• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Horizon Forbidden West game director says cross-gen development was "not limiting in any way", so many great ideas ended up being included

Corndog

Banned
What's wrong with You? It's like you are projecting
Who claimed the ssd is more important than cpu and gpu?
Tons of people. Don’t make me find the quotes because I don’t know how to copy the links properly.

edit: did that original UE5 ps5 demo thread get nuked. That had tons of evidence but I can’t find it.
 
Last edited:

VFXVeteran

Banned
"I don't think the cross-generation development was limiting in any way," de Jonge said. "When we started with the concept of this game, we had so many great ideas that ended up being included - to the point that we didn't really think about hardware limitations or anything, we just wanted to design a really nice, unique experience for the player.
Wow. I sincerely hope that people on these boards will now stop talking about this shit. It has gotten to epic levels of ridiculousness and people arguing with me to no end about how "wrong" I am about this. Why does it take the actual engineers from these companies to make people believe? And yet, I can guarantee a dollar to a dime, people will STILL mention next-gen being held back by cross-gen.
 

G-Bus

Banned
Going to assume all these ideas were centred around having the PS4.

Ps5 specs weren't finalized and they knew it was going to be a crossgen game.

Looks great. Hopefully GG other game is ps5 only.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
I think he's probably half right. I get the sense that some poeple on here think we are going to be getting AVATAR level graphics, and Hal from 2001 level ai, when cross gen gets dropped.
I'll be surprised if game design changes much at all.
It won't. But we see this every generation. We've got people thinking that a mid-gen refresh will sport a PS5 Pro having a 40TFLOP GPU. Now that's hardcore! :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
Wow. I sincerely hope that people on these boards will now stop talking about this shit. It has gotten to epic levels of ridiculousness and people arguing with me to no end about how "wrong" I am about this. Why does it take the actual engineers from these companies to make people believe? And yet, I can guarantee a dollar to a dime, people will STILL mention next-gen being held back by cross-gen.
Well, it depends on the dev team eg if designing games around weak hardware was such an issue, Nintendo would have went out of business sometime ago.

Even so, I would imagine designing games around better hardware means devs don't have to compromise as much on their original vision of the game they want to make; and certain features might be easier to implement.
 
Wow. I sincerely hope that people on these boards will now stop talking about this shit. It has gotten to epic levels of ridiculousness and people arguing with me to no end about how "wrong" I am about this. Why does it take the actual engineers from these companies to make people believe? And yet, I can guarantee a dollar to a dime, people will STILL mention next-gen being held back by cross-gen.
Do you really think the guy would come out and say that some of their ideas were limited by cross gen if that were the case ? Honestly he would have been better off not even bringing this subject up since he is limited by his responses regardless of the truth.
 
Last edited:

VFXVeteran

Banned
Well, it depends on the dev team eg if designing games around weak hardware was such an issue, Nintendo would have went out of business sometime ago.
That's not how this works. Nintendo games don't need high output GPU power but their design boxes still have to be PC to develop on.

Even so, I would imagine designing games around better hardware means devs don't have to compromise as much on their original vision of the game they want to make; and certain features might be easier to implement.
You guys are completely missing the point. Why don't some of you go and visit a gaming studio so you can get a crash course on how they develop games. The better hardware isn't a factor. Like the developer said, they implement algorithms --- on a PC. They don't care about the hardware until all of their problem solving is over.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
Do you really think the guy would come out and say that some of their ideas were limited by cross gen if that were the case ?
So now the guy is lying. Look, I'm not going to get into this thread. It's just as ridiculous as the UE5 demo only being possible on a PS5 when it was designed on a PC from the get go.

You guys believe what you want to believe.
 
Last edited:

EDMIX

Member
I think he's probably half right. I get the sense that some poeple on here think we are going to be getting AVATAR level graphics, and Hal from 2001 level ai, when cross gen gets dropped.
I'll be surprised if game design changes much at all.

Agreed.

Early gen games all don't do Ratchet Rift Apart type shit, that is very Insomniac, but generally they go with "safe" upgrades with features. Only mid to late gen do you get crazy features and design, because of that....I feel GG might be truthful with this as most of us all had the same idea of what a sequel might be.

You can go underwater, you get a bigger world, some different features. Gliding is nice, but I think in the 3rd game you'll get flying and it would make sense.

From Horizon 1, to Horizon 2 underwater, Horizon 3 in the sky, Horizon 4 in space lol So I think people need to understand, they just got the hardware.... when they did Horizon 1, they've been working on it since 2011, part of the team worked on Killzone SF so they learned a lot about the hardware, so from 2012 or so to 2017 is still a great deal of time for them to do some advance stuff.

How anyone was expecting Aloy to be in space with so little time with PS5 is beyond me.

It would be like fucking expecting HZD level shit in Killzone SF completely ignoring its a launch game.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
I think he's probably half right. I get the sense that some poeple on here think we are going to be getting AVATAR level graphics, and Hal from 2001 level ai, when cross gen gets dropped.
I'll be surprised if game design changes much at all.
Next-gen games will look a lot better though just look at Ratchet and Clank it's only Insomniac's 1st game not bogged down by last gen

Optimization will make games look way better like every generation
 
Last edited:

TheGrat1

Member
From the console speculation and the UE5 ps5 demo thread. He is spot on.

edit: quote from above.
“On the PlayStation 5, we can add so much more detail graphically. We can see the tiny hairs on Aloy’s face, for example.”
Did they really waste rendering on female facial hair? Not saying it’s not accurate but it seems you might want to focus on resolution, lighting, etc over her facial hair.
I assume in those threads that people were saying crossgen inherently sucks. And in this thread....people are saying crossgen inherently sucks. This does not answer the bolded sentence I questioned.
As an aside: I was actually impressed at them being able to render the vellus hairs on Aloy's face so realistically.
You know something that is possible ? that next decade practices are not the exact same of the previous one....crazy i know.
Explain these practices to Gneiting, then, so that you may assuage his concerns. It appears he completely forgot about them at the time of that tweet. Make sure you post the results of that conversation here, please.
 

martino

Member
I assume in those threads that people were saying crossgen inherently sucks. And in this thread....people are saying crossgen inherently sucks. This does not answer the bolded sentence I questioned.
As an aside: I was actually impressed at them being able to render the vellus hairs on Aloy's face so realistically.

Explain these practices to Gneiting, then, so that you may assuage his concerns. It appears he completely forgot about them at the time of that tweet. Make sure you post the results of that conversation here, please.
authority argument miam...
did you miss nanite was a thing ? do you see how this handle 90% of assets ?
are you still thinking practice at least using this engine will not change ?
i'm not even being just open minded here....
 
Last edited:

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
Crippling a gen With a weak device isn’t the same as releasing a few cross gen games at the start of the gen you clown. 🤡

The only clown present is a certain burgler.
Your lack of a ability to see the whole picture is astounding. Please explain how series S hinders if every single xbox game is on pc as well? You can't, since that's what's happening. The weakest link isn't and won't be the series S, it's pc. And it will be for many years.
 
Last edited:

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
And it is in the best interest of game development that the minimum spec is as high as possible. The Series S' existence does not help in that regard. Imagine if there was no Series S and a MS studio had an idea for a game that would have the Series X's RAM, GPU, and I/O bandwidth equivalents on PC as minimum spec and Phil Spencer by some miracle green lit it. Do not bother because the Series S' existence ensures that that will never happen.
If you genuinely believe that the S is not going to hinder development then tweet at Gneiting and explain to him that he has nothing to worry about.

I'd be happy to. And we haven't even broached the subject of scalability and how little this actually effects things in the modern production of a game.
 
And it is in the best interest of game development that the minimum spec is as high as possible. The Series S' existence does not help in that regard. Imagine if there was no Series S and a MS studio had an idea for a game that would have the Series X's RAM, GPU, and I/O bandwidth equivalents on PC as minimum spec and Phil Spencer by some miracle green lit it. Do not bother because the Series S' existence ensures that that will never happen.
If you genuinely believe that the S is not going to hinder development then tweet at Gneiting and explain to him that he has nothing to worry about.
No matter how many times this gets said it doesn't make it true. The XSS won't match the XSX in graphics, true. News flash! That's the point! SlimySnake SlimySnake just said CPU doesn't scale well but GPU does. The XSS has the SAME CPU as the XSX. Same SSD too. How in any way is that like PS4 and PS5? If you think that the XSS is 'weaker' than low end PC show me a $300 PC that can outperform the XSS. There are tons of PCs out there that don't even meet the XSS spec.

The ancient statement from the ID developer is especially funny. First off I wonder what he thinks now that the XSS development kit has been updated? Secondly what was the last game that ID came out with? Doom Eternal? Didn't that game run on the Switch? Doesn't ID specialize in making games that can run across a multitude of platforms as Doom proves? Yet for some reason the XSS stands alone as the platform developers can't make games for because it's too weak. It alone is holding the generation back. Well it and the PS4 apparently. It's silly.

I think that the PS5 version of Horizon would be impacted by running on a PS4 but that is NOTHING like an XSS version of a game running on the XSX. Do you guys honestly think the PS4 and XSS have the same performance profile? You guys really think highly of the PS4. If that's true maybe this guy is right and the PS4 won't impact Horizon at all.
 

Roxkis_ii

Member
Dev saying everything is fine is hardly even news.

All those people complaining about cross gen sound like a bunch of entitled babies. If Sony has crossed you so, maybe people should stick to xbox. I'm personally happy to be getting any games this year.
 

LectureMaster

Gold Member
Angela Bassett Reaction GIF by The Meredith Vieira Show
 

Stooky

Member
Do you really think the guy would come out and say that some of their ideas were limited by cross gen if that were the case ? Honestly he would have been better off not even bringing this subject up since he is limited by his responses regardless of the truth.
Ideas weren’t limited it’s a sequel. The scope is set by the by the first game. Unless they started from scratch with entirely new move set etc. it looks like that isn’t the case, especially if development was started on ps4.
 
Last edited:

mckmas8808

Banned
Wow. I sincerely hope that people on these boards will now stop talking about this shit. It has gotten to epic levels of ridiculousness and people arguing with me to no end about how "wrong" I am about this. Why does it take the actual engineers from these companies to make people believe? And yet, I can guarantee a dollar to a dime, people will STILL mention next-gen being held back by cross-gen.

THE DUDE IS LYING!!!!! NONE OF IT IS TRUE! Or he's being slick with marketing talk if the game started out of the PS4, then of course the game wasn't limited in design. Stop thinking your teaching us something, when it fits your agenda. If the PS5 and PS4 were the same and NOTHING new could be achieved through next-gen consoles; there wouldn't have been a new next-gen console cycle.

There's ZERO reason for MS and Sony to spends 10s of billions of dollars on R&D for these consoles, just to achieve 60 fps on games that used to be or would be 30 fps. Why do you keep lying about this? Is it to feed your PC is the best narrative? I don't get it.
 
Last edited:

Three

Member
I think that the PS5 version of Horizon would be impacted by running on a PS4 but that is NOTHING like an XSS version of a game running on the XSX. Do you guys honestly think the PS4 and XSS have the same performance profile? You guys really think highly of the PS4. If that's true maybe this guy is right and the PS4 won't impact Horizon at all.

Sure you do buddy. You sure changed your tune from when you were defending your beloved Phil Spencer:

I am stilling thinking this is a false narrative. Can anyone show me a game that is currently being held back by previous generation hardware? GTA V came out on 360, PS3, X1 and PS4. It was an open world cross generational title and I don't remember anyone talking about it being held back. With the XSX MS has given 3rd parties the choice on where they want to do their software. Unless someone can show where a developer was forced to make a game on old hardware this 'held back' thing IS a meme.

Before anyone talks about Halo Infinite remember that game has been in development for FIVE years. Was the XSX a complete hardware platform with mature tools that could have been developed on five years ago?
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
THE DUDE IS LYING!!!!! NONE OF IT IS TRUE! Or he's being slick with marketing talk if the game started out of the PS4, then of course the game wasn't limited in design. Stop thinking your teaching us something, when it fits your agenda. If the PS5 and PS4 were the same and NOTHING new could be achieved through next-gen consoles; there wouldn't have been a new next-gen console cycle.
What agenda do I have with telling the facts? You literally "see" right in front of your face how games are designed. We do NOT develop graphics engines from a console nor do we limit what we want to do based only on a low-end console. This isn't a conversation up for debate, it's actual FACT! I just get tired of people ignoring those facts.
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
I know it's likely untrue, but I want to believe. To start, if there are loading times that aren't nearly instant (aside from upwards of ten seconds in order to load the game itself after hitting START) then we'll know right there that there were compromises.
 

Stooky

Member
From the console speculation and the UE5 ps5 demo thread. He is spot on.

edit: quote from above.
“On the PlayStation 5, we can add so much more detail graphically. We can see the tiny hairs on Aloy’s face, for example.”
Did they really waste rendering on female facial hair? Not saying it’s not accurate but it seems you might want to focus on resolution, lighting, etc over her facial hair.
Wow gaffer telling a dev how to do their job lol y’all are on one.
 
Sure you do buddy. You sure changed your tune from when you were defending your beloved Phil Spencer:
You got me! Last generation hardware will affect current generation software. What does that have to do with the XSS seeing how it is NOT last generation hardware sir? Also since when was GTA V a current generation game? It's pretty clear that I am saying that the comparing the XSS and PS4 is folly. You want to step up and explain how those platforms are alike?
 
Last edited:

CamHostage

Member
authority argument miam...
did you miss nanite was a thing ? do you see how this handle 90% of assets ?
are you still thinking practice at least using this engine will not change ?

So, which game is your favorite Unreal Engine 5 title that you've played, so far?

Rocks literally disappear into the ground and Aloy still has clipping issues. What a load of crap

Have you played Returnal or Destruction All-Stars? Rocks disappear on the ground, and characters clip, even in next-gen exclusives. (However, rubble do not disappear on the ground in Demon's Souls on PS5... or on PS3.)
 
Last edited:

01011001

Banned
noone should be surprised by that, given that the first game was less ambitious and had a way less complex and interactive open world than freaking Zelda on Wii U xD

their games are all just basic ass Gamedesign + nice window dressing to distract people from the fact of just how basic and bland their games are (this is also Naughty Dog's tactic xD
 

dcmk7

Banned
You got me! Last generation hardware will affect current generation software. What does that have to do with the XSS seeing how it is NOT last generation hardware sir? Also since when was GTA V a current generation game? It's pretty clear that I am saying that the comparing the XSS and PS4 is folly. You want to step up and explain how those platforms are alike?
Comedy Central Mm GIF by Workaholics
 

Three

Member
You got me! Last generation hardware will affect current generation software. What does that have to do with the XSS seein how it is NOT last generation hardware sir? It's pretty clear that I am saying that the comparing the XSS and PS4 is folly. You want to step up and explain how those platforms are alike?
I'm making it perfectly clear that your stance on cross gen has changed and it's transparent why.

Your stance on XSS is also based on the exact same thing, defending MS. RAM is one of the most important things and you had id engine devs telling you how it affects the current gen but you decide this is an "ancient comment" when in fact it was fairly recent. What did they do to address it. I would love to hear what you think.
 
Last edited:

Haggard

Banned
So a AAA developer had no idea for anything that would utilize a half decent CPU in comparison to the 2011 mobile crap?
K....
 
Last edited:

dcmk7

Banned
I'm making it perfectly clear that your stance on cross gen has changed and it's transparent why.

Your stance on XSS is also based on the exact same thing, defending MS. RAM is one of the most important things and you had id engine devs telling you how it affects the current gen but you decide this is an "ancient comment" when in fact it was fairly recent. What did they do to address it. I would love to hear what you think.
Lots of developers have spoken out about this.

Explicitly saying will limit their game design.

I have seen people say Id Software made the Switch port of Doom Eternal. That's complete nonsense it was Panic Button.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Game developer corrected by the reality of developing their game on a 2012 Jaguar CPU.

You don't think PC game devs have had a hell of a lot more variance in hardware to deal with than a 2012 Jaguar CPU and a current gen SoC? I think Sony's engineers and all their genius can handle developing for two non-variant systems and not break a sweat. I don't know that, but I think they can.

But that's me. I'm not a game dev. You tell me how the game director of Horizon Forbidden West is wrong. You claim to know the "reality".

season 9 episode 21 GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants
 
Last edited:

Stooky

Member
THE DUDE IS LYING!!!!! NONE OF IT IS TRUE! Or he's being slick with marketing talk if the game started out of the PS4, then of course the game wasn't limited in design. Stop thinking your teaching us something, when it fits your agenda. If the PS5 and PS4 were the same and NOTHING new could be achieved through next-gen consoles; there wouldn't have been a new next-gen console cycle.

There's ZERO reason for MS and Sony to spends 10s of billions of dollars on R&D for these consoles, just to achieve 60 fps on games that used to be or would be 30 fps. Why do you keep lying about this? Is it to feed your PC is the best narrative? I don't get it.
How do you know he's lying?
 

scydrex

Member
You don't think PC game devs have had a hell of a lot more variance in hardware to deal with than a 2012 Jaguar CPU and a current gen SoC? I think Sony's engineers and all their genius can handle developing for two non-variant systems and not break a sweat. I don't know that, but I think they can.

But that's me. I'm not a game dev. You tell me how the game director of Horizon Forbidden West is wrong. You claim to know the "reality".

season 9 episode 21 GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants

And do you think that if were true. He would say it? Yes, the PS4 will hinder the PS5 version... LOL.
 

ManaByte

Member
You don't think PC game devs have had a hell of a lot more variance in hardware to deal with than a 2012 Jaguar CPU and a current gen SoC? I think Sony's engineers and all their genius can handle developing for two non-variant systems and not break a sweat. I don't know that, but I think they can.

But that's me. I'm not a game dev. You tell me how the game director of Horizon Forbidden West is wrong. You claim to know the "reality".

season 9 episode 21 GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants

The PC version of Horizon Zero Dawn won't run on a Jaguar CPU. The minimum AMD requirement is a FX 6300.
 

Topher

Gold Member
And do you think that if were true. He would say it? Yes, the PS4 will hinder the PS5 version... LOL.

Alright....believe he is lying then. Maybe he is. I'm not educated enough on the matter to say one way or another. Are you?

The PC version of Horizon Zero Dawn won't run on a Jaguar CPU. The minimum AMD requirement is a FX 6300.

Good thing PS4 isn't running Windows then, huh?
 
Last edited:

ZehDon

Member
Wow. I sincerely hope that people on these boards will now stop talking about this shit. It has gotten to epic levels of ridiculousness and people arguing with me to no end about how "wrong" I am about this. Why does it take the actual engineers from these companies to make people believe? And yet, I can guarantee a dollar to a dime, people will STILL mention next-gen being held back by cross-gen.
I have to ask: would you ever expect the Microsoft, Sony, or any other game company, to come out during the marketing push for a pre-release game and say "The game was definitely limited by being a cross-gen title. More than a few good ideas had to be shelved because of the PS4/Xbone. The scope of the world, the traversal methods, the complexity of the world simulation - we had grand designs, but had to abandon a lot of it because the base PS4/Xbone hardware simply couldn't handle it. Anyway, buy our game - comes out soon!" I would have to answer "Never in a million years". And so, from my perspective, we're simply never going to hear about the realities of their initial designs smashing into 2012 Laptop CPUs - even if it absolutely happened. We're only gonna hear about the positives, because they have a product they're trying to sell. I feel that this is an important aspect to this discussion - they have a monetary incentive to tell us cross-gen doesn't hold back next-gen, just like they had a monetary incentive to let folks believe they weren't making cross-gen titles.

My interpretation is this: either their ambitions for H:FW were pretty limited - not exceeding their original vision from 2017, and with no attempt to utilise next-generation hardware technology for gameplay purposes - or, they cut back on their ambitions due to the hardware from 2012 to ensure they could scale across two hardware generations. Given how ambitious Sony's first party studios usually are... I really do doubt it's the former. I think Guerrilla penned themselves in to the reality of the base PS4 - which means the director's statement doesn't mean what people want it to mean: they were absolutely limited by the PS4, they were simply smart enough to plan for it to ensure they did not exceed those limitations. To me, saying "cross-gen development was not limiting in any way" automatically becomes untrue in this situation.

What's your perspective on this?
 
Last edited:

AmuroChan

Member
Remember, just because a game is cross-gen doesn't mean both versions have to be exactly the same. The PS5 version can have design features that are unique to the PS5 and Dualsense, while the PS4 version simply doesn't have those features.
 
Top Bottom