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Forspoken on PlayStation 5 - What Works and What Doesn't - DF Tech Review

Tarnpanzer

Member
Is it full of spoilers?

Here is a summary from the woke forum:

  • loading is instantaneous, 4 seconds start a new game, .50 seconds to load saves
  • animation in gameplay is very smooth as is secondary animation
    • hair is cards controlled by curves
    • foliage bends to Frey moving through it
  • particles are gpu accelerated and sells the impact of the animation
  • volume clouds and fog is high quality
  • character models are very high quality
  • lighting is a step backward from FF15
    • uses a probe-based GI system, but this isn't the problem
    • indirect lighting is poor and glowy
    • directly lit areas are overly bloomy
    • AO is poor despite all the AMD sponsorship
      • FF15 has better AO, with its VXAO
      • AO is not baked
    • few shadow casting lights
    • areas that should be shadowed are glowing as if they're lit somehow
    • no real-time ToD, so it could be compared to Assassin's Creed Unity, which has baked lighting, but to much superior effect
  • ray traced shadows are good, but distant rasterized shadows aren't existant
    • distant objects don't exist
    • the BVH is only filled with very close objects, leading to a harsh cut-off where the inferior raster shadow map show up
  • environment dressing is poorly integrated
    • buildings don't feel like they're properly placed in the environment from a lighting standpoint
  • cutscenes can have texture issues, weird fade to blacks, and awkward second tier cutscenes
  • slow walking scenes? how about NO WALKING SCENES!?
  • dynamic res with FSR2
  • 1440p in performance mode
  • 2160p in quality and RT mode
  • internal res can be as low as 50% of the listed
  • performance mode has poor IQ (like Matrix Awakens on Series S)
  • John's preferred mode is the RT mode in 120hz mode (40fps)
    • most stable
  • performance
    • performance (60hz) can dip below 60fps to the mid 40s in some areas
    • quality mode (60hz) drops below 30fps in the same areas
    • RT mode (60hz) has less dips in this area
    • performance mode (120hz) allows for vrr to save those bad areas
    • quality (120hz) dips too low for vrr in these bad areas
  • the Project Athia reveal trailer looked better than the final game
 
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Senua

Member
eQ45JGM.jpg
 

BbMajor7th

Member
A bit a shame to be honest. Feels like there is some great work on display here but it's completely overshadowed by some really inexcusable stuff. The technical and - for me - the art direction are both desperately lacking in care or cohesion. Add that to the cack-handed writing, weak performance and the uninspired setting and it's really quite bad.

From a purely presentational perspective the game looks a full generation behind cross-gen games like Horizon Forbidden West. Honestly baffling.

eQ45JGM.jpg


This is Dark Souls level of flat lighting and that was an ugly game even by the standards of it's own era.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Scan face in video game will never going look good consistently.

Especially in RPG with side quests. Majority of games can’t effort to put high quality cutscenes in every optional side content so those scan face with limited facial expression is gonna look even more creepy.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Graphics are th eleas tof this games problems, but unless this game bombs horribly in sales I expect there to be at least a little effort ont he pc side to fix some things graphically.
 

GymWolf

Member
Scan face in video game will never going look good consistently.

Especially in RPG with side quests. Majority of games can’t effort to put high quality cutscenes in every optional side content so those scan face with limited facial expression is gonna look even more creepy.
Yeah, i don't see anyone beating the excellence of hfw in that aspect for a LONG time.
 
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scydrex

Member
Damn this game is ugly. Unity 9yr old game looks better 🤣 also DF didn't mention the HDR. I had to turn off or to the minimum the HDR and the brightness to low. When i launched the demo it almost blind me.
 
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Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
A bit a shame to be honest. Feels like there is some great work on display here but it's completely overshadowed by some really inexcusable stuff. The technical and - for me - the art direction are both desperately lacking in care or cohesion. Add that to the cack-handed writing, weak performance and the uninspired setting and it's really quite bad.

From a purely presentational perspective the game looks a full generation behind cross-gen games like Horizon Forbidden West. Honestly baffling.

eQ45JGM.jpg


This is Dark Souls level of flat lighting and that was an ugly game even by the standards of it's own era.
Fucking Assassins Creed Unity.
Ubisoft needs make another city sized Assassins Creed game and have the team get visuals baked or otherwise that can do justice to this engine, I havent been impressed by this engine since Unity (okay For Honor kinda impressed me) but not like Unity did.


On Topic
Really impressed by the hair.....PC will have to be native or above cuz we dont have DLSS, otherwise this engines weird dithering breaks it.
I do like their character models too.

Hopefully we can inject RTGI with Nvidia Freestyle assuming this game gets GFE support in the next Nvidia Driver Update.
Cuz its in desperate need of better lighting and better AO.

gm-7beb9897-af9b-41f0-b93a-392e2e18c90c-nvidia-mcflly-rt-gi-on.jpg
 

Myths

Member
Weird since that's one of the strengths of Luminous, or so I thought.

The DF breakdown will honestly be useful to study, considering its only the 2nd game we've ever seen on this engine.
Definitely not one of its strengths as even FFXV has barren lighting I would say. This game looks like it was shoved straight through Luminous Engine and bares a similar aesthetic with respect to lighting and AO (or lack thereof).
 

rofif

Banned
Unity still looks amazing on pc (playing right now) but most modern games are much better than Forespoken for sure lol.

I don't get why more developers don't do what unity did, make few times of day "sets" and make lighting as good as possible for each.
That's why Horizon forbidden west looks so good.
Everything is baked. They just have many "sets" for many times of day. And the results are stunning.
Forspoken wanted to be dynamic.... for no reason and it shows.
edit: btw - so which mode? 120hz quality or RT? both look the same but quality got better LOD and resolution ? But RT got a bit better performance and worse res?! Couldn't they make 1 quality mode and 1 performance mode + 120hz modes? I hate redundant modes
 
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Nydius

Member
Oof, this shading. We are going past-gen here, almost ps360 era.
Linneman pointed this very thing out around the 12:35-12:45 mark of the video where he mentions that it looks like X360/PS3 lighting.

"This area has some serious Wall Guy energy."

Looking at shots of the city, it looks so painfully generic. The shot at 12:24, for example. If I didn't know this was a modern game and someone told me that was a screenshot from an Earth Defense Force title, I'd believe it. Flat, lifeless, buildings. No detail, no attention to lighting,. Visual noise for the sake of filling space.
 
The title should be "what the hell happened"... FF15 lighting shouldn't be better than this it's as if they forgot to turn on some settings surely the engine is a lot better than what's shown here. At least the particles are cool I guess 🤷
 

Hurahn7

Banned
I don't play too many Square games, but I do know y'all complain about them a lot. Do they have an A and B team? Which team made this game?
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Just going by videos, all the particle effects and fire and stuff looks good. I watched that final boss battle and there's some good effects with all the shit whizzing around.

The rest of the stuff (landscape) and movement seems lousy.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
The game clearly runs on technical debts but complaints of DF and some here feel a bit overblown honestly, the game is by no mean a visual disaster, it looks very good to me, the problems are performance and that it's unnecessarily open world, artistically looks awesome, maybe the visuals are not up there to the requirements but it's by no mean an ugly game
 

Spyxos

Member
I was kinda surprising when he showed ff15 gameplay and it looked so much better. And i never thought of FF15 as a good-looking game.
 
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TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Scan face in video game will never going look good consistently.

Especially in RPG with side quests. Majority of games can’t effort to put high quality cutscenes in every optional side content so those scan face with limited facial expression is gonna look even more creepy.
Checkout the Judgment games. The MC, Yagami, was modeled after an actor and he looks perfectly fine in the games, which have tons of cutscenes and side missions.
 

ManaByte

Member
slow walking scenes? how about NO WALKING SCENES!?

This is an improvement for me. I'm sick of slow walking scenes in games, haven't even finished Ragnarok due to that, but have been playing a ton of Gotham Knights and there's none in that either.
 
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Spyxos

Member
I did play it for like 20 hours. I just didn't remember it being so pretty.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Checkout the Judgment games. The MC, Yagami, was modeled after an actor and he looks perfectly fine in the games, which have tons of cutscenes and side missions.
Does he have quality expression during those side quests? I’m sure it has great cutscenes during main mission but I highly doubt it’s same quality during side quests.

You especially see how midt NPCs who are giving those side quests are much lower quality compare main characters. (That’s true almost all games but games with realistic models it stands out much more.)
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Does he have quality expression during those side quests? I’m sure it has great cutscenes during main mission but I highly doubt it’s same quality during side quests.
No, not during the sidequest. He has a lot of expressions but I guess those weren't face scanned.

Might be a nice way to do it? Face scan for very specific sequences, but leaving the most common expressions to the 3D modelers.

You especially see how midt NPCs who are giving those side quests are much lower quality compare main characters. (That’s true almost all games but games with realistic models it stands out much more.)
Haha yeah, that's specially true for the Yakuza/Judgment games. Many times I've met a new sidecharacter and gone "yeah I bet this dude is an actor or something".
 

Three

Member
That's why Horizon forbidden west looks so good.
Everything is baked. They just have many "sets" for many times of day. And the results are stunning.
I'm pretty sure HFW is fully dynamic





Unless I've misunderstood what you're saying
 
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