Horizon Forbidden West [PS4, PS5, PC]

[iroboto]

I do it here too

yea that sounds about right. I think hero lighting, if that's what it's going to be called has been around for a long time now. Forza Horizon, most racing games, ubisoft titles etc. Few games had actual unified lighting, Drive Club, etc. And that was the subtle but important aspects that people managed to pick out. Real time GI is what brings a scene together, and sometimes that means removing hero lighting as part of it. Demon's souls also employs this technique on PS5 as well.

I guess that's just a choice however. But not always. I often associate it with last gen lighting techniques.

Nothing wrong, it was noticeable when watching the demo, perhaps a tad too strong.

 

[Rootax]

The more I watch the more I think they screwed up Aloy face... In some expression it looks like she had wisdom tooth removed 12 hours ago or something.

 

[Arwin]

I like it and from the other gender I’ve shown this too they all seem to universally approve the round face.

If you look at the PS4 Pro reveal trailer, you see that Ally gets really dark in shadows, to the point of almost disappearing, and I think the hero lighting started as a remedy against that. If I compare it to other games, even Uncharted had this as perhaps it’s biggest weakness - shadows especially on the face of the main character could be really ugly and break down, and the hero light takes a lot of this pain away, as well as help the hero stand out against the background. It also works I think because the aesthetic, like Uncharted, is sticking to graphic novel / painted style visuals rather than absolute realism. It also means that whatever GI solution they use is probably way too slow and course to use on the main character, and that is probably something that more third person games will have to deal with in the foreseeable future.

The PS4 version I predict will hold up half decently, but will have more pop-in or less visual detail (more aggressive and visual LOD), lower resolution, definitely only have a 30fps mode (60fps is not yet confirmed for PS5 either though), fewer fog and less lighting, lower GI, and so on, but all of this will probably be scaleable in the Decima engine.

Aa long as the PS4 version still looks better than the original game, I think few will complain. We should probably not forget that some of the R&D investments that were made into the texture compression, file system efficiency and streaming actually did make it to the PS4, as we could see in load times drastically improving sometimes in PS4 exclusives last year already.

All in all it seems like they are pulling off cross platform development for this game in very a satisfying way.

 

[Karamazov]

that the kind of leap i expect going from one gen to another, not only resolution and effects, but the amount of details on screen, higher poly characters, further drawn distance etc...
That's what is missing in CP2077 on PC for example. Only (i say only but of course it still matters) higher Res/FPS and effects, but exactly same LOD on PC vs PS4/XBX, when they could have gone higher. And i think the new engines coming will handle these sort of things a lot better accross systems.

 

[chris1515]

The rounder face comes maybe from the actress hannah hoekstra. They model Aloy using her face.

 

[Arwin]

Actually she does look a bit like she is 16 here. But in the previous game she was 19, so maybe she does look a tad young.

 

[Rootax]

I would be pissed if I was Hannah and this was the result

Anyway. I hope DF or some other media can have a look at the engine and what changed between HZD and FW. And how it impacts the flow of the production, etc.

 

[JoeJ]

The rounder face comes maybe from the actress hannah hoekstra. They model Aloy using her face.

oh, if only they had adopted her real hairstyle too, sigh

 

[Globalisateur]

oh, if only they had adopted her real hairstyle too, sigh

And real face.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

oh, if only they had adopted her real hairstyle too, sigh

Because Aloy, alone among the survivors, had a Focus device to access machine communications and a massive pile of shampoo and conditioner and access to a really good hair stylist.

 

[Clukos]

Slightly off-topic but I went back to Horizon on PC and decided to get a GPU capture, the reason why Aloy has such high quality shadows compared to everything else is... Because they do a separate pass just for Aloy during the shadow pass, of course! :smile:

Interesting, and also smart! You are more likely to notice bad shadows on the main character than anyone else in a 3rd person game

 

[PSman1700]

Slightly off-topic but I went back to Horizon on PC and decided to get a GPU capture, the reason why Aloy has such high quality shadows compared to everything else is... Because they do a separate pass just for Aloy during the shadow pass, of course! :smile:

Interesting, and also smart! You are more likely to notice bad shadows on the main character than anyone else in a 3rd person game

Its too bad il probably have to wait a long time before il get to play it on pc (though developments seem positive now), on ps5 il just play and enjoy the gameplay and visuals casually. On pc il explore the world and look/examine at every detail and hunt for the best graphics environments and scenes. A niche thing to do but some like that

 

[Deleted member 90741]

She looks like a young Minnie Driver (from Good Will Hunting), I like it

 

[upnorthsox]

Aloy gained some weight.

Well she has a boyfriend now so.................................................
...............that and the Covid 15 and it's surprising that she not running around in baggy sweats.

 

[Shortbread]

The level of detail is quite insane. The volumetric fog and rays around the upper-right tree need tweaking though. Yeah, the PS4 version is definitely going to be scaled-down - a whole lot.

More...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It's good to see that food is not in scare supply where she lives. Or she lives on whale blubber like the Alaskan Native Americans. After the first game, maybe she's led a mostly sedentary lifestyle?

Or, they just want to show that larger more "full figured" women (chubby) are beautiful too? I mean who wants athletic looking women in a game like this? Give us BBWs!

Spoiler

I'm KIDDING! She's got nothing on BBWs!

Actually she does look a bit like she is 16 here. But in the previous game she was 19, so maybe she does look a tad young.

All that fat certainly does come across as looking like the remnants of baby fat which makes her look younger than she was in the first game.

Regards,
SB

 

[zed]

Is it even worth supporting a ps4 version?
100 million+ consoles blah blah

BUT if one looks at charts the PS5 seems to sell more than the ps4
eg the last high profile release resident evil opening week UK
49% of its sales were on PS5, 31% on PS4

this ratio for ps5s4 is only going to favour ps5 more and more as more people buy it, Im guessing by the time it launches opening week UK sales for HFW will be something like 90% PS5 10% PS4
is that 10% really worth the extra effort? and it could backfire, see cyberpunk

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Well this thread went really creepy really quickly.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Is it even worth supporting a ps4 version?
100 million+ consoles blah blah

BUT if one looks at charts the PS5 seems to sell more than the ps4
eg the last high profile release resident evil opening week UK
49% of its sales were on PS5, 31% on PS4

this ratio for ps5s4 is only going to favour ps5 more and more as more people buy it, Im guessing by the time it launches opening week UK sales for HFW will be something like 90% PS5 10% PS4
is that 10% really worth the extra effort? and it could backfire, see cyberpunk

If that was a million units, that would be 490k for PS5 and 310k for PS4. If those hypothetical unit sales were 60 USD each, that's 18.6 million USD.

Just for shits and giggles, let's say HZ:FW sells 10 million copies. Let's say they go with Sony's new 70 USD per title price. And let's say that PS4 is only 25% of sales. That'd be 2.5 million unit sales at 70 USD for hypothetical retail sales of 175 million USD. I'm quite sure the effort to support the PS4 likely doesn't even register 1 million USD (likely just a fraction of that).

Is 175 million USD worth it? Also, I expect HZ:FW to sell significantly more than 10 million units over its lifetime. Granted not all of it at 70 USD. PS4 is still likely to generate over 200 million USD in retail sales, IMO.

Or think of it another way, Sony is predicting shortages of the PS5 into next year. This means that if it releases this year and it's PS5 only, many people that want to play the game would not have the possibility to play it. But, unless Sony are being dicks about it, with PS4 being supported they can buy and play the PS4 version and seamlessly transition (assuming no save game fuckery) to playing it on the PS5 once they can somehow get a PS5.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Is it even worth supporting a ps4 version?
100 million+ consoles blah blah

I would so like to see the numbers for this too.