I just love ND's rendering principle in general, it seems like they don't overlook anything while making very smart compromise in order to deliver what looks to me like one of the most balanced final output. And balance in itself is a highly difficult technical achievement. People tend to confuse not pushing the absolute most advanced lighting or technique is not pushing the envelope of technology, yet totally neglect the immense sacrifice such one sided bias would result. What good is voxel GI if everything else is low res? What good is gigatons of polys if your lighting and shaders are next to non existent? I understand some game does require more emphasizes on a specific area or two, but the skill lies at how you can maintain a well balanced visual presentation for the rest of the package. Far too often I see games with a very prominent graphical feature yet utterly fails in many other areas if not all. UC4 and a few other games to me looked unbelievably balanced and consistent yet at the same time still delivering a kitchen sink of high end techniques such as volumetric lighting, volumetric shadow, volumetric fog, advanced shaders, SSS, muscle sim, all kinds of motion blur, Bokeh DOF, excellent models, large and dense play areas, high res textures everywhere while maintaining 1080p. Whether they achieved this via hard work, budget, staff quantity, talent or whatever is another thing but hell they've got a damn good engine recipe that's for sure.
! ! ! ! Oh boy this is going to be such a change from the Dark SOuls 3 I am nose deep in right now !
