Every single one of those 3 clips is a non-playable part of the trailer, the actual gameplay is broken up quite a bit and pretty much mostly just where she throws the spears which have no impact on the giant at all. The fire effects do look great, that's probably the most impressive part of the whole trailer IMO, the giant doesn't react to anything she does during gameplay.
Holy shit, please learn about Newton's third law because you clearly have no grasp of it. Maybe also learn about this thing called adrenaline and how it affects neural response in targets afflicted by strikes.
K. What's your favorite cinematic game?
Sure. I just have to believe they were very quiet for years. Can you name another cinematic game that got this much hype pre-release on Xbox?
It kind of depends; Uncharted 4 was and still is a great one visually speaking. The Order 1886 was even better visually but had little in way of gameplay.
As for your other question: yes, there was a good deal of buzz for both Quantum Break and Rise of the Tomb Raider before they were released.
this still looks good but other games like H:FW look better overall
On a technical level this
easily surpasses Horizon: Forbidden West. It's not even up for discussion to be perfectly honest, and that's no slight at Horizon or Guerilla but, it's still a cross-gen game with old hardware in mind. Hellblade II is not.
Now on an artistic (subjective) level? Comes down to personal taste. The aesthetic direction for these two games are vastly different and therefore not directly comparable. Horizon is obviously going for much more saturated color palettes and a vibrant, more high fantasy vibe. Hellblade II is going for a much more dystopian approach, more grounded fantasy and light sci-fi elements with horror mixed in.
I prefer them both for different reasons subjectively, but it's easier to find other games doing what Horizon: Forbidden West is doing versus what Hellblade II is doing. At least IMO.
this game has great fire effects and lighting, but some other areas like character models and animations weren’t as good. It’s still early days still though.
People keep mentioning character models and animations but where is the proof? Where is the articulation of that proof? These feel like buzzwords being thrown around now. Someone posted a shot of Senua's face from the 2019 trailer and new one and I made a detailed observation on all of the similarities and in some cases, increased detail in the new model shown.
Animation, likewise, looking on-point and very in-line with the 2019 reveal. People keep pointing to facial animations but unless Senua is making the exact same facial gestures (which she isn't), then you're not going to get a 1:1 replica of that very specific animation.
the downgrade is similar to what happened to TLOU2 imho
Except TLOU2 didn't really have a downgrade and in some parts looked better in the final game compared to its initial demo. Also, Hellblade 2 is still at least a year away; this is the first actual gameplay we've seen as the 2019 trailer was in-engine, and it's already frightenedly close to the first trailer. Further development and optimizations should see any discrepancies (most of which are quite small) cleaned up, if anything.
quite a change since the last trailer
Not really; obviously some things like her face paint are different. The lighting is different, and some of her clothing is different. Her expression is different as well, of course.
But that is more or less the extent of it. Model geometry is practically the same, texture work is also essentially the same. Keep in mind it's raining in the shot to the left, water on the skin is going to have a different effect versus something more dry as in the shot to the right, not to mention the lighting differences plus her facial expression resulting in some subsurface skin details like the forehead vein being much less pronounced in the shot to the left.