I think that's really hard to say. Game development is in a weird place compared to the generations before. They make new tools and things, but it really has felt like we have been hitting diminishing returns hard. Even with upscaling and AI.
For instance I thought Luminous was fine for 15, but I was over it by time Forspoken came out.
A better example would be Bethesda. They keep updating that engine, but even with the lighting improvements and better animations and things. The gameplay design feels limited and held back by the engine.
I suspect the same thing with Cyberpunk and CD Projekt Red. Yes, the game looked good. For one reason or another outside of talent, I don't think it could handle everything they originally set out for it to do.
Even taking into account feature creep and talent issues.
Not really, just look at the announcement trailer for the game straight out of the PS5 reveal event:
That vertical slice looks orders of magnitude better than the final game, so the underlying technology is clearly not the problem.
Then what happened? Probably that Luminous Productions, as a AAA development team, lacked the resources (and in some areas, technical talent down there in the trenches) to execute on such a high level across an open-world action game that has 30 to 40 hours worth of content.
Fuck, even the Citadel -- crafted in 2013 under Nomura's short-lived time at the helm of Final Fantasy XV -- completely surpasses both Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth when it comes to visuals on all fronts:
In regards to the FOX Engine, in some areas, it even surpassed the latest version of Decima that, at the time, went on to power the original Death Stranding. In fact, had it been developed while at Konami, I'm tempted to say that the game would've benefited of a slightly more sophisticated lighting, a day and night cycle and perhaps 60FPS on, at the least, the PS4 Pro, as well as an overall less clinical look to the visuals.
But going outside "what if" territory, I'll just say that the visuals in display in P.T. are still to this day just as breathtaking -- if not richer in some regards! -- than the interiors from Silent Hill 2 and f, and needless to say the artistic shitshow that is the MGS Delta remake.
Why would I want FOX Engine when MGS looks like freaking
this:
Because that's all a merit of the hardware running the game -- allowing for higher resolutions, higher polycounts and more detailed textures -- not of the underlying technology which sucks dick comparatively speaking to the results achieved by the FOX Engine a decade ago on a game that was targetting the PlayStation 3, which, yes, had 256MB of VRAM.
The lighting work in the Snake Eater remake is horrendous compared to The Phantom Pain, which if it came out next week on the Switch 2 would instantly become the best looking and most performant game on the hardware. It already is the best looking game you can play fully maxed out on the Steam Deck at rock-solid 60fps.
