Single-player RPGs

[Zap]

With people talking about Witcher 3, Rockstar games, etc. and comparing to these, got me thinking.

In a marketplace where multiplayer gaming is increasingly the focus, which single player games are really succeeding? What makes a great single-player RPG is the story and how much control it feels the player has over the world and the experience.

The only way very linear single player games like Undertale work is if their story is great. These games basically function like novels. They are not trying to immerse you in a world with a plethora of choices and secrets to discover. They are just trying to tell a good story.

Some games do both. Skyrim has a decent/good storyline and is probably the best game (and because of it highest selling) made to date in terms of its openness and RPG feel with infinite options and ways to explore and take part in the world. Witcher 3 had a phenomenal story and decent world exploration with many good side quests and lots of secrets and cool areas, features to discover.

Final Fantasy games are fairly linear but provide customizability with which party memebrs you choose, and even though the story is linear, you can explore the world for secrets pretty much at any point in the game. That makes it feel open.

"Remake" committed to being completely linear and on rails, with most of the environments aggressively restricting your movement and what you can do in the game. All it does it tell a story, a series of hallways to get to the next boss fight, i.e. FF13 gaming. And then you can ask yourself, is the writing in this highly linear hand-holding experience of corridors to hallways a good story?

There are going to be differing opinions, but at the end of the day, this game chose to be linear with virtually no exploration. The only way that works, as with a game like Undertale, is if the story is excellent and charming. The whole story. Not parts of it, and not vignettes.

[Xengre]

Final Fantasy VII Remake (episode 1) had multiple hubs (4) and several areas where you could freely explore for side quests or pursue with a somewhat open yet linear approach. Only very few were extremely linear.

However, don't forget Final Fantasy VII Remake was a PS4 game... held back by last gen and UE4's specific streaming data limitations all while delivering an extremely visually rich game and environments unlike Witcher 3 and Skryim at their time (not that they looked ugly, the issue pertains to asset utilization and repetition vs unique asset variety and memory management, in particular... ex. Witcher 3 areas use the same handful of assets while FF7R1's are extremely diverse in a given area). Fortunately, we will see this fixed with Rebirth episode 2 as we've seen from gameplay and it being next-gen only. Skyrim is even worse on this point so I don't need to say much.

As for Witcher 3 having good quests and side content... well, aside from its loot system being anti-exploration due to how it was designed in terms of scaling dreadfully destroying exploration rewards and the quests mostly (not all) being simply as bland as what was in FF7 Remake... I'm not sure I can agree but you are free to have your opinion that it was good. Imo, Witcher 3's side content as was FF7 Remake's both equally sucked. Skryim was the victor here (kind of, it had more unique stuff but was seriously so bland for most of it). Lets not even get started on how bad GTA franchise is when it comes to the issue of hyper repetitive assets and the entire game looking mostly the same aside from urban vs rural. RDR2 on PS4 also doesn't even come close, not that it is not a good looking game for the PS4.

Don't forget, while you are obviously trying to knock FF7 remake for this you're doing the same to FF7 original, too... and FF8... and FF9, and especially FF10. In fact, you are doing it to most JRPGs be it Grandia, Xenosaga, Trails in the Sky, and so forth.

Anyways, point is it was held back by the PS4 and now we're seeing that issue resolved on PS5 with episode 2, fortunately. It was definitely a point people complained about, though I'd be interested to see which people preferred if they could actually compare it with a graphically downgraded but more open game vs what we got.

[Mako]

I dont see how 7R was held back by PS4. It was a deliberate design choice, not a platform limitation. Skyrim was Xbox 360 (PS3 competitor) game btw. FF15 was PS4 game and its a proper open world with better (compared to 7R) indoor visuals to boot (especially obvious when you compare Shinra builing to Zagnautus but also pretty much everywhere else).
There are many examples of massive (arguably already too big) open worlds with great visuals on PS4, like AC Origins, RDR2 or Horizon.

[NairBoT]

When it comes to JRPG, I looking for something very specific.

My favorite two are:

Blue Dragon (XBOX 360)
World of Final Fantasy (PS4)

Both are traditional turn-based combat with family friendly characters and story.
There is this magic and wonder that comes with the atmosphere.

If I want a real-time game for an older audience, it will be a western game like RDR2, not Japanese.

Both FF7 Remake and FFXV are not fun for me in any way.
I tried many times to play them but they are just awful.

As for open world or linear gameplay.
Both are fine depending on the game.
FFXIII was terrible.

[Zap]

My understanding is FF15 is more a JRPG than FF13. It seems like it's the pacing, story, and characters that's the problem for most of the people who complain about it. I haven't played FF15 and only watched footage of it.

I still haven't played Blue Dragon...I missed that one when it came out and didn't know or pay attention that it was Sakaguchi's. I didn't even know who Sakaguchi was until I started learning why FF changed so dramatically after FFX. Have been wanting to play Blue Dragon for a while, and I hear it's awesome. They need to make a PC port. Lost Odyssey was great (though the story dragged eventually).

[Xengre]

Цитата допису Barfolomew's Galactic Rescue:

My understanding is FF15 is more a JRPG than FF13. It seems like it's the pacing, story, and characters that's the problem for most of the people who complain about it. I haven't played FF15 and only watched footage of it.

I still haven't played Blue Dragon...I missed that one when it came out and didn't know or pay attention that it was Sakaguchi's. I didn't even know who Sakaguchi was until I started learning why FF changed so dramatically after FFX. Have been wanting to play Blue Dragon for a while, and I hear it's awesome. They need to make a PC port. Lost Odyssey was great (though the story dragged eventually).

Basically FF15's story goes from well paced until around halfway where it shifts from an open and evenly paced story to an extremely linear story heavy focus moving away from open world to almost entirely linear zones (think swapping from Witcher 3 halfway through to suddenly FF7 remake) which is a bit a a dramatic and startling shift. It isn't bad, but it becomes very story heavy and linear. In fact, there is one chapter they had to break up and shorten/rework and saves because it was so excessively long between saves originally.

The other issue is the character writing and story arcs. Basically, you got some solid characgters like Ignis, the villain (legendary at this point comparable to Sephiroth nearly), etc. Then you got characters like Lunafreya (the main female heroine / romantic interest) who has barely any development or story or... her brother who has even less story and scraps of backstory you can find to piece together some info/understanding to a complicated character arc (too complicated for how much was cut tbh for most users). These are shortcomings due to being cut from a 3 part trilogy per its original design suddenly down to a single game because Square Enix executives wanted to rush the game out, then even when cut to one game they wanted to rush it out even earlier... Tbh, it is a complete miracle Tabata was able to turn that trainwreck around and salvage as much as he did but there is no way post release support and DLC could fully fix what Square Enix forced it into. Fun fact, the world map during development and areas you were supposed to visit like Tenebrae actually suggest the scale of the game was supposed to be around 12~20x the size of the game we got in addition to being 3 games instead of 1. This also relates to all the cut content / out of borders stuff in the game found including fully rendered massive (like actually massive) cities we don't get to ever see, which is kind of ironic cause the places we do visit are mostly very tiny towns due to the cut down game almost all of it is wilderness far from any human characters feeling quite... desolate (works for its final theme near end but not the entire game...).

Overall, it isn't horrible but it clearly has story and character threads cut short, is imbalanced in these aspects, and at times even confusing if you don't pay attention. Its really hard to care about someone like Luna despite her immense efforts and sacrifice when she barely gets any chance to show it. Her and her brother are just two examples of quite a few, unfortunately.

Цитата допису Mako:

I dont see how 7R was held back by PS4. It was a deliberate design choice, not a platform limitation. Skyrim was Xbox 360 (PS3 competitor) game btw. FF15 was PS4 game and its a proper open world with better (compared to 7R) indoor visuals to boot (especially obvious when you compare Shinra builing to Zagnautus but also pretty much everywhere else).
There are many examples of massive (arguably already too big) open worlds with great visuals on PS4, like AC Origins, RDR2 or Horizon.

It was, unfortunately a hardware limitation actually. The UE4 even has very famous streaming asset issues like blurry door meme (but frequently many assets in fact) buckling under the sheer rich asset density of FF7 R despite its mostly linear design, particularly in hubs but even in smaller areas.

The developers actually have interviews stating that they ditched the PS4 specifically to make the game open world for episode 2 and improve visuals because of how limiting the PS4 proved with episode 1.

Now, this doesn't mean it wasn't entirely a design point as you say, too. Even though episode 2 is way more open it doesn't mean episode 1 would have been comparable scale even without the hardware limitations as, we all know, Midgar is a more linear zoned location but it wouldn't have been quite what it was if not for the hardware limitations.

You mentioned some open world games which raises an interesting point.

Take this Horizon Forbidden West PS4 gameplay (2nd game in Horizon franchise and best looking Horizon game on PS4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fymyc8DsLvs

@ 8:09 you will see some very crude geometry for the environment. The plant vegetation is mostly flat textures (a common but great trick for saving resources) and the textures are generally extremely repetitive. You might get lush scenes but if you look over the details and actually count the number of unique texture or model assets... it is actually quite low. Draw distance before LoD (level of detail) starts fading off extremely hard (in fact outright hidden by fog and shadows and a lot of geometry flattned to billboarded sprites). If you unpause around that time the game seems to have a serious dynamic resolution scaling and also blurring to hide defects when in motion to save performance and try to maintain quality as best as it can manage. @ 24:08 look over the points I raised again, notably texture and asset variety.

Here is another
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUahE3mgRSE

Around 21 mins in you can see the character quality isn't very high outside of cutscenes and particle effects from the fire and poison are clearly flat 2D sprites using transparency and don't look that great this time to save performance.

In fact, after the engine upgrade Horizon Forbidden West actually buckles under its details at a distance compared to the prior game in exchange for better details up close, though the artists are selective in how they handle LoD intelligently to make up for it best they can with limited hardware environment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0UKE0KrV4

Honestly, their artists and programmers do a pretty great job with a limited budget to make the game pretty, if not a bit repetitive visually.

Now Final Fantasy VII Remake on the PS4...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6E68OI78wU

Here is one of the hubs. We can see while they walk around the artists do a fairly incredible job of crafting the assets so that less obvious assets are lower quality to save resources while ones you are more likely to notice/look at are higher quality most of the time. We see as they walk through the hub there is an extremely dense and high number of asset (particularly texture, but also geometry) variety even in just a single area when viewed, much less the different city blocks and it has to keep what it can in memory in an efficient way because you might rotate the camera and such and if you rotate full 360 the asset variety can utterly explode far beyond what you would see without moving the camera which already initially dwarfed Horizon or Witcher 3. This is part of why the game has seen hitching issues when walking from place ot place as it tries to stream in new data if your PC isn't up to spec and obviously the PS4 struggles with this some (esp the blurry texture issue that it is known for with this game). Even the NPCs, just their faces alone have over 500.

Obviously, there are things FF7 Remake has to balance as well such as lighting interaction on characters, hair quality and aliasing issues, dynamic resolution as well, clever background skyboxes (like upper plates in the distance, or the famous low quality slums skybox when doing 2nd bombing run and looking down from the upper plate... section where you have the wind turbines).

If you want a more direct comparison of the PS4 version vs what other versions achieve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NFWHnq_oPI

I believe both this and Horizon target 30 FPS on the non-Pro PS4 model iirc, too.

[Mako]

With Horizon you're pretty much nitpicking on some procedurally generated content in the middle of nowhere. All big open worlds since at least TES4 Oblivion are like this. Procedurally generated landmass with some hand-made spots inserted. Otherwise its an impossible task even for a big team.

You originally picked on Skyrim which by all accounts is a PS3 game.
Point is - the jump between PS4 and PS5 is nowhere near previous generations jumps. We just got some marginal improvements in graphics and thats it. While PS4 actually allowed for big seamless open worlds (Skyrim is not seamless, its full of loading screens, every cave or town exists in its own worldspace) by increasing its RAM size from mere 256MB to 8GB.

Many PS4 games look at least just as good as 7R and have much bigger scale. Even their own FF15 from 2016 looks more advanced in pretty much every way compared to 2020 FF7R while being open world. If UE4 cant draw a decent sized open world without looking like Fortnite or geting massive performance problems that just means its a bad engine (and it is). In FF7R you get draw distance problems everywhere. Chapter 6 underplate is just designed to showcase engine's problems because its so open and cant hide unpleasant stuff behind many walls. You can clearly see light sources disappearing (switching off) at a distance or that awfull skybox imitating slums under you. Its actually baffling how something like this skybox made it to official release. Any decent game, even not open world, uses low poly 3D objects to draw distant scenery like this. But here you get this. Its not limited to this chapter, every time you get to see some skyboxed ground under you (support pillar after 2nd floor, chapter 15 and so on) it looks super fake. Or Shinra building in chapter 4 which is so obviously low res ugly 2D flat texture, and they even zoom in on it in a cutscene, holy jeebus, do those devs even have eyes? Dont tell me all of this is PS4 limitations because they are not.

BTW I've noticed a trend here with Kitase games. He starts with on-rails game (FFX, FFXIII, FF7R) then makes open world sequel to them. Even list of other changes/addition is pretty darn similar. For example both X-2 and XIII-2 added pokemon-like features and dedicated jump button, we're already getting jump button in Rebirth, will be funny if there is also monster catching (other than chocobos) somewhere.
Anyway, XIII-2 is expenentially better game than XIII (if only it also had a decent PC port) and IMO redeems XIII as a kind of prologue to the main course. There is a chance that Rebirth will also be such game.

[Zap]

Well done, Mako.

[Xengre]

Цитата допису Mako:

With Horizon you're pretty much nitpicking on some procedurally generated content in the middle of nowhere. All big open worlds since at least TES4 Oblivion are like this. Procedurally generated landmass with some hand-made spots inserted. Otherwise its an impossible task even for a big team.

This isn't nitpicking though. This is extremely important for the system's shared system RAM limitations. It has only 8GB and it is shared with other RAM needs since it is unified.

If a Horizon scene only has like 20-30 textures in a scene but Final Fantasy VII Remake has over 400 that is a truly tremendous difference. Same can be said about memory handling large numbers of entities where Horizon doesn't tend to have many at a single time. Horizon has one detailed primary character, Alloy, typically while FF7R may have multiple particularly highly detailed characters. Animation quality is another issue as are particle effects.

The memory limitations are very important here, not to mention this also can impact the type of processing tricks such as graphically they can or cannot use.

Цитата допису Mako:

You originally picked on Skyrim which by all accounts is a PS3 game.
Point is - the jump between PS4 and PS5 is nowhere near previous generations jumps. We just got some marginal improvements in graphics and thats it. While PS4 actually allowed for big seamless open worlds (Skyrim is not seamless, its full of loading screens, every cave or town exists in its own worldspace) by increasing its RAM size from mere 256MB to 8GB.

I didn't really pick on it, but it is true the game uses a ton of repetitive assets to save resources, and yes it is a PS3 game as you said but even compared to other PS3 games it does this to cut corners because of memory limitations.

That said, I'm not really seeing the relationship of this paragraph with what we've been discussing. You said the PS4 didn't hold back FF7R, but it did within its generation (it was originally only for PS4) and the devs stated so and it is also the reason stated for why they ditched it for episode 2 & 3. It has some very notorious bugs, too, due to hardware limitations as mentioned.

Цитата допису Mako:

Many PS4 games look at least just as good as 7R and have much bigger scale.

Which games are you referring to exactly?

Цитата допису Mako:

Even their own FF15 from 2016 looks more advanced in pretty much every way compared to 2020 FF7R while being open world.

The Luminous engine was utterly incredible for its time and has been criminally squandered and mishandled by Square Enix.

That said...
Here it is on PS4 to refresh your memory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcyUPmqzD2g

First thing you might notice is to make it run well enough on the PS4 they made extremely strong use of dynamic resolution often dropping as low as around 1568x882 resolution.
It also targets 30 FPS similar to FF7R and Horizon, but even with the 30 FPS cap trick to help its performance issues it still struggles on the PS4 with serious frame pacing issues.

The game had to sacrifice competent anti-aliasing solutions and suffers from severe aliasing and shimmering due to not being able to afford it.

Due to the draw distance involved the game frequently has billboarded flat trees and vegetation and other tricks to save performance, but the vegetation, trees, and environment textures are even less varied than Horizon's making it very easy on memory. Mob variety in a scene is low easing up on resources, too, and aside from two cities in the game NPCs are basically non-existent in this world (bar tiny exceptions but too small to matter).

Let's show Final Fantasy XV under a similarly city like and dense condition as the Final Fantasy VII Remake Sector 7 slums video I posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsFpn8unI1U&list=PLxYb6LVQvyFbnKANekYzlcm6A27tdzLfi&index=20

As we can see the FFXV resolution struggles and the asset variety such as unique models and textures are significantly less and lower quality typically.

Don't get me wrong, FFXV is a very pretty game and I beat it on PS4 at launch but the comparison is bad and FFXV doesn't hold up because it has to make sacrifices to fit what the engine and scale of the game encompass.

I also want to note this city in that video is the only notable one. Altissia is small and extremely restrictive segmented map and there is a gas station and two very small hub backwater towns.

Цитата допису Mako:

If UE4 cant draw a decent sized open world without looking like Fortnite or geting massive performance problems that just means its a bad engine (and it is). In FF7R you get draw distance problems everywhere. Chapter 6 underplate is just designed to showcase engine's problems because its so open and cant hide unpleasant stuff behind many walls. You can clearly see light sources disappearing (switching off) at a distance or that awfull skybox imitating slums under you. Its actually baffling how something like this skybox made it to official release. Any decent game, even not open world, uses low poly 3D objects to draw distant scenery like this. But here you get this. Its not limited to this chapter, every time you get to see some skyboxed ground under you (support pillar after 2nd floor, chapter 15 and so on) it looks super fake. Or Shinra building in chapter 4 which is so obviously low res ugly 2D flat texture, and they even zoom in on it in a cutscene, holy jeebus, do those devs even have eyes? Dont tell me all of this is PS4 limitations because they are not.

I wouldn't say that UE4 is bad, specifically, but it has clear limitations and I wish they had stuck with Luminous engine. Sadly, because of development issues involving this engine to avoid another split engine development catastrophe like Crystal Tools they actually pulled FF7 Remake and KH3 off Luminous engine and moved them to UE4 as an emergency. :( If they had taken more time they might have been able to pick a better fitting engine for the job or maybe a management issue (who knows) leaving them with UE4 ultimately instead of a better alternative option since Luminous engine got restricted for that development period.

Yeah, some of the skyboxes looked good like looking at the upper plates from the slums. However, the one you mentioned where you look down I cannot fathom why they didn't say "Hey, this obviously is not acceptable, we need to improve this skybox." That one was truly a no go. Still, this is a one off compared to others. For the lights I would have to see what you are talking about (maybe you can post a clip from YT if you can find it easily enough) but unless there is a LoD issue or engine shortcoming when running the scene on PS4 I can't imagine any intentional / design reason for them to stop lights so it would almost certainly be a PS4 limitation due to configured LoD.

Now... here is the ultimate point. I'm sure you've seen Final Fantasy Rebirth's trailers and gameplay, maybe even the newest trailer just released yesterday. Imagine them trying to get that to run on the PS4. It would be rough with considerable visual compromise, perhaps simply too excessive and they might have to neuter the visuals removing textures, models, etc. making scenes look more bare just to make it run and performance (FPS & resolution) would still be at risk.

Цитата допису Mako:

BTW I've noticed a trend here with Kitase games. He starts with on-rails game (FFX, FFXIII, FF7R) then makes open world sequel to them. Even list of other changes/addition is pretty darn similar. For example both X-2 and XIII-2 added pokemon-like features and dedicated jump button, we're already getting jump button in Rebirth, will be funny if there is also monster catching (other than chocobos) somewhere.
Anyway, XIII-2 is expenentially better game than XIII (if only it also had a decent PC port) and IMO redeems XIII as a kind of prologue to the main course. There is a chance that Rebirth will also be such game.

Interesting point. I've never actually looked into why regarding the FF XIII trilogy. Honestly, aside from some basic info I still need to play it. I own it but just haven't been interested to play... >.< and now we got too many games and I'm behind. Mercy maybe I'll still find some time at some point for it. FFX-2 is a weird game lol...

Maybe the reason this happens could be related to story emphasis on the first game, but since they're reusing the same world and to avoid it being repetitive or linear for no valid reason they start shifting towards a more open design. Or maybe there were engine evolutions during development. Not sure.

[Mako]

PS5 has 16GB RAM, its a much smaller increase (2x) compared to what PS4 did (32x).
This obviously leads to smaller gains when it comes to gameplay and graphics advancements.
Also on both PS4 and PS5 this shared memory works differently from PC. It doesnt have to allocate some of it as virtual VRAM, unlike PC every texture needs to be in memory only once, not once in RAM and then again in VRAM or virtual VRAM (in case its integraded GPU).

You talk about texture variety but you forgot about significant issues with texture streaming in PS4 version of FF7R. At release most textures looked like its a PS3 game for a few seconds (and sometimes up to a minute) untill better LOD is streamed.

FF15 is more or less the same as FF7R when it comes to textures. But its significantly better in most other ways. Animations quality and variety (it has like 100x more animations outside of cutscenes for all kinds of stuff), cloth physics, materials/PBR system (gun metal always looks like gun metal, cloth always looks like cloth, in 7R this is not the case, materials in it often look far too cartoonish). Characters accumulate, dirt, blood and sweat on their clothes and skin. It has proper dynamic lighting, better volumetric lighting and AO (this is especially noticable when you compare already mentioned Zagnautus to insides of Shinra buidling, or sewers vs Crestholm)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuZcH8oQ2Zk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOyMyh_-FKQ
It was also a lot more natural as LUTs for it were taken from real life scenarios (there is even video of this process). Its one of those few games that trade "cinematic" color grading for realistic colors (another game from 2016, Watch Dogs 2 also did amazing job here).
And again massive difference in draw distance. Everything you see on a horizon, sometimes for miles and miles away, is a 3D model, not some stupid 2D texture.

Which games are you referring to exactly?

Already named RDR2 and basically every AC since Unity but there really are many others.

[Xengre]

Цитата допису Mako:

PS5 has 16GB RAM, its a much smaller increase (2x) compared to what PS4 did (32x).
This obviously leads to smaller gains when it comes to gameplay and graphics advancements.
Also on both PS4 and PS5 this shared memory works differently from PC. It doesnt have to allocate some of it as virtual VRAM, unlike PC every texture needs to be in memory only once, not once in RAM and then again in VRAM or virtual VRAM (in case its integraded GPU).

To be honest, I'm not sure why you are talking about the PS5. The PS5 has nothing to do with this conversation aside from episode 2 & 3 are next-gen (PS5) only.

The issue is not how good the PS5 is, but that the PS4 was not able to handle the quality they pursued in an open world environment hence the PS4 was cut off and now they're focusing on next-gen only releases.

Цитата допису Mako:

You talk about texture variety but you forgot about significant issues with texture streaming in PS4 version of FF7R. At release most textures looked like its a PS3 game for a few seconds (and sometimes up to a minute) untill better LOD is streamed.

I did not forget. I mentioned the PS4 version's "blurry door" and streaming issues repeatedly in multiple posts above. Sadly, this is an issue that many UE4 games struggled with even when less visually impressive and it was particularly bad on the PS4 version of FF7 Remake. This is actually one of the big reasons why I brought up the substantial texture asset issue, too, because it caused UE4 to buckle even harder than it often did with other games when ran on the PS4 and why it would pose such an issue if they had made it open world because they would have even more substantial memory demands.

Цитата допису Mako:

Definitely less, way less, than FF7R.

Цитата допису Mako:

FFXV does well on a lot of this but can spare the resources because the environments are less demanding, they got less characters on screen (typically 4 main party members + 1-2 types of enemies and well... I'm sure you saw the NPC quality wasn't exactly great). We've also seen what the engine can do with Forspoken when not held back by last gen hardware, granted it was still partially heavily neutered because of AMD partnership works being placed in it and being used (due to financial contract) over Luminous engine's superior tech such as the lighting. Simpler scenes do allow the few quality elements in a scene to be of higher quality, after all. Luminous engine's ability to handle data streaming is also arguably best in its class pre-UE5 (maybe even still currently), quite unlike UE4's weakness there.

[quote=Mako;4039229229056478121Characters accumulate, dirt, blood and sweat on their clothes and skin. It has proper dynamic lighting, better volumetric lighting and AO (this is especially noticable when you compare already mentioned Zagnautus to insides of Shinra buidling, or sewers vs Crestholm)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuZcH8oQ2Zk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOyMyh_-FKQ
It was also a lot more natural as LUTs for it were taken from real life scenarios (there is even video of this process). Its one of those few games that trade "cinematic" color grading for realistic colors (another game from 2016, Watch Dogs 2 also did amazing job here).
And again massive difference in draw distance. Everything you see on a horizon, sometimes for miles and miles away, is a 3D model, not some stupid 2D texture.

Lighting is Luminous engine's defining strength hence the name, or at least it was until Hajime Tabata was working on FFXV and once the engine was ready for real development beyond conceptual state they made such radical progress (FFXV's actual dev timeline past concept is roughly 1.5 years which is insane) him and his team were floored by the development efficiency of the tools (probably explains Forspoken's utterly asininely massive scale, too) that he commented this as its strongest advantage and not lighting.

Which games are you referring to exactly?

Already named RDR2 and basically every AC since Unity but there really are many others.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has some nice visuals for its time, but the reality is they're not very asset rich and the assets aren't high quality. Really, it is the fact that they have such competent artists that made it look as good as it did.

Assassin's Creed is an interesting point.

I found some gameplay of their newest one on PS4 Assassin's Creed Mirage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdO9bh3ULtY

This one is harder to analyze but it can be noted that this is an extremely matured engine late into PS4's life unlike UE4 and this engine was built for open world scale completely in mind as a fundamental of the engine. They make a ton of sacrifices in character animation quality and character skin material, texture, and facial animation quality. They have tons of items in the environment that are simple polygons with textures done well ti give clever detail such as food in containers, ropes on ground, hay, etc. and other tricks for buildings. Last, they also have simply superb artists much like Square Enix.

Honestly, this one is much more impressive than what we saw with Horizon, RDR2, etc. but it is an extremely catered and iteratively matured engine with immense experience in using said engine in crafting these types of games. It isn't graphically superior to what FF7R puts out on a 1:1 but in terms of comprehensive output it is definitely comparable. Even then it struggles as well as you can see, for example, at timestamp 1:26:03 where the rugs and various items on/around the table stalls are extremely low quality (blurry) similar to UE4's issue as they try to stream in because at times even this specialized engine cannot keep up with this scale on the PS4.

AC is definitely an interesting example of pushing the open world visual envelope.

[Mako]

Цитата допису Xengre:

To be honest, I'm not sure why you are talking about the PS5. The PS5 has nothing to do with this conversation

It has EVEYTHING to do with this conversation. If PS4 was limiting Remake then which console is supposedly enough for those jumps in quality and scope? PS5. But the jump in its hardware power isnt really as impressive as it should be for such statement to be true. It's comparable to a hight end (but not extreme high end) PC from 2016.

You keep nitpicking on some minor mishaps in open world games but in most of your examples they happen not because its a hardware limitation but because of game's scope alone. Each scenery element gets a lot less development time compared to linear games.
Even so there are many of issues with Remake's environmental visuals. But instead of talking about specific timestamps overall image quality must be taken into account.
And as a sum of all parts Remake isnt better than any mentioned game so far (except skyrim, yes) even up close and in indoor areas.

[Xengre]

Цитата допису Mako:

Цитата допису Xengre:

To be honest, I'm not sure why you are talking about the PS5. The PS5 has nothing to do with this conversation

It has EVEYTHING to do with this conversation. If PS4 was limiting Remake then which console is supposedly enough for those jumps in quality and scope? PS5. But the jump in its hardware power isnt really as impressive as it should be for such statement to be true. It's comparable to a hight end (but not extreme high end) PC from 2016.

You keep nitpicking on some minor mishaps in open world games but in most of your examples they happen not because its a hardware limitation but because of game's scope alone. Each scenery element gets a lot less development time compared to linear games.
Even so there are many of issues with Remake's environmental visuals. But instead of talking about specific timestamps overall image quality must be taken into account.
And as a sum of all parts Remake isnt better than any mentioned game so far (except skyrim, yes) even up close and in indoor areas.

Just because this isn't the jump the PS1 was to the PS2 does not mean the PS5 is a small jump. This is only looking at the most commonly perceived specifications, CPU and GPU power.

This completely ignores the I/O capabilities of the PS5 which are the biggest jump, many times over in fact, of any prior gen of a system even when compared to PC. What was the primary limiting factor of the PS4 for Remake? Data transfer.

However, we don't really need to go that far into it because just the PS4 > PS5 leap is significant in terms of memory and processing capabilities, too, even if they're not as drastic as some prior generations. It is "enough" to resolve the issue we see with Remake on PS4, and that is the critical point.

No, the points raised are absolutely due to hardware limitations... I even showed texture streaming issues and comparison of asset density to validate this point in each of those games. Even if a game has less time to develop something, say an open world vs linear game, they're still both going to push the limit of their resources. This is precisely why we see open world games, which are at greater risk of being demanding if not careful, utilize more tricks (as I pointed out several examples) to offset demand on those limited resources, tricks you see with less frequency and less trade offs in more linear games.

Are you remembering vanilla Skyrim, especially on console at the time? Or monstrously modded PC Skryim years later? Vanille Skyrim was actually quite graphically impaired compared to other titles during its time. It succeeded elsewhere, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBZCmEwD-OM
In fact, it wasn't even a substantial upgrade over its prior game Oblivion.

Here is just a few random PS3 games far more impressive than Skyrim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIeWplPS8mk

Then there is something like this for PS3...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIP271dv0PY

If we're to compare Skyrim vs Remake in their given era Skryim gets mutilated both graphically and in visual design, granted elsewhere Skyrim as far as consumers are concern stomped FF7 Remake and made mad profits.


I also think you're kind of getting off topic here. The core of the matter is the PS4 held back the scope of episode 1, Remake, and the evidence of this is not only clear but the developer explicitly stated this limitation as the reason they were not supporting it for episode 2 & 3. This is not due to an artistic limitation but a technological one.

[Mako]

Cool story. This is probably why there are so many "those games are 7-9 years apart" videos on YT now showing how often old games in the same series look better than new ones.
PS5 performance gains are marginal. They are on par with what PC was getting in 2000s (doubling RAM sizes and GPU power annualy) in a single year. Except there is 8 years gap between those console gens. Most of those gains are wasted on fake RT which in its most commonly used form is just a more expensive way to do what 2000s GPUs could do with cube maps.

2 main advancements of PS4 gen were PBR and seamless worlds. Both are much more noticable (there are some games on PS3 that use PBR but its not on par with commonly used today forms) especially when we talk about games from those gens ported to PC where SSD drives became a thing ages ago.

Цитата допису Xengre:

However, we don't really need to go that far into it because just the PS4 > PS5 leap is significant in terms of memory and processing capabilities, too, even if they're not as drastic as some prior generations. It is "enough" to resolve the issue we see with Remake on PS4, and that is the critical point.

Point is most of this could have been resolved with a better engine or at least with more clever use of this one (for example it does support 3D skyboxes since UE2). Plenty of games look just as good if not better than 7R and have open world.

[Zap]

Basically what Mako is saying is that FF7 "remake" isn't really a JRPG--it's a series of boss fights and cinematics on rails with very limited actual in-game environments and interactivity. FF15 is more a JRPG than "remake" by a mile by the sounds of it.

It sounds like FF15 really only failed in the story department. But because critical reception of FF15 was poor, they decided to go a totally different direction and make this FF16 DMC ripoff, instead of staying with the JRPG elements of FF15 and just improving their writing and pacing and storytelling.

So, in other words, they fixed the wrong problem.

And "PS4 hardware limitations" for why "remake" is so linear and limited is an excuse, an excuse that Mako has thoroughly exposed. No matter how many line by line quotes and timestamped videos that are offered, the arguments put forth that it's "Ps4 limitations" are just nonsense. It's quite blatantly and obviously an excuse, because as he points out, there are games even a generation earlier than "remake" that are way more open, interactive, and nearly as beautiful as "remake."

It sounds like FF15 could have redeemed the franchise after FF13's debacles, but they had to salvage and make do with prior work under Nomura's leadership before he was removed from FF15, which rendered it a bit of a disconnected experience because it was developed under two separate leaders. Imagine if FF15 had had universally acclaimed storytelling. What a great redemption that would have been for the series and for Square. Instead they looked at the reception and decided to go action cheese with FF16. Another disappointing decision by SE leadership. Oh well. It is what it is.

I always knew Mako was my favorite warrior.

[Mako]

Pretty much. PS4 limitation is an obviously fake excuse.
Except FF15 actually has a great and well written story. Its just presented in a weird way for JPRG. This has nothing to do with that stupid movie btw, which only adds more confusion to understanding some characters (especially Ravus). Part of it is time constraints, but part of it is a design choice. Player is expected to do a lot of homework, read between lines, remember small details and connect dots. This is uncommon for FF series but pretty popular approach in Japanese games in general (some of which like dark souls series are highly praised for their lore while in game itself you get very minimal exposure). Kitase's style is more like dropping a cutscene every 5 steps you take which is a polar opposite and can often be excessive.