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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

Represent.

Represent(ative) of bad opinions
Assassins-Creed-Shadows-1024x576.jpg
What the fuck are they thinking releasing such shit low quality shots? Yeah, they dont give a shit about presentation, which leads me to believe they dont give a shit about graphics either. The 2 go hand in hand


COULD look decent in motion, but there seems to be nothing next gen here. Avatar seems like a one-off now.
 
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xxDeadlockxx

Neo Member
In general it falls far behind what I expected but above all I have a serious problem with the characters.

When are they going to start making characters that don't look like you're still playing on a PS4/One? I don't see Next Gen characters in almost any game.

I was testing the Immortals of Aveum demo because I sensed, as has been seen, that it was about to fall into the Pass. And for someone quite limited on purely technical issues the characters in this game without being completely what I expect, at least I liked them a lot more. Much better than what was shown yesterday in the new AC.

Due to time constraints, I no longer expect to see a next gen version of its current engine from Ubisoft.
 

Audiophile

Member
Rumours were saying RTGI, Virtualised Geometry and a heavily updated "Anvil Pipeline" that's directly shared between all AC studios.

Those are likely touched up shots too knowing Ubi and this is their first fully next-gen current-gen title, four years into the gen.

Hopefully there is a hell of a lot more going on in motion, but from the shots alone it really does like a like a PS4 game.

Not interested in playing it tbh as I don't like RPG AC (and frankly I felt nothing watching the trailer), but I really wanted to see a strong demonstration of tech, in the hope that there'd be another classic style AC game in the future (or perhaps if "Hexe" turns out interesting).


Here's the full-res shots btw:

acsh-screenshot-exclusive-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805949.jpg
acsh-screenshot-4-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805947.jpg
acsh-screenshot-1-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805944.jpg

acsh-screenshot-3-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805946.jpg
acsh-screenshot-5-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805948.jpg
acsh-screenshot-2-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805945.jpg
 
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IDWhite

Member
As I expected lots of people here aren't impressed by those AC shadows screenshots.

We can't say much right now but I clearly see a huge leap on lighting, geometry and shandows. They add 3D vegetation everywhere with high detail models.

It looks like they also improved the skin shader, volumetric effects and draw distance.

Waiting for the gameplay to see how far they have come with the animations, destruction, AI and city design.
 

Represent.

Represent(ative) of bad opinions
Rumours were saying RTGI, Virtualised Geometry and a heavily updated "Anvil Pipeline" that's directly shared between all AC studios.

Those are likely touched up shots too knowing Ubi and this is their first fully next-gen current-gen title, four years into the gen.

Hopefully there is a hell of a lot more going on in motion, but from the shots alone it really does like a like a PS4 game.

Not interested in playing it tbh as I don't like RPG AC (and frankly I felt nothing watching the trailer), but I really wanted to see a strong demonstration of tech, in the hope that there'd be another classic style AC game in the future (or perhaps if "Hexe" turns out interesting).


Here's the full-res shots btw:

acsh-screenshot-exclusive-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805949.jpg
acsh-screenshot-4-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805947.jpg
acsh-screenshot-1-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805944.jpg

acsh-screenshot-3-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805946.jpg
acsh-screenshot-5-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805948.jpg
acsh-screenshot-2-announce-15052024-6pm-cest-1715700805945.jpg
Looks hideous in screenshots.

But for some reason I have a weird feeling its going to look really nice in motion. I dont know why i feel this way, just a gut feel

We will see
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Rumours were saying RTGI, Virtualised Geometry and a heavily updated "Anvil Pipeline" that's directly shared between all AC studios.
Remember the discussion we keep having over and over again about RT not being transformative? It used to piss off a lot of cyberpunk fans in this thread. But this just might be the perfect example of why simply slapping RTGI and other fancy tech on an engine without upgrading everything else is simply not going to produce next gen visuals. Matrix doesnt look gen because it has hardware acccelerated GI. It looks next gen because they did far more to get the lighting look near photorealistic. You can see how 1943 and Immortals look a gen apart despite being on the same engine. There are other things devs have to do to get that next gen look.

Now its entirely possible that we are freaking out for no reason and the final game will impress, but simply updating an engine to do RTGI is never going to be enough. Metro Exodus to me never looked next gen on PC when it came out in 2019 and again when they redid the RTGI to have more bounces in 2021 with reflections and shadows. It still looked last gen as fuck. Let's hope all the other work they have done for animations, destruction, weather and other NPC systems comes through to create a more believable open world than we've been getting over the last 15 years. I have faith in ubisoft developers to get at least the world design right, even this B team from odyssey.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
The thunders destroying trees isn't only during that campaign mission where you run to a place and there is a thunderstorm? Like a scripted moment?

Does it happen during normal gameplay?

It's hard to believe that they toned down the destruction from zero dawn with a more powerful cpu...






Fucking imgur doesn't make me post gifs, fuck.

It's the third gif in this list


The game should at least have all the destruction of zero dawn, so some trees, some plants, some rocks of various size, some small wood structures and some other things during some campaign missions.

In fw i saw stone pillars, trees and rocks getting destroyed by enemies, never tried to destroy anything myself, i thought the tech was at least on the same level of zero dawn, wtf?!

Well if you checked properly, it seems like you win this one, guerrilla did me dirty downgrading their tech in the sequel.

Yeah, there was one tree type in Horizon 1 that can be destroyed by very specific enemies. Sabertooths and Thunderjaws. In Horizon 2, they are replaced by palm trees that can be destroyed by your mount and the spinedinbot. But as you saw, aloy's attacks cant destroy them.

And yes, that lightning strike happened randomly. I was recording the storm to show cgnoire that the weather in this game is amazing and then the lightning strike happened within seconds of me starting the recording.

I wish it happened more often. I wish these systems were used more often in the game. last night some rhinos went nuts when i was shooting at plants to see which ones break with gunfire and they started running away breaking all bamboo trees in the process. it looked amazing but there were only three of them and you almost never encounter them. Game needs to have packs of 20 minimum and the entire world needs to be packed with them like spiderman 2 NPCs. And then they can start adding fire spreading through the forest if you use too many explosives or even larger trees falling down. The scripted RDR2 tree falling sequence was fucking amazing. I want to see that in next gen games and actually make it happen.

Just looking at that zelda video makes me depressed because the devs dont even bother. GG added all that mocap tech for dialogue scenes and spent five fucking years handcrafting hundreds of character models that look better than most protagonists in other games, but when it comes to the big open world, its as dead as ever. avatar is better but not by much. The entire industry is just phoning in this aspect. lets hope Rockstar gives everyone a wake up call but even they resorted to just scripting everything in RDR2 which is far less impressive than having it be systems driven.
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
Yeah, there was one tree type in Horizon 1 that can be destroyed by very specific enemies. Sabertooths and Thunderjaws. In Horizon 2, they are replaced by palm trees that can be destroyed by your mount and the spinedinbot. But as you saw, aloy's attacks cant destroy them.

And yes, that lightning strike happened randomly. I was recording the storm to show cgnoire that the weather in this game is amazing and then the lightning strike happened within seconds of me starting the recording.

I wish it happened more often. I wish these systems were used more often in the game. last night some rhinos went nuts when i was shooting at plants to see which ones break with gunfire and they started running away breaking all bamboo trees in the process. it looked amazing but there were only three of them and you almost never encounter them. Game needs to have packs of 20 minimum and the entire world needs to be packed with them like spiderman 2 NPCs. And then they can start adding fire spreading through the forest if you use too many explosives or even larger trees falling down. The scripted RDR2 tree falling sequence was fucking amazing. I want to see that in next gen games and actually make it happen.

Just looking at that zelda video makes me depressed because the devs dont even bother. GG added all that mocap tech for dialogue scenes and spent five fucking years handcrafting hundreds of character models that look better than most protagonists in other games, but when it comes to the big open world, its as dead as ever. avatar is better but not by much. The entire industry is just phoning in this aspect. lets hope Rockstar gives everyone a wake up call but even they resorted to just scripting everything in RDR2 which is far less impressive than having it be systems driven.
No dude, you can destroy the trees in zero dawn by yourself, just use an explosive granade, i can't post the video because apparently it got deleted.
Have you seen the third gif of my link? You can destroy plants aswell, at least 2-3 types.

Also i don't think avatar looks more lively than horizon, you barely have enemies around and very few animals and even less interactions between navi and enemies, in horizon it's not that rare to see people hunting dinobot, i have a fresh run on pc from a month ago and they improved that from zero dawn, it is not far cry or gta level of costant chaos of course.

Horizon has way more animals (they have to be more than 12 species like you said) and you can see the little critters moving the weed when they pass around you or the birds flying away or the crabs and shit hiding under the sand and the dinobots roaming around and at least half of them have some type of interaction with the location because they try to heal the planet, not big interactions, but the whole package of little things just feel more lively than avatar that felt really barren.
 
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H . R . 2

Member
What the fuck are they thinking releasing such shit low quality shots? Yeah, they dont give a shit about presentation, which leads me to believe they dont give a shit about graphics either. The 2 go hand in hand


COULD look decent in motion, but there seems to be nothing next gen here. Avatar seems like a one-off now.
agreed
there are exceptions though,
for instance IO's marketing team and concept artists are geniuses. they are extremely skilled at creating elegant and stylish posters,ads, trailers and anything promotional
however the trilogy was a massive disappointment in terms of its visuals.
even Glacier 1 in Absolution looked better
38ab313c371d6626fd7ae33ece22ade1_f19ee74da5d2686ce85c3da0f899fe17.jpg
86b8ce85bac8dea1cede64f8ae7e3dae_81edae72136714ff6328701b67b0a3b0.jpg


but look how genuinely awesome!

ALSO

Assassin’s Creed Shadows Has 15 Ubisoft Studios Providing Support

The open-world action RPG has perhaps the highest number of support studios for a Ubisoft title in the publisher's history.

 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Has 15 Ubisoft Studios Providing Support

The open-world action RPG has perhaps the highest number of support studios for a Ubisoft title in the publisher's history.

Probably 3000 devs like GTA6.

The problem is that the core tech and art design comes from the main team and if that main team drops the ball, those support studios can pick up the slack.
 

JCreasy

Member
Remember the discussion we keep having over and over again about RT not being transformative? It used to piss off a lot of cyberpunk fans in this thread. But this just might be the perfect example of why simply slapping RTGI and other fancy tech on an engine without upgrading everything else is simply not going to produce next gen visuals. Matrix doesnt look gen because it has hardware acccelerated GI. It looks next gen because they did far more to get the lighting look near photorealistic. You can see how 1943 and Immortals look a gen apart despite being on the same engine. There are other things devs have to do to get that next gen look.

Now its entirely possible that we are freaking out for no reason and the final game will impress, but simply updating an engine to do RTGI is never going to be enough. Metro Exodus to me never looked next gen on PC when it came out in 2019 and again when they redid the RTGI to have more bounces in 2021 with reflections and shadows. It still looked last gen as fuck. Let's hope all the other work they have done for animations, destruction, weather and other NPC systems comes through to create a more believable open world than we've been getting over the last 15 years. I have faith in ubisoft developers to get at least the world design right, even this B team from odyssey.

Agreed,

For me personally, the most impressive visuals I've seen this gen take advantage of virtualized (or micro) geometry. The ability to add density, which underpins the look of the more sophisticated materials we sometime see.

When poring over the Matrix demo, all the screenshots of photorealistic assets were impressive because of the amount of dense details. Lighting can help punctuate those details, but it's not a substitute.

Also, I don't know about y'all, but the first thing I look for in graphically impressive game are the character faces. Skin shaders, a richly detailed, scan, hair, etc. When those elements look good, that's how I know I'm dealing with a seriously talented dev team that gets it.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Also, I don't know about y'all, but the first thing I look for in graphically impressive game are the character faces. Skin shaders, a richly detailed, scan, hair, etc. When those elements look good, that's how I know I'm dealing with a seriously talented dev team that gets it.
In a third person game, thats one of the first things i notice. Thats why hero lighting in Horizon is so great. it makes Aloy stand out at all times and my god she looks phenomenal.

It's a shame no one has embraced it since.

F90RzZrW8AAfd_c


FbvraeXWQAAgsY3
 

DanielG165

Member
Ghost of Tsushima on PC. i know it looks good but all I see is that last gen look. Lets hope Shadows can at least look better than this.
Well, they didn’t really add much in the way of improved graphics here, right? It’s essentially the “PS5 port”, but unlocked essentially for PC. I would hope that Shadow is a far better looking game than a PS4 title whose incredible art style is what really did most of the heavy lifting.
 

mrqs

Member
In a third person game, thats one of the first things i notice. Thats why hero lighting in Horizon is so great. it makes Aloy stand out at all times and my god she looks phenomenal.

It's a shame no one has embraced it since.

I liked the first Horizon and thought it was beautiful, but for some reason my brain can't process well the visuals in Forbidden West, it's maybe too noisy and too cluttered. Maybe it's my TV? The slow tutorial-paced beginning of the game doesn't help a lot too.
 
AC Shadows looks like ass to the surprise of no one. Seems like Ubi games have froze in time when it comes to visuals. The only way these guys can redeem themselves is to come up with a game that looks closer to the fake ass CG they been putting out instead of these PS4 looking ass games.
 

DanielG165

Member
I liked the first Horizon and thought it was beautiful, but for some reason my brain can't process well the visuals in Forbidden West, it's maybe too noisy and too cluttered. Maybe it's my TV? The slow tutorial-paced beginning of the game doesn't help a lot too.
The game is hard to read because there is so much visual noise around. It’s graphically a beautiful game, but definitely cluttered.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I liked the first Horizon and thought it was beautiful, but for some reason my brain can't process well the visuals in Forbidden West, it's maybe too noisy and too cluttered. Maybe it's my TV? The slow tutorial-paced beginning of the game doesn't help a lot too.
It’s not just you. Many complained about how cluttered it looked back at launch. There was actually a really bad sharpness flickering issue back at launch that they fixed by turning down the hdr brightness and sharpness sliders but it made the game look a bit soft. Still it is much more playable more than it was at launch because it was literally straining my eyes after a prolonged play session in fidelity mode.

i remember trying a fix from Reddit. Something to do with turning off motion blur and reducing the camera span speeds. Once they applied the sharpness fix it wasn’t necessary but you can try it and see if it helps.
 

Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
What’s your source on this?

A “large” part of the market that couldn’t tell the difference between the cgi movie and the 720p switch launch title? Yeah I know we all have this rhetoric of “casuals don’t know shit” but they’re not THAT bad dude
You must have not read the part where I said Odyssey running at 4k... and no even on Switch it was mostly 900p when docked (although it could ofc drop to 720p, mostly in New Donk City) not that it really matters.

My source is from my friend / family group which consists of hundreds of people. Some people online truly are so near the middle of the onion and can't see that surface level. I asked my niece who's 14 if she thought the graphics were better in MK8 Deluxe versus the 3DS MK7 she had been using and she just looked at me and said "what are graphics". Kids today do not care one single shit or even talk about graphics like when we were kids in the 16 bit era and companies leveraged graphics as a marketing tool. Graphics for this and I would argue every gen before it since the PS360 era has not really mattered. Look at the consoles that 'won' - PS1, PS2, Wii, DS, 3DS, Switch... Graphics are not an issue to people outside of gaming enthusiasts and even then we are a subset of an enthusiast community where a lot of that same enthusiast community doesn't even care about graphics lol.

Now extrapolate that to Joe Walmart that plays FIFA/Madden every year, then out to someone that plays Fortnite on a shitty old PC, then out to a Switch only player, then out to someone that plays Minecraft on an old tablet, then out to someone who plays Facebook games... 4k Odyssey absolutely looks the same as the Mario movie to THEM. When I made my statement those were the people I was referring to who are whether we like it or not the mass market and who current videogames are marketed at in an effort to expand the market. In my experience young people's only concern when it comes to gaming is usually - 1) Is it good? 2) Is it on PC so I can use discord while I game and 3) Can I play it with my friends online. That's all they care about. Graphics don't even come up. The numbers of the most played games in the World back this theory up.

This is why the industry is currently collapsing around developers and publishers feet. This absolutely stupid race to the bottom for photo realism which has been going on since around the time Microsoft entered the market and the arms race with between XBOX and Playstation has led us to a massively shrunken market (mainly because the price of silicon you need to power games that look like that and the fact you can no longer shrink the die sizes quickly to release consoles for half their original price in year 3) and games becoming more and more like interactive movies filled with cutscenes or forced walking sections.

Most people who play games play Fortnite, Warzone, Minecraft, League of Legends, Roblox, Counter-Strike, WoW, Switch games and most of them tablet / phone / facebook games. There is no longer a large enough market to justify making what a lot of you expect which would be a $200 million Uncharted 5 for instance (then another $200 million on marketing so you're talking needing to sell 10 million copies to just break even lol...). This is why most developers are making multiplayer, competitive, co-op, battle royal, hero shooters, moba's etc so they can GaaS them up. Much lower dev costs with a much, much, much huger possible return on investment even if your game is moderately successful.

Please enjoy Hellblade II. It will be one of the last traditional 8 hour linear games with a focus on story and visuals until they figure out how to make more photo realistic games without needing 4-5-6 year development cycles.
 

Msamy

Member
After seeing some wolverine Leaked gameplay from milestone 13 (10-2023) build which have many unfinished things which approximately the latest game build in the Leaked data ( note the Leaked build which many played is milestone 8 ( 2022 build) ) , I can say that the game looks far better , I can't wait to see the latest build of the game in the next showcase, i think insomniac update wolverine graphics engine more than Spiderman 2, here's some photos considering the game still have 2 more years.
mLVVom3.png
bnrxbuv.jpeg
lVzmow2.jpeg
aXHb4cO.jpeg
giUTe8Z.jpeg
JDimipH.jpeg
J6txxWW.jpeg
YmRNUFJ.jpeg
 
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64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
You think sony, M or other big studios can't do physics? no they can't do physics while having high fidelity because it's a whole new ballpark.
They can, they just refuse to because physics are not needed in story focused cinematic games like what Sony makes.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.


Ghost of Tsushima on PC. i know it looks good but all I see is that last gen look. Lets hope Shadows can at least look better than this.

The game (graphically) doesn't even look good by last gen standards. Thats some clean crisp 2013 quaility visuals right there

But jts got some clean art direction and a super inspired style with the coloring, lighting and shading. I like it.
 
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Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
They can, they just refuse to because physics are not needed in story focused cinematic games like what Sony makes.
They also use their CPU cycles on NPC’s and all the animations they need to sell towns or cities.

When making a modern game (outside something like a PC exclusive with an unlimited budget like Star Citizen) you have to chose between complex physics interactions or high visual fidelity. It’s why games like the last two Zelda’s have all of the physics systems they have but technically look like a PS3 game while Horizon’s World has the interactivity of a brick wall but looks absolutely stunning and has industry leading facial animation and voice acting. Most AAA games chose the latter.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
They also use their CPU cycles on NPC’s and all the animations they need to sell towns or cities.
Gta was doing this same shit years ago on Xbox 360 hardware as was red dead 2 so its not exactly anything new or particularly impressive. Hell gta4 and rdr2 managed to do this and get away with amazing physics too so this doesn't prove anything about realistic visuals and physics being too much to accomplish.

They just don't do it because the playerbase for their games is more concerned with nice stories and high quality cinematics. That's all there is to that.

Nintendo did what they did with physics because they have a different audience and philosophy to making video games.

And you can't somehow use them as an example of the supposed dilemma you're proposing when they made their game for the exponentially weaker device- the game would have 7thgen graphics regardless of physics because it's on a switch!!
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
They can, they just refuse to because physics are not needed in story focused cinematic games like what Sony makes.
I take sony caring more about good combat systems in his "cinematic" experiences over zelda and its dogshit combat that didn't improved a bit from botw (or past zelda really) every day of the week dude, priorities and all.
 
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64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
I take sony caring more about good combat systems in his "cineamtic" experiences over whatever zelda does every day of the week dude, priorities and all.
Sure. But any dev could code in a decent physics system with amazing graphics on hardware as capable as the ps5.

Nintendo did what they did because they were limited by a weak 9 year old chip.
 

Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
I take sony caring more about good combat systems in his "cinematic" experiences over zelda and its dogshit combat that didn't improved a bit from botw (or past zelda really) every day of the week dude, priorities and all.
Horizon’s combat is completely dull. Bullet sponge enemies or horrific human combat.
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
Sure. But any dev could code in a decent physics system with amazing graphics on hardware as capable as the ps5.

Nintendo did what they did because they were limited by a weak 9 year old chip.
And i give them all the praise for that, some of the systems in tokt are crazy, but they are not good enough to make run their game at constant 30 fps, i thought botw was bad, but tokt is a shitshow when things get busy.ù
Nintendo going the gimmicky route with a fucking tablet is infuriating, their games deserve a powerfull home console.
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
After seeing some wolverine Leaked gameplay from milestone 13 (10-2023) build which have many unfinished things which approximately the latest game build in the Leaked data ( note the Leaked build which many played is milestone 8 ( 2022 build) ) , I can say that the game looks far better , I can't wait to see the latest build of the game in the next showcase, i think insomniac update wolverine graphics engine more than Spiderman 2, here's some photos considering the game still have 2 more years.
mLVVom3.png
bnrxbuv.jpeg
lVzmow2.jpeg
aXHb4cO.jpeg
giUTe8Z.jpeg
JDimipH.jpeg
J6txxWW.jpeg
YmRNUFJ.jpeg

chernobyl-not-great.gif
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I take sony caring more about good combat systems in his "cinematic" experiences over zelda and its dogshit combat that didn't improved a bit from botw (or past zelda really) every day of the week dude, priorities and all.
The combat in Zelda BOTW was basic but they did a great job enhancing it in ToTK. I had a blast using all different kinds of fuses for both my arrows and weapons. The new robots you could build yourself to help fight alongside you also added a lot more depth to the combat. The lynels used to be a pain to fight in the first game, but this time around I was the one bullying them.

Id still rate Horizon 1's combat over ToTk, but HFW's combat is straight up trash. Whoever designed it needs to be cleaning dishes instead of making video games. They are clueless on how to make a fun combat system.

Anyway, the point i was trying to make with the zelda video was that the devs didnt have access to fancy cpus and GPUs, they just wanted to do a physics driven game and did despite being held back. the other studios dont do it because they dont want to. they would rather spend half a decade building out dialogue tree mocap stuff or bullshit side quests no one gives too shits about.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
The combat in Zelda BOTW was basic but they did a great job enhancing it in ToTK. I had a blast using all different kinds of fuses for both my arrows and weapons. The new robots you could build yourself to help fight alongside you also added a lot more depth to the combat. The lynels used to be a pain to fight in the first game, but this time around I was the one bullying them.

Id still rate Horizon 1's combat over ToTk, but HFW's combat is straight up trash. Whoever designed it needs to be cleaning dishes instead of making video games. They are clueless on how to make a fun combat system.

Anyway, the point i was trying to make with the zelda video was that the devs didnt have access to fancy cpus and GPUs, they just wanted to do a physics driven game and did despite being held back. the other studios dont do it because they dont want to. they would rather spend half a decade building out dialogue tree mocap stuff or bullshit side quests no one gives too shits about.
Dude you are bad at hard videogames, you were the only one mad that enemies were too aggressive or some shit, no offense, i had my definitive proof with dogma2 and the supposedly hard desert part to reach the furry city, it was an absolute cakewalk for me, and i usually die like 500 times in hard games, so...
I take a bit of unfair challenge over the zero challenge of zelda except for like 2 enemies in the whole game.

The combat is the biggest praise fw received even in negative reviews, at some point you have to understand that You dind't liked the combat and it's ok, but it's a you thing, not some hard truth, sorry.

Even the critic of having too many elements is absolute bullshit, first because it's a fucking action RPG, rpgs have different elements, did people bitch about literally any rpg with multiple elements? Second, you can ignore all of that if you spec for different builds, i didn't used more than 2 elelments in my 2 run on max difficulty, so again, bullshit from people that can't even umderstand how rpgs and builds works.

Zelda is not just uber basic in his core mechanics (and that would be already a big sin in a game where you constantly fight) it has an actively bad, ancient lock on system and no evade button outside of lock on (and the backflip is not as good as a bloodborne dodge or a simple roll to get out of danger when enemies attack from all sides), basically if you are not locked on to an enemy, you can't fucking dodge any danger coming close to you, most of the times i died it was because of the control scheme, not because most enemies pose any threat whatsoever other tham hitting hard and being spongy with the whole breakable weapon system and shit.
I'm not gonna even start with the enemy quality because anyone who has played more than 2 action games in its life and has a bit of intellectual honesty already knows where i'm going.

Gaf just has the weirdest hate boner for horizon but outside of here, combat is considered excellent by most.

But this os not the place to argue gameplay, so i don't wanna ruin the topic.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
After seeing some wolverine Leaked gameplay from milestone 13 (10-2023) build which have many unfinished things which approximately the latest game build in the Leaked data ( note the Leaked build which many played is milestone 8 ( 2022 build) ) , I can say that the game looks far better , I can't wait to see the latest build of the game in the next showcase, i think insomniac update wolverine graphics engine more than Spiderman 2, here's some photos considering the game still have 2 more years.
mLVVom3.png
bnrxbuv.jpeg
lVzmow2.jpeg
aXHb4cO.jpeg
giUTe8Z.jpeg
JDimipH.jpeg
J6txxWW.jpeg
YmRNUFJ.jpeg
its an improvement, but i see last gen lighting everywhere. the character models of the NPCs especially look bad. It reminds me of Shadow of Tomb Raider.

lets see how far they can take the graphics in the next two years, but im losing hope. 2 years before release is when they would typically show off the game to the world.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
Rumours were saying RTGI, Virtualised Geometry and a heavily updated "Anvil Pipeline" that's directly shared between all AC studios.

Those are likely touched up shots too knowing Ubi and this is their first fully next-gen current-gen title, four years into the gen.

Hopefully there is a hell of a lot more going on in motion, but from the shots alone it really does like a like a PS4 game.

Not interested in playing it tbh as I don't like RPG AC (and frankly I felt nothing watching the trailer), but I really wanted to see a strong demonstration of tech, in the hope that there'd be another classic style AC game in the future (or perhaps if "Hexe" turns out interesting).


Here's the full-res shots btw:

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Laughable screenshots, hopefully it looks light years better in motion.

Sony teams next works are our last hope boys, if cthulhu exist, sushima 2 should massacre this thing with ease.

(But tbf, tsushima wasn't too hot technically except for the artstyle)
 
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Msamy

Member
its an improvement, but i see last gen lighting everywhere. the character models of the NPCs especially look bad. It reminds me of Shadow of Tomb Raider.

lets see how far they can take the graphics in the next two years, but im losing hope. 2 years before release is when they would typically show off the game to the world.
I think Those leaked builds doesn't rtgi and other geometry effects in them , considering the Leaked slides confirm that they gonna use real time lighting and other next gen futures, also i think character models not finalized yet ( some models looked better than Spiderman 2 models) , i really have high hopes for this game graphically
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Dude you are bad at hard videogames, you were the only one mad that enemies were too aggressive or some shit, no offense, i had my definitive proof with dogma2 and the supposedly hard desert part to reach the furry city, it was an absolute cakewalk for me.

The combat is the biggest praise fw received even in negative reviews.

You dind't liked and it's ok, but it's a you thing, not some hard truth, sorry.

Even the critic of having too many elements is absolute bullshit, first because it's a fucking action RPG, rpgs have different elements, did people bitch about literally any rpg with multiple elements? Second, you can ignore all of that if you spec for different builds, i didn't used more than 2 elelments in my 2 run on max difficulty.
lol we have been through this before. Didnt you admit to playing the game as a melee only build so you literally have no idea what the ranged combat is like. you know the bread and butter of the game.

i was the only one? big LOL. there were many people in the OT who eventually agreed with me just like they eventually came around when i was the only one complaining about the performance mode shimmering and the fidelity mode being an eye sore. I even posted a video on youtube showing how much the combat sucks and even after 2 years i still get replies on it. they all say the same thing. Bullshit aggressive design and arrows that do zero damage.

Here are only some of the almost 100 comments on that vid.

Totally agreed. The combat is just ridiculous. In 30 years of being a gamer, this is the most unbalanced combat system I've ever seen. I play on normal. Once an enemy being 15 levels below me (and me with legendary armor + weapons while being at full health -> level 50) leaped 3km across the map, landed slightly (not even fully) on me and instantly killed me. Enemies are too fast and zip everywhere. You fight against 5 or more at the same time? Be prepared for being knocked down till you die because something is relentlessly attacking you + Aloy stands up slower than my 84s old grandma. Didn't knew I was playing Dark Souls...
Finally my tribe who thinks the fighting in this game is a nightmare. I totally found myself dying and running everywhere. as I couldnt even see around, the camera close up totally makes like tunnel vision. This was worse in the mission to recode the land gods, the second robot site had the thunderbird and that was hard to see from ground to sky. And yes Aloy is like slowwww to stop movement attack or to get up with a little tap, worse with 3 machines stomping at the same time rofl.
It’s basically “pick the right element or die.” They changed the enemies so that you’re incentivized to just spam shoot them with the “right” element. There’s no point to a creative approach anymore.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one that feels this way. WHY I THINK THE COMBAT ISNT AS GOOD AS ZERO DAWNThe enemies are very agressive, and the game encourages an agressive playstyle. It really wants you to go for enemy weak points, which are often only exposed during their attack animations. Aloy has no block, and no parry ability, so this means you have to roll/dodge, but Aloy's dodge isn't fast enough to accommodate for this. it makes me very inclined to try to "interrupt" enemy attacks. "Shoot them or hit them while they're lunging at me, and then their attacks will get interrupted and I'll get a hit in!" What ends up happening, is that: their attacks are not interrupted. I get my hit in, but I always get hurt. Furthermore, they NERFED Aloy's roll. In the first game, we had not only a faster roll, but a long roll upgrade. The combat would be alright if Aloy just had some more mobility, and maybe the ability to better interrupt enemy attacks. The worst thing is when you get hit WHILE you are dodging, Aloy gets knocked on her ass, and right when she gets back on her feet, you're IMMIDIATLEY attacked by another enemy and back on the ground again. I've had this repeat until I died many times. This is a prime example of a frustrating death that isn't the player's fault I love hard combat in games. But there's a difference between combat that's difficult because it's well designed and every fault is your own, and combat that's difficult because it's poorly designed and annoying. I played zero dawn alternating between hard and very hard mode. I'm playing forbidden West on Story.
The combat is nowhere near the balance in the first game. Half the challenge while fighting comes from getting blindsided and peppered with projectiles. I didn't go down to normal because I'm bad, but because I was just getting frustrated with fighting every two minutes.
The main culprit for me is machines gangbanging me. 1 on 1 fights are really good when you get into the flow of dodging and running around trying to find out openings to land an arrow. However this system completely crumbles when another machine joins the fight. I could be fighting a Ravager and the addition of a burrower in that same fight would completely fuck it up. Mostly because now you have two incredibly aggresive machines throwing their shit at you at different paces and you have to cater to hitting the weakpoints of bith machines with different arrows and different tactics. It just falls apart. Im actively running away from 1 vs 3 or 4 fights now because its more frustrating than fun.
I had to put the game on story just because the combat is so fucking annoying. It's impossible to tell where weak spots are mid combat because there's a million fucking things to scan on machines, I can't tell what elements to use because color coding seems to mean nothing, not to mention by the time you pull up your scanner, you've already been knocked over. Also, there doesn't seem to be a point in combos if your hits don't stagger anything and you get knocked over before you can pull off any basic combos. Really disappointed, although tbh I don't remember the first game being much better. The only thing keeping me going is the story and atmosphere.
HZD was the most fun I had in a game's combat, Forbidden West had everything it needed to surpass it. More types of weapons, valor surges, various mods, etc. Yet the execution was extremely poor. Every fight turns into a frustrating mess. You would think they would learn from these mistakes for the DLC but no. They added even more aggressive machines in the Burning Shores that are frustrating and give no sense of accomplishment when you defeat them.
Yep, agreed. The combat is clunky and clumsy. I really want to pick it back up and start playing again, but I find myself knocked around like a pinball more than half the time during machine combat. It's funny that combat in Zero Dawn on PS4 felt smoother than in Forbidden West. When ZD ported to PC and released for like 15 bucks on Steam with the DLC, I grabbed it right up and played the game again. I was so stoked to see that Guerilla answered many fans' prayers by inserting a Field of View adjustment with the Zero Dawn PC port. It made the combat feel even better. I'm surprised Guerilla didn't offer FOV adjustment in the second game, considering it was one of the most request add-ins for the first. I think allowing players to adjust their field of view in Forbidden West would make the combat more enjoyable, because at least you would have a better view of Aloy's surrounds so you know where to dodge to. Otherwise, it's just a flip-fest that almost always ends with me dive-bombed by a machine and literally stuck under it.

but yes, continue to live in your own delusional reality where i was the only one who thought the combat was trash. hilarious to see you bring up reviewers who trashed your favorite Days Gone as if they have any idea how to review combat systems.

Also, the horizon zero dawn metacritic average is 89, same as horizon forbidden west. zero dawn's user average is 8.4. forbidden west? 7.1. almost 2 full deviations below the critic score. meanwhile spiderman 2, the most woke game of all time that should get trashed by metacritic users is literally identical to the critic average. both at 90. Dragons dogma? 8.6 critic vs 6.3 user.

But yes, im the only one.
 

GooseMan69

Member
I’m in the Zero Dawn camp as well as far as combat goes. Forbidden West falls into the classic sequel trap where it adds too much shit to the combat and it ends up weighing it down (doom eternal). I say this as someone who stans pretty hard for that game.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
lol we have been through this before. Didnt you admit to playing the game as a melee only build so you literally have no idea what the ranged combat is like. you know the bread and butter of the game.

i was the only one? big LOL. there were many people in the OT who eventually agreed with me just like they eventually came around when i was the only one complaining about the performance mode shimmering and the fidelity mode being an eye sore. I even posted a video on youtube showing how much the combat sucks and even after 2 years i still get replies on it. they all say the same thing. Bullshit aggressive design and arrows that do zero damage.

Here are only some of the almost 100 comments on that vid.











but yes, continue to live in your own delusional reality where i was the only one who thought the combat was trash. hilarious to see you bring up reviewers who trashed your favorite Days Gone as if they have any idea how to review combat systems.

Also, the horizon zero dawn metacritic average is 89, same as horizon forbidden west. zero dawn's user average is 8.4. forbidden west? 7.1. almost 2 full deviations below the critic score. meanwhile spiderman 2, the most woke game of all time that should get trashed by metacritic users is literally identical to the critic average. both at 90. Dragons dogma? 8.6 critic vs 6.3 user.

But yes, im the only one.
Oh wow a couple of comments of people with skill issues, go on, maybe you are gonna convince me.

I can find posts like that for every game in existence dude, not everyone is gonna be happy with everything.
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
I’m in the Zero Dawn camp as well as far as combat goes. Forbidden West falls into the classic sequel trap where it adds too much shit to the combat and it ends up weighing it down (doom eternal). I say this as someone who stans pretty hard for that game.
And you don't have to use any of that if you want, you can focus on a single weapon or a couple of elements.

How the fuck is more variety of weapons, enemies and systems a bad thing?

I never used most of the elements and at least half of the weapons types in 100+++ hours.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
half? you only played as melee so you didnt use 99% of the weapon types in 100+ hours.
Like i said in the previous post, i only played melee in the first run of the vanilla game, and if you read my old posts since you like to save them for late gatchas, you can also read that i had to use range sometimes against the bigger enemies because melee was too dangerous.

And like i said in the last post, i did the dlc and the new run on pc with ranged weapons.

But nice try.

P.s. don't get mad dude, we are just discussing, we can be snark but no need to get angry.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Like i said in the previous post, i only played melee in the first run of the vanilla game, and if you read my old posts since you like to save them for late gatchas, you can also read that i had to use range sometimes against the bigger enemies because melee was too dangerous.

And like i said in the last post, i did the dlc and the new run on pc with ranged weapons.

But nice try.
did you also play doom as a melee game then dismiss all of that game's critics with a retarded git gud comment instead of actually putting two thoughts together to form a coherent argument?

that seems to be your MO. say some dumb shit, ignore all evidence and then get scared about getting quoted begging people not to prove you wrong with your own posts. thats pathetic. next time, man up, admit you were wrong or dont bother replying. i dont have time for your nonsense.
 
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GooseMan69

Member
And you don't have to use any of that if you want, you can focus on a single weapon or a couple of elements.

How the fuck is more variety of weapons, enemies and systems a bad thing?

I never used most of the elements and at least half of the weapons types in 100+++ hours.

The extra weapons and elements are fine. What I didn’t like so much was the ridiculous amount of time I spent cycling through the weapon wheel, crafting arrows, and scanning machines, all while awkwardly running around trying to dodge the spongy and insanely aggressive enemies. Even when I prepared and scanned everything before getting into a fight, this would still happen. This would be exacerbated when the game threw you into a fight without the opportunity to prepare beforehand (scan, craft, etc). In Zero Dawn as I recall, the combat loop was more like: preparation (scan machines, craft arrows), then once you get into a fight it was mostly real time, free flowing combat. FW felt like fucking turn based combat at times. It had absolutely no flow, especially before upgrading arrow capacity.

It does feel a lot better once all the pouches are upgraded and you don’t have to craft arrows every 2 seconds. I’m pretty decked out and now I enjoy the combat more. But I shouldn’t have had to do a bunch of busy work bullshit to get to that point.

Again, I say this all as someone who loves the game. I literally had it as my personal GOTY for 2022, even though its definitely not by objective measures.
 
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