any day of the week, they are good to look at it but the leave nothing inside me 5 min after they are done...i fucking remember every hard fight in gow like it was yesterday.

But yeah, the one cut camera is absolute bullshit of the worst kojima sniff my own fart tier, i remember people defending that shit for whetever reason.
The only moment when it was actaully well used is when the camera turn in the boat and you see athena when you are going to recover the blades of chaos, that bit was cool

P.s. lmao at returnal being nextgen in any way, shape or form just because you have the screen filled with coloured balls and lasers, if particles everywhere is nextgen then forspoken is also nextgen, just watch the final boss fight.

I don't care if it's canned or faked, i just didn't see this shit last Gen so good to finally see it again.

 

[GymWolf]

Same. The Titan fight and the engrossing story made it an insta buy for me too.


I don't care if it's canned or faked, i just didn't see this shit last Gen so good to finally see it again.

You never saw scripted destruction?

So you forgot unchy2 having an entire building collapsing or unchy 4 where an entire church collapse or battlefield having precanned giant buildings collapsing or any fucking game that goes bombastic during cutscene with explosions and destruction?

Ok.

Gimme this shit in real time then i'm gonna be impressed, if it happen during a scripted scene it looks good but whatever really.

Tbf i still have to finish the game so maybe there is something not scripted but i have doubts, the framerate already tanks a lot during these precanned scenes.

 

[SlimySnake]

Just because Ratchet and HFW/HBS run at 4k30 (and therefore obviously would look better at 1440p30 or whatever, does NOT mean that they're not super fucking impressive and big leaps from anything last gen.

Anyone who doubts this should go back and compare Ratchet 2021 to Ratchet 2016 (which was really great looking at the time). The difference is HUGE. Not in resolution, or frame rate, but just overall fidelity. It's a "generational" leap, whatever that even means anyway.

And personally, I think 60fps is one of the most important components of visual fidelity, so imo somewhere between 1080p and 1440p at 60 is about the right choice for this gen. And this is what Sony have given us.

The real puzzle is why seemingly every other developer is just SO FAR behind Sony's. What the hell is going on? It wasn't anything like this stark last generation.

Lots to unpack here. Ratchet is indeed a huge leap over the 2016 ratchet, but so is HFW over the 2017 HZD despite being last gen. Does that make HFW next gen? Go and play HFW on PS4, it looks virtually identical save for resolution, foliage draw distance and maybe hero lighting. the leap came from GG reducing the resolution of the base PS4 game to 900p getting 44% of the GPU back improving their lighting, water quality and character models over there the previous game. If we apply the same logic to ratchet, it becomes obvious that Ratchet could be done on the PS4 at a reduced resolution with some effects paired back just like HFW.

I think the biggest mistake Sony devs made last gen was sticking with their stupid 1080p target. That limited that kind of mid to late gen leap we used to see in the PS2 and PS3 era where games like Uncharted 2, Gear 2 and AC2 looked vastly better than their original entries. I remember playing RDR2 on my brothers 65 inch tv running on an x1s and I was pretty surprised by the IQ. I mean playing RDR2 at native 4k on my X1x was practically a religious experience, but 900p didnt look that bad. The game still retained its phenomenal graphics. I think for GOW Ragnorak, they shouldve dropped the resolution to 900p and at least tried to upgrade the visuals.

Lastly, Sony studios have been shown up by Ubisoft devs, Microsoft Devs and even SE this past E3. I am not sure why you think they are leagues ahead. That may have been true at the start of the gen with DS and Ratchet leagues ahead of other games, but if this E3 is any indication, it's the sony devs who are lagging way behind.

 

[GymWolf]

Lots to unpack here. Ratchet is indeed a huge leap over the 2016 ratchet, but so is HFW over the 2017 HZD despite being last gen. Does that make HFW next gen? Go and play HFW on PS4, it looks virtually identical save for resolution, foliage draw distance and maybe hero lighting. the leap came from GG reducing the resolution of the base PS4 game to 900p getting 44% of the GPU back improving their lighting, water quality and character models over there the previous game. If we apply the same logic to ratchet, it becomes obvious that Ratchet could be done on the PS4 at a reduced resolution with some effects paired back just like HFW.

I think the biggest mistake Sony devs made last gen was sticking with their stupid 1080p target. That limited that kind of mid to late gen leap we used to see in the PS2 and PS3 era where games like Uncharted 2, Gear 2 and AC2 looked vastly better than their original entries. I remember playing RDR2 on my brothers 65 inch tv running on an x1s and I was pretty surprised by the IQ. I mean playing RDR2 at native 4k on my X1x was practically a religious experience, but 900p didnt look that bad. The game still retained its phenomenal graphics. I think for GOW Ragnorak, they shouldve dropped the resolution to 900p and at least tried to upgrade the visuals.

Lastly, Sony studios have been shown up by Ubisoft devs, Microsoft Devs and even SE this past E3. I am not sure why you think they are leagues ahead. That may have been true at the start of the gen with DS and Ratchet leagues ahead of other games, but if this E3 is any indication, it's the sony devs who are lagging way behind.

If sushima 2, new bend game, faction and the new corey game don't rock my balls graphic wise, they are fucked.

We already know that spidey 2 is gonna be mid.

 

[SlimySnake]

You never saw scripted destruction?

So you forgot unchy2 having an entire building collapsing or unchy 4 where an entire church collapse or battlefield having precanned giant buildings collapsing or any fucking game that goes bombastic during cutscene with explosions and destruction?

Ok.

Gimme this shit in real time then i'm gonna be impressed, if it happen during a scripted scene it looks good but whatever really.

Tbf i still have to finish the game so maybe there is something not scripted but i have doubts, the framerate already tanks a lot during these precanned scenes.

Yeah, i would love to have this shit in realtime, but again, devs shied away from it last gen. The bell tower scene is pretty trash compared to what we have here and what ND did on the PS3 with the building collapse and the Chapter 26 setpiece where you fight on top of a crumbling island. BF1 and BFV completely removed the big canned destruction from BF4 along with severely reducing the realtime destruction that was so amazing in BFBC2 on PS3.

For whatever reason, everyone last gen just took a step back when it came to destruction. Infamous Second Son completely removed the physics, GOW completely removed the setpieces, we all saw what happened with Far Cry after Far Cry 2. It's like they all decided we want to have pretty graphics, static as fuck, and we wont have any destruction or physics whatsoever. Honestly, I think it started late in the PS3 gen with TLOU, GTA5, and Far Cry 3 all looking way better than their predecessors but lacking the physics and destruction that made those games so innovative at the time. I was honestly pretty shocked by the lack of big setpieces in TLOU compared to Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3. They had a couple of decent ones in TLOU2 but nothing even remotely close to Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 setpieces.

Bayonetta 3 was the first game since Metal Gear Rising in 2012 that had insane setpieces. Sadly, the game looks like a PS2 game. Honestly, i think GOW1 looked better. So clearly, it has to do with these GPUs and CPUs not being able to do both destruction and pretty graphics. It's probably why FF16 looks like a PS3 game at times because they said fuck you to fidelity and went all out on setpieces like Bayonetta 3.

 

[arkhamguy123]

Yeah, i would love to have this shit in realtime, but again, devs shied away from it last gen. The bell tower scene is pretty trash compared to what we have here and what ND did on the PS3 with the building collapse and the Chapter 26 setpiece where you fight on top of a crumbling island. BF1 and BFV completely removed the big canned destruction from BF4 along with severely reducing the realtime destruction that was so amazing in BFBC2 on PS3.

For whatever reason, everyone last gen just took a step back when it came to destruction. Infamous Second Son completely removed the physics, GOW completely removed the setpieces, we all saw what happened with Far Cry after Far Cry 2. It's like they all decided we want to have pretty graphics, static as fuck, and we wont have any destruction or physics whatsoever. Honestly, I think it started late in the PS3 gen with TLOU, GTA5, and Far Cry 3 all looking way better than their predecessors but lacking the physics and destruction that made those games so innovative at the time. I was honestly pretty shocked by the lack of big setpieces in TLOU compared to Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3. They had a couple of decent ones in TLOU2 but nothing even remotely close to Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 setpieces.

Bayonetta 3 was the first game since Metal Gear Rising in 2012 that had insane setpieces. Sadly, the game looks like a PS2 game. Honestly, i think GOW1 looked better. So clearly, it has to do with these GPUs and CPUs not being able to do both destruction and pretty graphics. It's probably why FF16 looks like a PS3 game at times because they said fuck you to fidelity and went all out on setpieces like Bayonetta 3.

Woah woah woah, all of this is right except second son had good physics and destructible environments.

Using the smoke aerial bomb super move in any enemy camp you see everything explode and crumble and fly around everywhere. One of the coolest parts of the game

 

[SlimySnake]

Woah woah woah, all of this is right except second son had good physics and destructible environments.

Using the smoke aerial bomb super move in any enemy camp you see everything explode and crumble and fly around everywhere. One of the coolest parts of the game

I think that was limited to the makeshift DUP checkpoints. Just cardboards dropping when hit. They completely gutted the physics around cars, pedestrians and other objects that would float in tornadoes, physically react to your missiles and could be thrown at enemies.

 

[GymWolf]

I think that was limited to the makeshift DUP checkpoints. Just cardboards dropping when hit. They completely gutted the physics around cars, pedestrians and other objects that would float in tornadoes, physically react to your missiles and could be thrown at enemies.

You could destroy all the black structures in their camps, not much but more than what you could destroy in the past games.

Car physics was downgraded yeah.

The game also had a strange destruction system for the objects around the city, you can't destroy them with normal hits but you would be susprised of how many object you can break with the smoke shotgun.

The npcs in the past games never had ragdoll but they cutted down their interactions with you, but if you were doing a bad dude run, the neon had this nice chaining feature so you could erase a group of npcs just by hitting one, that was cool.



Honestly, the previous games only had better car damages and physics over second son, i don't remember major physics or destruction in these games.

Second son still manage to look decent even today somehow if you don't look at cutscene and characters faces

 

[GymWolf]

I would fucking kill for a new infamous with massive destruction.

How the fuck i post pics from imgur?

 

[Neilg]

if particles everywhere is nextgen then forspoken is also nextgen, just watch the final boss fight.

Sort of is if it's more particles than you could do last gen?

everyones got a little extra power and they choose to use it different ways. trading off the fidelity and textures to ramp up particle effects to 20x what they were before, with a full global fluid system for secondary animation on them is nextgen.

 

[GymWolf]

Sort of is if it's more particles than you could do last gen?

Then forspoken is definitely nextgen, just watch the final boss fight, it may have more particles than returnal...

Sorry but in my book, a single aspect being nextgen is not nearly enough.

 

[SlimySnake]

You could destroy all the black structures in their camps, not much but more than what you could destroy in the past games.

Car physics was downgraded yeah.

The game also had a strange destruction system for the objects around the city, you can't destroy them with normal hits but you would be susprised of how many object you can break with the smoke shotgun.

The npcs in the past games never had ragdoll but they cutted down their interactions with you, but if you were doing a bad dude run, the neon had this nice chaining feature so you could erase a group of npcs just by hitting one, that was cool.

lmao at Activist slain. If only we could do that to the Stop Oil protestors all over britain right now blocking traffic and stopping cricket matches.

 

[GymWolf]

Can someone explain to me how the fuck should i post this pic in here??

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/infamous-second-son-screenshot-contest.805887/post-109043265

I hate this fucking imgur.

 

[Turk1993]

Can someone explain to me how the fuck should i post this pic in here??

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/infamous-second-son-screenshot-contest.805887/post-109043265

I hate this fucking imgur.

This one?

 

[GymWolf]

This one?

Yeah, from the tablet i can't post this shit to save my soul...

Btw

What the fuck is even this from a 2013 game?

 

[alloush]

Yeah, i would love to have this shit in realtime, but again, devs shied away from it last gen. The bell tower scene is pretty trash compared to what we have here and what ND did on the PS3 with the building collapse and the Chapter 26 setpiece where you fight on top of a crumbling island. BF1 and BFV completely removed the big canned destruction from BF4 along with severely reducing the realtime destruction that was so amazing in BFBC2 on PS3.

For whatever reason, everyone last gen just took a step back when it came to destruction. Infamous Second Son completely removed the physics, GOW completely removed the setpieces, we all saw what happened with Far Cry after Far Cry 2. It's like they all decided we want to have pretty graphics, static as fuck, and we wont have any destruction or physics whatsoever. Honestly, I think it started late in the PS3 gen with TLOU, GTA5, and Far Cry 3 all looking way better than their predecessors but lacking the physics and destruction that made those games so innovative at the time. I was honestly pretty shocked by the lack of big setpieces in TLOU compared to Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3. They had a couple of decent ones in TLOU2 but nothing even remotely close to Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 setpieces.

Bayonetta 3 was the first game since Metal Gear Rising in 2012 that had insane setpieces. Sadly, the game looks like a PS2 game. Honestly, i think GOW1 looked better. So clearly, it has to do with these GPUs and CPUs not being able to do both destruction and pretty graphics. It's probably why FF16 looks like a PS3 game at times because they said fuck you to fidelity and went all out on setpieces like Bayonetta 3.

Not sure what you guys mean by setpieces. Could you elaborate, Slimy? What does it exactly refer to? Man, do I sound dumb!

 

[GymWolf]

Not sure what you guys mean by setpieces. Could you elaborate, Slimy? What does it exactly refer to? Man, do I sound dumb!

2 big creatures fight and during combat some cutscenes start and they destroy shit.

The only time it was real time is the sequence in the demo with ifrit and the phoenix destroying some stone columns and the framerate tanks like nobody's business...

 

[SlimySnake]

Can someone explain to me how the fuck should i post this pic in here??

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/infamous-second-son-screenshot-contest.805887/post-109043265

I hate this fucking imgur.

Those concrete particle systems in the final boss were a legit holy shit moment. Its a shame that the powers you got from her were so scaled down.

Yeah, from the tablet i can't post this shit to save my soul...

Btw

What the fuck is even this from a 2013 game?

Asset quality took a huge boost last gen thanks to the insane 20x boost in vram when going from PS3 to PS4. Killzone SF also had some incredible looking materials. The boost this gen is only 2.5x and i wonder if that is the main reason for the lack of visual upgrades we have seen this gen especially with RT taking up 1-1.5GB of vram on its own.

Ryse too.

 

[GymWolf]

Those concrete particle systems in the final boss were a legit holy shit moment. Its a shame that the powers you got from her were so scaled down.


Asset quality took a huge boost last gen thanks to the insane 20x boost in vram when going from PS3 to PS4. Killzone SF also had some incredible looking materials. The boost this gen is only 2.5x and i wonder if that is the main reason for the lack of visual upgrades we have seen this gen especially with RT taking up 1-1.5GB of vram on its own.

Ryse too.

Ps5 should have been a 1000 dollars console to guarantee such a nextgen jump, we have diminishing returns because the consoles are not powerfull enough not because graphica has reached its peak like some morons think.

 

[rofif]

Ps5 should have been a 1000 dollars console to guarantee such a nextgen jump, we have diminishing returns because the consoles are not powerfull enough not because graphica has reached its peak like some morons think.

thank god it was not 1000 console!
The problem with ps5 is lazy devs treating it as a budget pc instead of 10x more powerful ps4.
There is no reason you couldn't do that today. Only time and money is the limit.

 

[SlimySnake]

thank god it was not 1000 console!
The problem with ps5 is lazy devs treating it as a budget pc instead of 10x more powerful ps4.
There is no reason you couldn't do that today. Only time and money is the limit.

I think it's both. Sonys insistence on targeting $399 resulted in a $499 console that still had the limitations of a $399 budget console. The 448gbps of bandwidth is probably a huge bottleneck along with the 12.5 gb of vram and 10 tflops gpu.

I was hoping for 14 tflops and I'm pretty sure if Sony had a bom of $480, a $100 more than their ps4 bom, they could've got there. Thats 40% more gpu power that could go towards better rt or better resolution or effects. We definitely wouldn't be seeing games drop to 1080p.

 

[Neilg]

The SSD will pick up some of the slack here, but nobody has written the tools to take full advantage of it yet. (or, they have, but nobody has built a game from the ground up factoring that in right from the asset pipeline) We're using last gen development techniques on hardware that needs to be used differently to make the most of it - so games are 'last gen except we boosted a single aspect of it' (lighting quality, image quality, particles). thats pretty much all there is for now.

 

[TheRedRiders]

The SSD will pick up some of the slack here, but nobody has written the tools to take full advantage of it yet. We're using last gen development techniques on hardware that needs to be used differently to make the most of it - so games are 'last gen except we boosted a single aspect of it' (lighting quality, image quality, particles). thats pretty much all there is for now.

Playing FF16 right now and about 11 hours in, there's inconsistencies in graphical fidelity, but man is the world and environments huge, especially when you're doing the mother crystal missions, some of the areas are pushing tons of geometry, textures and all sorts of visual effects. One after the other, even when on foot...It's clear they're making heavy use of the SSD's bandwidth to stream all these insane places.

 

[Neilg]

Playing FF16 right now and about 11 hours in, there's inconsistencies in graphical fidelity, but man is the world and environments huge, especially when you're doing the mother crystal missions, some of the areas are pushing tons of geometry, textures and all sorts of visual effects. One after the other, even when on foot...It's clear they're making heavy use of the SSD's bandwidth to stream all these insane places.

They are - but it's still not being factored into to development right from the early stages. There's a lot more juice left in what it will bring to the table it is all i'm saying, utilising it is more complicated than just bumping up some settings near the end of development or having to optimise less.

 

[UnNamed]

The problem with ps5 is lazy devs

Everytime someone on GAF write "lazy devs", God kills a cat. Please don't kill cats.

At this point I think game developing is so expensive, devs would struggle to reach a true nextgen experience even with a 1000€ machine. They have the power but they lack of specialists and resources.

This because not only small/medium devs have problem with games, but even Sony's first parties or Microsoft internal studios still have to release a true nextgen game.
See the PS360 era for example: sub 720p and sub 30fps on third party games, but incredible games ND, Guerrilla, Epic, etc.

 

[alloush]

Everytime someone on GAF write "lazy devs", God kills a cat. Please don't kill cats.

At this point I think game developing is so expensive, devs would struggle to reach a true nextgen experience even with a 1000€ machine. They have the power but they lack of specialists and resources.

This because not only small/medium devs have problem with games, but even Sony's first parties or Microsoft internal studios still have to release a true nextgen game.
See the PS360 era for example: sub 720p and sub 30fps on third party games, but incredible games ND, Guerrilla, Epic, etc.

I disagree. Halo had a $500mill budget if I am not mistaken. That's the budget of a blockbuster movie directed by Christopher Nolan. Sony don't starve their studios of money, they support them all the way through. Big devs are not lacking finances, they are lacking ambition, workrate, imagination, creativity etc. This could be argued for smaller devs whom if given the resources of the big boys they would do wonders to showcase what they are capable of.

 

[SlimySnake]

Everytime someone on GAF write "lazy devs", God kills a cat. Please don't kill cats.

At this point I think game developing is so expensive, devs would struggle to reach a true nextgen experience even with a 1000€ machine. They have the power but they lack of specialists and resources.

This because not only small/medium devs have problem with games, but even Sony's first parties or Microsoft internal studios still have to release a true nextgen game.
See the PS360 era for example: sub 720p and sub 30fps on third party games, but incredible games ND, Guerrilla, Epic, etc.

This whole games are expensive because of graphics talk is so weird when you see these dudes create next gen vistas and levels in days on UE5 AND UE4. Dont you guys remember that embark studios video where they had a team of 3 devs create an entire world in just 3 weeks? Even last gen, there was a GG dev showing their procedural tools where he created a pretty sizeable level in just minutes.

The main costs of the game are this ridiculous insistence on making everything a fucking 50 hour game with another 50-100 hours of side content. Even linear story driven games like FF16 and GOW Ragnorak are like 40-50 hours long. Horizon has so many bs side quests with thousands of lines of dialogue for characters no one here can even name. If devs go back to 15 hour games with RPGs taking 20-30 hours to complete like Mass Effect 1-3 then you will see these budgets come back down. RE4 was 15 hours long and sold more than FF16. GOW wouldve sold 5 million in a weekend even if it was 20 hours long with actual setpeices and next gen graphics. Probably wouldve sold more.

Zelda took me 145 hours to finish, and I still have 35 shrines and dozens of side quests left to go. Game looks like a PS2.5 game. Devs need to be reigned in. Starfield has 1000 planets. I can promise you, it wasnt the graphics that cost them so much time an money.

 

[SlimySnake]

I disagree. Halo had a $500mill budget if I am not mistaken. That's the budget of a blockbuster movie directed by Christopher Nolan. Sony don't starve their studios of money, they support them all the way through. Big devs are not lacking finances, they are lacking ambition, workrate, imagination, creativity etc. This could be argued for smaller devs whom if given the resources of the big boys they would do wonders to showcase what they are capable of.

The funny thing is that Nolans latest movie cost just $100 million. He's actually one of the few directors who makes sub $200 million movies and regularly comes under budget. his most expensive movie was Tenet which was around $170 million and he crashed a real plane for it. Dunkirk, his war movie, was actually cheaper around $100-150 million.

The most expensive movie made so far is Avatar 2 which had a budget of over $300 million with marketing pushing it over $430 million. There is no way these games cost $500 million. Sony said $200 million for HFW and TLOU2 which is hilarious considering the Avengers movies cost around $250-300 million and were paying RDJ $75 million alone. Tory Baker and Nolan north are probably taking him less than $200k.

In fact, Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson's masterpiece had a budget of just $45 million. I have no idea what kind of scam these studios are running but they need to do a better job of managing budgets and scope of games.

 

[Neilg]

. Dont you guys remember that embark studios video where they had a team of 3 devs create an entire world in just 3 weeks? Even last gen, there was a GG dev showing their procedural tools where he created a pretty sizeable level in just minutes.

lol
sorry dude but this isnt the gotcha you think it is. Modern games arent a series of barren biomes.
Throwing a collection of 50 pre-made quixel assets around to build a scene is pretty easy yeah. In AAA game development, who do you think makes those?

 

[SlimySnake]

lol
sorry dude but this isnt the gotcha you think it is. Modern games arent a series of barren biomes.
Throwing a collection of 50 pre-made quixel assets around to build a scene is pretty easy yeah. In AAA game development, who do you think makes those?

Have you played any open world game from last gen? They are all barren open worlds. Some have trees but no wild life. Horizon, Far Cry, Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, RDR2, Ass Creed, Metro exodus, you name it, they are all 90% empty biomes with a few cities sprinkled across.

 

[Neilg]

I dont think you understand the point I was making. and you certainly don't understand how game development works if you think that.
Who do you think makes the plants, the trees, the landscape surface thats been designed to funnel the player into a narrative? and the massive buried lede on the cities. the characters. I cant tell if you're being intentionally dense or actually believe what you're saying.

 

[SlimySnake]

Everytime someone on GAF write "lazy devs", God kills a cat. Please don't kill cats.

At this point I think game developing is so expensive, devs would struggle to reach a true nextgen experience even with a 1000€ machine. They have the power but they lack of specialists and resources.

This because not only small/medium devs have problem with games, but even Sony's first parties or Microsoft internal studios still have to release a true nextgen game.
See the PS360 era for example: sub 720p and sub 30fps on third party games, but incredible games ND, Guerrilla, Epic, etc.

This whole games are expensive because of graphics talk is so weird when you see these dudes create next gen vistas and levels in days on UE5 AND UE4. Dont you guys remember that embark studios video where they had a team of 3 devs create an entire world in just 3 weeks?

The main costs of the game are this ridiculous insistence on making everything a fucking 50 hour game with another 50-100 hours of side content. Even linear story driven games like FF16 and GOW Ragnorak are like 40-50 hours long. Horizon has so many bs side quests with thousands of lines of dialogue for characters no one here can even name. If devs go back to 15 hour games with RPGs taking 20-30 hours to complete like Mass Effect 1-3 then you will see these budgets come back down. RE4 was 15 hours long and sold more than FF16.

I dont think you understand the point I was making. and you certainly don't understand how game development works if you think that.

We are talking about graphics being the primary reason for games becoming expensive. My argument is that sitting down, creating an asset and then putting that in a game is not the main reason games are taking forever to make. Especially when these worlds are being generated using tools that allow for procedural placement and generation of assets. Trees, foliage, hills, etc. Blaming graphics or saying the games look last gen because next gen graphics cost too much is ridiculous.

One TLOU2 level takes 18 months to make. The museum level that had no gameplay went through dozens of revisions. The assets were done in the first month. After that it was all iteration. Movies are shot in 3 months. No iteration after that aside from some expensive reshoots. Thats where the devs need to be reined in. Stop spending 18 months on one level.

Stop creating 200 side quests that involve mocap, scripting, level designers, artists, voice actors, programmers and well every single department over in a studio. Actually generating an open world with fancy next gen graphics and creating assets involves artists and programmers managing the engine. Blaming all the costs on those two departments is bizarre.

 

[rofif]

This whole games are expensive because of graphics talk is so weird when you see these dudes create next gen vistas and levels in days on UE5 AND UE4. Dont you guys remember that embark studios video where they had a team of 3 devs create an entire world in just 3 weeks?

The main costs of the game are this ridiculous insistence on making everything a fucking 50 hour game with another 50-100 hours of side content. Even linear story driven games like FF16 and GOW Ragnorak are like 40-50 hours long. Horizon has so many bs side quests with thousands of lines of dialogue for characters no one here can even name. If devs go back to 15 hour games with RPGs taking 20-30 hours to complete like Mass Effect 1-3 then you will see these budgets come back down. RE4 was 15 hours long and sold more than FF16.


We are talking about graphics being the primary reason for games becoming expensive. My argument is that sitting down, creating an asset and then putting that in a game is not the main reason games are taking forever to make. Especially when these worlds are being generated using tools that allow for procedural placement and generation of assets. Trees, foliage, hills, etc. Blaming graphics or saying the games look last gen because next gen graphics cost too much is ridiculous.

One TLOU2 level takes 18 months to make. The museum level that had no gameplay went through dozens of revisions. The assets were done in the first month. After that it was all iteration. Movies are shot in 3 months. No iteration after that aside from some expensive reshoots. Thats where the devs need to be reined in. Stop spending 18 months on one level.

Stop creating 200 side quests that involve mocap, scripting, level designers, artists, voice actors, programmers and well every single department over in a studio. Actually generating an open world with fancy next gen graphics and creating assets involves artists and programmers managing the engine. Blaming all the costs on those two departments is bizarre.

I wonder how much ff16 vs ragnarok cost to make.
XVI is probably much cheaper to make despite being just as long. (Still playing)

 

[ChiefDada]

I wonder how much ff16 vs ragnarok cost to make.
XVI is probably much cheaper to make despite being just as long. (Still playing)

No doubt Ragnarok had a much higher production budget in terms of writing and the actors (particularly Thor and Odin) are much more expensive. Santa Monica salaries will also be much higher than SE just from a CoL/geographic standpoint. There's just way too many variables outside of tech/graphics.

 

[CGNoire]

lmao at Activist slain. If only we could do that to the Stop Oil protestors all over britain right now blocking traffic and stopping cricket matches.

There always ugly arent they.

 

[SlimySnake]

The latest Crew trailer from Ubisoft looks stunning. Especially the forest levels. Reminds me of Pacific rift.

 

[Neilg]

The assets were done in the first month.

wrong! placeholder assets were, so they could plan it. once the scene is close to locked they get replaced. it's a parallel path that is tricky to navigate while not wasting manpower.
What do you think all the people who make assets sit around doing if their work is finished in a month?
Production is planned to minimize downtime assets don't determine the length of production, but you use the full length of production to make them so that you're not paying people to sit around doing nothing.

Your point about movies is nonsense too. movies spent 12-18 months in pre-production and previz to plan the shoot so that it's possible to do it within 3 months. before pre-production it also has to be written, that can take years. After it's been shot it takes 12 months or more to do the CG.
A movie is only a relevant comparison to the performance capture part of a game.

You honestly come across like you have little to no understanding of how games are actually made at times, like no awareness of the process or the order things are done in, or even why. it makes your extremely strong opinions about how lazy devs are seem fucking ridiculous.

 

[TheRedRiders]

They are - but it's still not being factored into to development right from the early stages. There's a lot more juice left in what it will bring to the table it is all i'm saying, utilising it is more complicated than just bumping up some settings near the end of development or having to optimise less.

I'm not sure about this, looking at the scale of some of the environments, especially traversing between large environments is a next-gen leap. There is a noticeable lack of twisty corridors and large walkways, something which Cerny mentioned in his Road to PS5 talk. It's clear the the world design of this game is built around next-gen streaming.

Assume I'm wrong for arguments sake, how would you imagine a game to be if it was being designed from the ground up to entirely take advantage of the high bandwidth streaming to be?

 

[Neilg]

I'm not sure about this, looking at the scale of some of the environments, especially traversing between large environments is a next-gen leap. There is a noticeable lack of twisty corridors and large walkways, something which Cerny mentioned in his Road to PS5 talk. It's clear the the world design of this game is built around next-gen streaming.

Assume I'm wrong for arguments sake, how would you imagine a game to be if it was being designed from the ground up to entirely take advantage of the high bandwidth streaming to be?

What you're referring to and seeing is the result of a standard development process having access to the SSD (faster load times), not the result of the tools used to make the games being designed around it. By factored into development I meant things like additional tools in their software that allows them to really think about development in a new way. lots of devs have theorized about what they hope to do with this down the road. right now they're just making things how they used to and getting away with a bit more of it.

What I will concede though - a while ago I posted about how I cant wait for games to better use VDB's for fire/smoke/simulations, as the size of those files is out of control. FF16 uses a TON of VDB assets and simulations, and they look fucking great. Uncompressing and popping off a 300mb cache for an explosion in real-time was definitely not possible before, it would have had to be converted to a flipbook. That's not just using faster load times, everything about the way they planned and developed those fx changed - being able to use more efficient files direct from the simulation allows them to do a lot more of it, and make the game more spectacular as a result. that to me is a bigger shift than just 'they didn't have to cut the map in 2 pieces'

 

[Hunnybun]

Lots to unpack here. Ratchet is indeed a huge leap over the 2016 ratchet, but so is HFW over the 2017 HZD despite being last gen. Does that make HFW next gen? Go and play HFW on PS4, it looks virtually identical save for resolution, foliage draw distance and maybe hero lighting. the leap came from GG reducing the resolution of the base PS4 game to 900p getting 44% of the GPU back improving their lighting, water quality and character models over there the previous game. If we apply the same logic to ratchet, it becomes obvious that Ratchet could be done on the PS4 at a reduced resolution with some effects paired back just like HFW.

I think the biggest mistake Sony devs made last gen was sticking with their stupid 1080p target. That limited that kind of mid to late gen leap we used to see in the PS2 and PS3 era where games like Uncharted 2, Gear 2 and AC2 looked vastly better than their original entries. I remember playing RDR2 on my brothers 65 inch tv running on an x1s and I was pretty surprised by the IQ. I mean playing RDR2 at native 4k on my X1x was practically a religious experience, but 900p didnt look that bad. The game still retained its phenomenal graphics. I think for GOW Ragnorak, they shouldve dropped the resolution to 900p and at least tried to upgrade the visuals.

Lastly, Sony studios have been shown up by Ubisoft devs, Microsoft Devs and even SE this past E3. I am not sure why you think they are leagues ahead. That may have been true at the start of the gen with DS and Ratchet leagues ahead of other games, but if this E3 is any indication, it's the sony devs who are lagging way behind.

1. I'd say HBS and to some extent HFW are clearly next gen games, yes. Burning Shores in particular is way way way ahead of anything last gen. I simply don't believe your claim that HFW on PS4 looks close to that fidelity. On a a youtube video on a phone, then yeah, it'll be a good resemblance, but actually playing it on a great big 4k tv (which is after all an essential part of the experience), I'd bet that's a massive difference. I mean, it's 30fps for a start, so that's a huge downgrade right away, before we even start on the quality of graphics one can capture in a screenshot. By your logic, Doom 2016 is a PS3 game because it runs on a Switch. Frankly, it's bullshit.

2. No comment on the second para except to say that mistakes imo is a strange thing to focus on when assessing Sony first party graphical output of last gen, considering they produced about 95% of the best looking games of that generation. But ok, it's an opinion I guess.

3. Ubisoft showed that Star Wars game that does indeed look like the best graphics yet (imo) but then who knows how it'll actually run on consoles. I'm guessing it'll be 720p-ish upscaled if you want to play at 60fps. That doesn't look great at all. So who knows what it'll actually look like on a big TV. Maybe it'll be nice and sharp, but I doubt it. I thought the Avatar game disappointed, personally. IMO overall fidelity was worse than Ratchet and Burning Shores. Seemed to be running at 1440p-ish at 30fps from some analysis I saw, but that mentioned the probability that that was achieved via reconstruction. Let's say they're doing a base of 1080p at 30, then. That's 1/4 of the pixels of Burning Shores, for a game that IMO looks worse anyway. That's what I mean by Sony's ascendancy. It's not the graphics per se. It's the overall performance they're gleaning compared to other devs.

I'm not sure what you're referring to with Microsoft? Fable looked decent, but only tiny bits of gameplay. Certainly nothing better than Ratchet, say. Forza? Isn't that the game you were berating for ages for its wasteful 4k visuals?

I honestly can't remember anything else being particularly impressive...?

 

[ChiefDada]

Going on a tangent, if it hasn't already been made apparent by my incessant talk of the game's excellent shadow technique/system, FFXVI had made me a believer in RT shadows and how much of an impact it can have on visuals. I never gave much of a flip about shadows (silly me) until I stumbled upon that town location I posted earlier. It wasn't like I was looking for it, it was so impactful it made me stop to figure out why I appreciated the visuals on display. Can we reach a consensus on when we can openly share screenshots? Maybe in another month or so?

What I will concede though - a while ago I posted about how I cant wait for games to better use VDB's for fire/smoke/simulations, as the size of those files is out of control. FF16 uses a TON of VDB assets and simulations, and they look fucking great. Uncompressing and popping off a 300mb cache for an explosion in real-time was definitely not possible before, it would have had to be converted to a flipbook. That's not just using faster load times, everything about the way they planned and developed those fx changed - being able to use more efficient files direct from the simulation allows them to do a lot more of it, and make the game more spectacular as a result. that to me is a bigger shift than just 'they didn't have to cut the map in 2 pieces'

What is VDB?

 

[Neilg]

What is VDB?

I tried to find a video on it and this does a surprisingly good job of explaining it -
He's rendering them in blender, but the key here is that you can load them in a game engine too.

The short version is, when you see a movie with fire and smoke simulations, those are simulated very slowly and stored per frame as a .vdb. they're big files, and games can't push the resolution movies can, but you can now use the same format - just at a lower detail level. The same behaviors and complexities are possible, and all the mature tools used by VFX artists are now available for fx in games. So you can sim an explosion and have the room fill with smoke, and have that smoke pick up the lights in the game engine. Or play back a quick 30 frame sim of a dust cloud for a certain attack move. Creating fx in games and faking it with layers of 2d cards is a pain, and this makes it more fun, with better results.

They're pre-simulated - so they do not react to things moving around in the scene, they're mostly for cutscenes or quick combat use. That means the GPU just needs to figure out how to light it, and not the difficult simulation part, and the disk needs plenty of speed to load and play back the sequences. Definitely no chance this was happening last gen - it was all flipbook based using 2d geometry.

 

[CamHostage]

What is VDB?

It's a file type for sparse volumetric data. As I understand it, you create an file when you're creating your volumetric effects or units, and the result is a gigantic data tree of everything that is happening in that box of space over time. And it's so big that even though all the calculation is done, you still can't use it in realtime... usually. So in the past, you'd make a "flipbook" where the effect is compressed down to a 2D visualization. Much smaller, but it's a flat animation, and then you use tricks and layering to make it look 3D enough to serve a purpose, but it's still a picture now, not a model. (The VDB itself is ultimately still an animation too, but it's 3D and contains the full dataset of movement and depth, whereas a flattened flipbook doesn't have much flexibility and its repetition/2D can be visibly limiting.) Now with fast-loading devices accessing and pulling in huge caches at a time (plus experiments in compression of these volumetric data systems,) it's beginning to be in consideration to work with the real files instead of the stampdowns.

(...Or, what NeilG said above.)

JangaFX - Insight: VDB, a deep dive

Learn how the VDB file format works through this illustrative article written by one of our EmberGen developers.

jangafx.com

This clip explains VDBs a bit, which you probably got enough of a sense of from Neil's post, but it also gets into the compression advantages being explored (which may be how we're starting to see these effects now, as not only are next-gen systems allowing them, but advancements in the approach are making them less of a nightmare to conceive using in a project.)

 

[ChiefDada]

Thanks CamHostage and N Neilg . Your contributions are always appreciated.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

Going on a tangent, if it hasn't already been made apparent by my incessant talk of the game's excellent shadow technique/system, FFXVI had made me a believer in RT shadows and how much of an impact it can have on visuals. I never gave much of a flip about shadows (silly me) until I stumbled upon that town location I posted earlier. It wasn't like I was looking for it, it was so impactful it made me stop to figure out why I appreciated the visuals on display. Can we reach a consensus on when we can openly share screenshots? Maybe in another month or so?



What is VDB?

Guessing you never played Black Ops Cold War then? That game made me realize how important RT shadows are. Disappointed me greatly when they dropped them for Moderm Warfare 2.

 

[ChiefDada]

Guessing you never played Black Ops Cold War then? That game made me realize how important RT shadows are. Disappointed me greatly when they dropped them for Moderm Warfare 2.

Correct. Never been a fan of those games.

 

[ChiefDada]

P.s. lmao at returnal being nextgen in any way, shape or form just because you have the screen filled with coloured balls and lasers, if particles everywhere is nextgen then forspoken is also nextgen, just watch the final boss fight.

I won't comment on Forspoken since I haven't played it, but you don't need to wait to get to final bosses in Returnal. The particle system is baked into the design of the game. You see it at all times. You may also discount the dualsense implementation, but it plays a huge factor in delivering that next gen feel. No other game to date has provided better dualsense integration.

 

[CamHostage]

They're pre-simulated - so they do not react to things moving around in the scene, they're mostly for cutscenes or quick combat use. That means the GPU just needs to figure out how to light it, and not the difficult simulation part, and the disk needs plenty of speed to load and play back the sequences. Definitely no chance this was happening last gen - it was all flipbook based using 2d geometry.

So, right, they are a preset animation of a 3D space where the datapoints play out the elements to time.

However, in addition to the strengths you mentioned of encountering lighting or easing out of that 2D layering, I believe you can also apply shaders or even materials to a VDB, as well as adjust parameters of density and color balance? So unlike flipbook 2D exports of these 3D elements where they will pretty much always look the same (barring some 2D manipulation effects,) the existent 3D nature of the VDB lets you continue to treat it as a living element in the scene with some dynamic adjustments possible. Same explosion mushroom cloud, for example, but it can have a different intensity and brightness and scale to look pretty different if reused, and it can have the natural difference of lighting of a different location or a different ToD or shadowing so that it looks like it's happening correctly inside the scene.



Usage of VDBs in realtime applications seems still experimental and limited (there are parameters to edit but from what I'm reading there's still some pain points which have evolved over time as realtime VDB integration becomes more in use... can you stretch/squish or offset a VDB?) So I'm not sure where this is or where it's going, but it seems like the tools for it keep changing, and there's a lot of component apps/plugins to play with, so maybe we'll get some novel uses of VDB elements in games now that such bulks can be dropped in...

*Also, we're talking about this as an "animation", but I believe that's not entirely accurate? Kind of akin to the 2D GIF, there can be a single-image "frame" of a still VDB. The use of static VDB data seems less exciting conceptually unless you take it to massive structural levels of volumetric datapoints to actually build volumetric things in a game, or if you don't need your clouds to ever move, but if you needed a Bunny Cloud for some model in a game, I would believe the file you make would end up being a VDB?

(This is all very techy talk, way beyond my understanding, but I like when this thread isn't just complaining about what doesn't exist yet and instead gets into the things still coming or just now emerging after figuring out the logistics...)

 

[GymWolf]

I won't comment on Forspoken since I haven't played it, but you don't need to wait to get to final bosses in Returnal. The particle system is baked into the design of the game. You see it at all times. You may also discount the dualsense implementation, but it plays a huge factor in delivering that next gen feel. No other game to date has provided better dualsense integration.

I recently said that returnal had the best implementation of the dual sense, i just don't care about controller gimmicks, i don't get more immersed in a game because something vibrate in my hands, it is a nice novelty that i notice for 10 min then it become a non-factor for me.