Death Stranding (DC) [XBSX|S, PS4, PS5, PC]

[OCASM]

Ok watched it. Gameplay seems very MGSVish, with an added emphasis on envirnomental traversal with various tools. Ok.
What stuck out was the music though. In a very bad way.
Knarly guitar riffs reminiscent of B-side J-rpgs of the 2000's? Really? So excessive. So unoriginal and bland. So noisy. Zero mood. Just constant cheesy over-stimulation.
Kojima has an incurable love for cheap anime camp, so I was kind of expecting that to seep into the character/world design and mexican-soap-opera-like melodramatics, and it showed more and more with each new teaser and trailer. But at least musically, kojima's past games managed to always be very tasteful. Even if leaning on the camp side of things, it had always been very self-aware and fitting to the hollywood espionage aesthic of each game. The previous trailer had some very cool synthy tunes as well. I was loving it then. I don't know what happened here. Sounds like they grabbed some tunes from Kojima's 13 year old nerdy emo nephew from japanese pop-core bands of 20 years ago on his iPod.

Apocalyptica is good, man!

 

[ultragpu]

Holy shit this is way beyond anything released this gen graphically, the details, particles, effects, models, facial animation, fluid dynamic and lighting are absurdly good, and all as an open world game. At times it seriously looks like CG, RDR2 really doesn't come close to it graphically, it belongs on current gen, this is semi next gen to me.

 

[milk]

Read Dead Redemption 2 actually looks better than this (besides facial animations). Their shaders are just not good (specular levels are way to high& skin shader is simply bad), lighting is also meh.

I don't think the shaders themselves are what's off, but how they are lit. RDR2 has a very good AO and Specular Occlusion solution that makes everything feel way more placed within the scene, which is ahead of most other renderers, but their materials don't seem specially great on their on, in fact, I feel they are somewhat constrained to less vibrant values than they actually are in real life, which makes them less accurate to real world, but makes the whole scene more consistent.
DS's skin shading looks the best I've seen in real time in my opinon. It has a very convincing oily/waxy look that I had not seen in other games. RDR2 characters look very dry skinned in comparison, but thanks to them being covered in dust and dirt all the time makes it seem deliberate.

 

[Ike Turner]

I don't think the shaders themselves are what's off, but how they are lit. RDR2 has a very good AO and Specular Occlusion solution that makes everything feel way more placed within the scene, which is ahead of most other renderers, but their materials don't seem specially great on their on, in fact, I feel they are somewhat constrained to less vibrant values than they actually are in real life, which makes them less accurate to real world, but makes the whole scene more consistent.
DS's skin shading looks the best I've seen in real time in my opinon. It has a very convincing oily/waxy look that I had not seen in other games. RDR2 characters look very dry skinned in comparison, but thanks to them being covered in dust and dirt all the time makes it seem deliberate.

RDR2's skin shader is bad (it's worst than what is seen here as a matter of fact). But's it's not only the lighting which is off in DS (there's a distinct lack of AO). Their specular values look way to high and the roughness/glossiness map seems to be non-existant..

 

[OCASM]

Holy shit this is way beyond anything released this gen graphically, the details, particles, effects, models, facial animation, fluid dynamic and lighting are absurdly good, and all as an open world game. At times it seriously looks like CG, RDR2 really doesn't come close to it graphically, it belongs on current gen, this is semi next gen to me.

No variable penumbra shadows nor multiple-scattering fog. RDR2 > this.

 

[milk]

I am so curious: "WHO DEVELOPS THE GAME"?

When Kojima left Konami only several members were also left with him. However they finished a AAA-game in 3~4 years. Who did the programming??? Who are the artists?????

It needs a lot of people and who are the developers behind it??????

Aparently, the music part was solved by recycling Kojima's 13 y.o. nephew's favorite tunes from ps2 era RPGs, so that's one time saver there.

 

[Nesh]

Read Dead Redemption 2 actually looks better than this (besides facial animations). Their shaders are just not good (specular levels are way to high& skin shader is simply bad), lighting is also meh.

I am not agreeable on this one. Lighting and materials look much more realistic and convincing to me in this game.

 

[milk]

RDR2's skin shader is bad (it's worst than what is seen here as a matter of fact). But's it's not only the lighting which is off in DS (there's a distinct lack of AO). Their specular values look way to high and the roughness/glossiness map seems to be non-existant..

What I'm suggesting is that the specular values are physically acurate, but they look too bright on the final render because they don't have proper specular occlusion.

 

[OCASM]

 

[ultragpu]

No variable penumbra shadows nor multiple-scattering fog. RDR2 > this.

I spent 50+ hours looking at those penumbra shadows and multiple-scattering fog in RDR2 and they did absolutely nothing for me, more like got distracted by the abundance of low res textures and low poly assets through and through. Also man do I appreciate the inclusion of absurdly high quality character models and animation in a story driven open world game!

 

[London Geezer]

I am so curious: "WHO DEVELOPS THE GAME"?

When Kojima left Konami only several members were also left with him. However they finished a AAA-game in 3~4 years. Who did the programming??? Who are the artists?????

It needs a lot of people and who are the developers behind it??????

Maybe that’s what the game is about. Beings from other dimensions who came to make the game about themselves.

I have no idea what I just watched but bloody hell it looks good.

I don’t agree that it looks ‘too good for ps4’. I think it looks great, but nothing we haven’t already been shocked by Horizon zero dawn - I got that Decima feeling for sure and honestly this isn’t any better looking than that. In fact I think HZD has a few things still going for it which this one doesn’t show so far - namely the huge enemy models and crazy particles.

Really amazing art and direction, that’s Kojima for you.

 

[London Geezer]

Read Dead Redemption 2 actually looks better than this (besides facial animations). Their shaders are just not good (specular levels are way to high& skin shader is simply bad), lighting is also meh.

Pretty sure that at least the HDR here won’t be an absolute disaster as it was in RDR2 - even after the patch it’s still not on par with other AAA games.

 

[Ike Turner]

What I'm suggesting is that the specular values are physically acurate, but they look too bright on the final render because they don't have proper specular occlusion.

As somebody who's been working on shaders nearly every day for 2 years straight..there's unfortunately nothing physically accurate in what we call PBR/PBS..it's still all approximation and every material still has to be manually tweaked (especially specular levels if no specular map is used) depending on the lighting engine etc...This seems like and artistic choice here as everything seems to be made to look as close as MGS as possible (yes there's also no spec occlusion in there).

 

[ultragpu]

The Decima engine does some true black magic.

 

[OCASM]

I spent 50+ hours looking at those penumbra shadows and multiple-scattering fog in RDR2 and they did absolutely nothing for me, more like got distracted by the abundance of low res textures and low poly assets through and through. Also man do I appreciate the inclusion of absurdly high quality character models and animation in a story driven open world game!

The gameplay animation on DS looks just as robotic as it did in MGSV, the combat in particular looked pretty bad.

 

[London Geezer]

Also... do they say HOMO DEMONS??? At 2.20?

I’ve met a few homo demons in my time. Wouldn’t recommend.

 

[London Geezer]

The Decima engine does some true black magic.

I’d say it’s Decima through the eyes of a great director and very, very talented artists!

 

[cheapchips]

I loved how gamey it looked during the gameplay bits and how batshit it continues to look in cut scenes.

 

[London Geezer]

I loved how gamey it looked during the gameplay bits and how batshit it continues to look in cut scenes.

That’s the word. Batshit crazy. How does a 9 min trailer still leave me completely confused over what I’m actually watching?

If I had to guess, there’s an element of looking back in time with the help of that creepy baby in the jar? And the president is in her bed in the Oval Office and has asked the protagonist to... make America whole again? MAWA?

 

[Karamazov]

or different periods of time linked by death and mixing things up because of some weird failed experiment, and you have to try to restore things.