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Horizon: Forbidden West State of Play announced for May 27th

CamHostage

Member
My god, these snippets of the game look sometimes so good and sometimes so so bad. I need the full reveal cause this is dissapointing

Video compression can be a mean sonofagun...

It's funny, because Horizon FW went through the exact same "meh" phase when Sony debuted it in a livestream back in June of 2020. Then the properly-compressed trailer and screenshots came out and people (...most people) were wowed.



(I was the same way, and when I see that first 20 seconds of the real video I see blocky islands and washy ocean and feel underwhelmation come on, but then it comes around the corner into that canyon of trees and oh, it's on...)

For sure the raw landscapes are going to pale in comparison to UE5's Valley of the Ancient, the project is what it is in terms of being a Decima project at this point in the engine's lifecycle. But if it holds up to that original reveal, I don't know what there would be to complain about considering that trailer way up there with anything we've ever seen on next-gen.
 
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Jigsaah

Gold Member
You should read the DESCRIPTION of the youtube video to have this cleared out.
OHHHHHHHH thanks man. Sorry I lost a fight with a migraine this morning. I just woke up, checked my phone and saw this was live. So this is just a countdown. DOPE!
 

Md Ray

Member
4CC.gif
Meme No GIF by HiHo Kids
 

skit_data

Member
If they wanted to keep expectations in check, I'd argue that they shouldnt have raised them with that trailer last year.

This is back when Jim Ryan was going around telling everyone how he believed in generations. I wouldnt be surprised if they created that trailer using the PS5 specs.

Lets see if the water physics get downgraded as well. If the waves dont look like that you will know that the trailer was faked.

WL7OFUc.gif
I think the biggest mistake Sony made was to not be transparent with their crossgen games. They should’ve announced this and Spider-Man MM as ”Coming to PS4 and PS5” when they announced them.

I actually never expected the game to look that good. There are a couple of parts in the announcement trailer that I could see being actual in game footage, but there was simply too much stuff going on in most of the trailer to be representative of in game graphics.

I still think this looks very impressive though, better looking graphically than most games and even fewer when taking art direction into account. It will be interesting to see character models and enemies, I expect their models to be better than the PS4 ones(PS5 might use the photomode/cutscene models instead).
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
only naughty dog and rockstar games will manage anywhere near these kind of visuals
Nah. The best thing about UE5 is that they bought the company that makes those mega textures and all of the Quixel library is available to everyone who can download the UE5 engine. Including you. People have been creating photorealistic UE4 demos for years now, and now it will be even easier.

Epic only charges you royalties after you ship a million or so units. So you can literally release the game with the same exact assets and not pay a single dollar for them.
 
I want to comment about something, hope Gaf will not make a circus of it.
That first scene, with the tower and the clouds rolling through the valley during the day. At the right of the scene the clouds climb the mountain. Anyone also saw those blocky artifacts?
I was thinking, is this just a limitation of the precision they're are using for those clouds or could be an collateral effect from VRS (if it's being used)?
 

Popup

Member
I was always amazed at the layers of tech in the original. The environment was one thing but you got the feeling a whole chunk was also reserved for those machines, their scale and their animations and interactions. Not only this but I always remember those cauldrons and their completely different environments. Those always felt like the Killzone artists had campaigned for them!
 

CitizenZ

Banned
It made me realize these environments are just copy paste now. If someone wants to go copy and compare with Shadow of Mordor, i think you will understand.
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
This new camera is showing the shimmering I was seeing before. Something about the way the clouds interact with the rays of light. But it's isolated to a specific area in the FOV. I don't know what that is. I'm hesitant to call it a visual artifact, because the behavior is not consistent across the full length of the clouds.
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
I want to comment about something, hope Gaf will not make a circus of it.
That first scene, with the tower and the clouds rolling through the valley during the day. At the right of the scene the clouds climb the mountain. Anyone also saw those blocky artifacts?
I was thinking, is this just a limitation of the precision they're are using for those clouds or could be an collateral effect from VRS (if it's being used)?
We saw the same thing. I'm miffed.
 
Well still 3.5 hours more of this. Hope they'll show of some of the hazardous weather types, too.
It looks fine so far for a 1080p stream but obiously not as good as the trailer suggested a year ago.

Not sure if we can compare this to UE5. At least HZDFW is showing a living world not completly barren deserts.

They should put a stop to this "in-engine" video shit. Call it CGI again. Stop overhyping games ffs.
Still curious to see real gameplay. I also wanna see a 4K version of both. This countdown and some gameplay.
 
I want to comment about something, hope Gaf will not make a circus of it.
That first scene, with the tower and the clouds rolling through the valley during the day. At the right of the scene the clouds climb the mountain. Anyone also saw those blocky artifacts?
I was thinking, is this just a limitation of the precision they're are using for those clouds or could be an collateral effect from VRS (if it's being used)?
Yeah I saw those, too. But it doesn't seem to happen to often. Probably some sort of bug they ran into.
 

skit_data

Member
I want to comment about something, hope Gaf will not make a circus of it.
That first scene, with the tower and the clouds rolling through the valley during the day. At the right of the scene the clouds climb the mountain. Anyone also saw those blocky artifacts?
I was thinking, is this just a limitation of the precision they're are using for those clouds or could be an collateral effect from VRS (if it's being used)?
Ouff, I see them as well. That is the only real jarring thing I’ve seen so far. Looks like there is some kind of low res shadow or how the light interacts with geometry of the mountain.
 
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MastaKiiLA

Member
It's the cloud dissolve. Looks like video macroblocks, which I can't imagine is the resolution of the dissolve, but who knows? I'd like to see that same action happening on the 4k direct feed to get a better idea.
 

Fake

Member
I love the lighting, but I really hope there is no saturation like HZD. Those green moonlight is not so realistic.
 
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skit_data

Member
Has anyone noticed the little eye icon at the bottom? It doesn’t seem to have a set animation like i thought at first.

Its ”pulsating” sometime and sometimes it shuts completely. I really wonder what it is supposed to represent.
 
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Fake

Member
Has anyone noticed the little eye icon at the bottom? It doesn’t seem to have a set animation like i thought at first.

Its ”pulsating” sometime and sometimes it shuts completely. I really wonder what it is supposed to represent.

Trying to tell you there is something in the shots. Maybe robots or humans.
 

Tommi84

Member
Its ”pulsating” sometime and sometimes it shuts completely. I really wonder what it is supposed to represent.
If it's anything like the previous game, this is your 'visibility' marker. When it's shut, you are invisible to your enemies.
 

elliot5

Member
Has anyone noticed the little eye icon at the bottom? It doesn’t seem to have a set animation like i thought at first.

Its ”pulsating” sometime and sometimes it shuts completely. I really wonder what it is supposed to represent.
maybe this is just some drone tool used in-game and that's like a "spotted" indicator or noise detection.
 

kyliethicc

Member
Well still 3.5 hours more of this. Hope they'll show of some of the hazardous weather types, too.
It looks fine so far for a 1080p stream but obiously not as good as the trailer suggested a year ago.

Not sure if we can compare this to UE5. At least HZDFW is showing a living world not completly barren deserts.

They should put a stop to this "in-engine" video shit. Call it CGI again. Stop overhyping games ffs.
Still curious to see real gameplay. I also wanna see a 4K version of both. This countdown and some gameplay.
Its in-engine. CGI is a lie. That would mean it was made outside the game engine. All of that trailer and this is captured in-engine.

And its just HFW, not HZDFW. Just Horizon Forbidden West.

HZD FW was the DLC lol. (HZD Frozen Wilds.)
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
Has anyone noticed the little eye icon at the bottom? It doesn’t seem to have a set animation like i thought at first.

Its ”pulsating” sometime and sometimes it shuts completely. I really wonder what it is supposed to represent.
In the first game, it let you know if the machines could spot you or not. If you stood still in the tall grass, the eye is closed. If you move quickly, the eye is open. Seems to be the same behavior.
 

CamHostage

Member
This game is going to look awesome in HDR!
But this preview should have only been 1 hour, lol.

Edit: The lighting and Fog system are Awesome.

It's worth looking closer at the fog/clouds (even in the compressed footage) because this is stuff that Guerrilla has been working on for Decima engine. With the next evolution of their Nubis system in Decima (which has been in upgrades since 2017's Horizon 1 launch,) they're doing low-level clouds (you could get above the cloud layer in Horizon on mountaintops but I believe it was just fog bands, I think?) and clouds that wrap realistically around mountains, they're doing more natural multi-layers atmosphere instead of just this-or-that clouds, they're doing clouds that can move and swirl (some of that was seen in the trailer with the red hellstorm), stuff like that. They said that with the first game, "our goal should be to get to 80% not ugly". This, obviously, is shooting for a higher percentage...

EMLK6av.jpg


I'm not sure what else there could be to look closer at or get some expert breakdown of from this countdown footage? Hopefully we'll get an oceanside view as one of the locations later in the countdown and we can see how the wave system is working out in the final.

(*And yes, 5 hours of stickcam footage, even if it did come out nice and clear, that's a way too long a countdown!)
 
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skit_data

Member
In the first game, it let you know if the machines could spot you or not. If you stood still in the tall grass, the eye is closed. If you move quickly, the eye is open. Seems to be the same behavior.
Ah that makes sense, I haven’t played the original since i platinumed it, so I suspected this to be the case but I’ve almost forgotten all HUD elements
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
Is that tallneck the only machine we've seen so far? There were a few flashes and the shine of a machine eye in the foggy mountains, but no telling what that was. Could've been a seeker. Could've been anything.
 
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