Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2016 - 2017]

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I totally agree, but I am skeptical of just how much effort will go into making the Wii U build better, when there is an NX build that will likely sell better, and have a bigger impact on Nintendo's future success. Given the amount of time before launch, I do believe the Wii U build will gain some performance, but I seriously doubt a locked 30fps will be a thing. Exploration will likely hold pretty tight to 30fps, but when things get hectic dips into the lower 20's will likely remain.

Monolith Soft are helping with the game, wouldn't surprise me if they are handling the NX port as they seem very technically proficient going on the Xenoblade games.
 
If there's one thing Nintendo is good at it's delivering software polished to the uttermost sheen. I see no reason why that would change now, especially with an IP as important to them as Zelda. The game is still 9 months away.
 
I think what they do with those specs is far more impressive than what devs do on 1TF+ consoles tbh. Zelda for the specs it's running on is marvellous looking.
You say "far more impressive", it's all the same...trade offs. Last gen we had GTA5 on WiiU level hardware.
What's to say what devs can do with 1TF+ console isn't as impressive considering 1TF+ isn't really much these days and yet you have something like Uncharted 4 or Battlefront. Is it only impressive when they do it on a weak system? But then it is all relative since PS4Bone are weak too compared to what's out there today, more powerful than WiiU sure but they also have to adhere to the higher standards expected of modern games.
 
You say "far more impressive", it's all the same...trade offs. Last gen we had GTA5 on WiiU level hardware.
What's to say what devs can do with 1TF+ console isn't as impressive considering 1TF+ isn't really much these days and yet you have something like Uncharted 4 or Battlefront. Is it only impressive when they do it on a weak system? But then it is all relative since PS4Bone are weak too compared to what's out there today, more powerful than WiiU sure but they also have to adhere to the higher standards expected of modern games.

Taking GTAV as an example I would say Zelda is far more impressive because of dev team size and budget aswell as working with a CPU architecture from circa 1999. GTA V cost around $150 million to develop and we can only guess but before this Zelda the most expensive game Nintendo ever made was Twilight Princess at $20 million. I would guess BotW cost no more than $50 million so a third of GTA V's budget whilst being developed by 10x less people.

We will obviously have to wait for the finished product but like I said before if Nintendo can polish BotW to hit 30fps most of the time while improving the visuals it will be imho one of the most technically impressive games ever made considering the awful out of date hardware and memory limitations (not just RAM but no HDD for World streaming).
 
Taking GTAV as an example I would say Zelda is far more impressive because of dev team size and budget aswell as working with a CPU architecture from circa 1999. GTA V cost around $150 million to develop and we can only guess but before this Zelda the most expensive game Nintendo ever made was Twilight Princess at $20 million. I would guess BotW cost no more than $50 million so a third of GTA V's budget whilst being developed by 10x less people.

We will obviously have to wait for the finished product but like I said before if Nintendo can polish BotW to hit 30fps most of the time while improving the visuals it will be imho one of the most technically impressive games ever made considering the awful out of date hardware and memory limitations (not just RAM but no HDD for World streaming).
The $150 million was not all development money, it included marketing which GTAV had plentiful.
Dev size and money is also not directly scalable to quality, infact in software development bigger size often means more problems, difficult and more complex development since communication is harder and your work can get affected by someone you've never even spoken to...it requires a lot more management. That is impressive too.

Like I said, it's all relative.
 
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The $150 million was not all development money, it included marketing which GTAV had plentiful.
Dev size and money is also not directly scalable to quality, infact in software development bigger size often means more problems, difficult and more complex development since communication is harder and your work can get affected by someone you've never even spoken to...it requires a lot more management. That is impressive too.

Like I said, it's all relative.

GTA V was $250 million all in, $100 million estimated to be marketing.
 
Well that's marketing in and of itself, let's not be too quick to take budget numbers as gospel.

My point was GTA V has a budget that is probably at least 5x that of BotW and GTA V had much better CPU's and HDD's as standard to stream the World on PS360.
 
My point was GTA V has a budget that is probably at least 5x that of BotW and GTA V had much better CPU's and HDD's as standard to stream the World on PS360.

+5 years development from Nintendo own teams and +2 years for 100 people will only cost $30 millions, maybe less? GTA5 development cost was $137 millions. As a Nintendo game, they won't spend hundred of millions on marketing...

How many people are even developing this game at Nintendo? We could even consider this game as a Monolith soft game supervised by Nintendo...
 
My point was GTA V has a budget that is probably at least 5x that of BotW and GTA V had much better CPU's and HDD's as standard to stream the World on PS360.
At the same time the WiiU also has more RAM. And one doesn't really needs to wait for BoTW to come out to make the claim that BoTW will not have less density than GTAV and less assets as well due to the very nature of these games and their environment, and these are the two things which just happen to be time and money sink.
 
You say "far more impressive", it's all the same...trade offs. Last gen we had GTA5 on WiiU level hardware.
What's to say what devs can do with 1TF+ console isn't as impressive considering 1TF+ isn't really much these days and yet you have something like Uncharted 4 or Battlefront. Is it only impressive when they do it on a weak system? But then it is all relative since PS4Bone are weak too compared to what's out there today, more powerful than WiiU sure but they also have to adhere to the higher standards expected of modern games.
I know this is my first post but I think some things should be addressed:
1. GTA5 on PS3/360 is almost a generation beyond this Zelda in terms of technical feats. I mean, I see a lot of Nintendo fans speaking of "the physics" but even GTA4 which was a 2007 game had it done much, much, much better than this Zelda, and GTAV improved a lot over that. Of course, in terms of lighting, solid framerate, textures (Zelda has to use cell shading to hide its PS2-esque texture resolution), draw distance and IA GTAV is worlds above anything Nintendo has ever tried to do. Nintendo is about gimmicks, not real videogames, and that's apparent when analysing their games from a technical view.

2. This new Zelda is a 2004 game in terms of technical merits. It can't compete even with 2006 games like Oblivion when it comes to graphics (graphics, not aesthetics. I'm aware that Nintendo puts a lot of colours here and there to give that cartoony look that a lot of people likes despite it being obsolete technically speaking), but it's good enough for a Nintendo game on the WiiU.

3. The WiiU is, in terms of hardware, a console halfway between the Xbox and the Xbox 360. Its 1999 CPU isn't even comparable to the Celeron 3 the Xbox mounted core for core, and when compared to Xbox 360's Xenon CPU, it's 3 cores can't compare to even a single core of the Xenon (not only Xenon cores are clocked much higher at 3.2 Ghz, since they're a much more modern architecture of 2005, they also perform much better when compared in a per clock basis with WiiU's 1999 tech). The console also has less than half the bandwidth of the Xbox 360 and a GPU that's at best 2/3 as powerful (160Gflops vs 230 Gflops of the Xenos). Yes, I know this is Nintendo's fault to use such an archaic technology on the WiiU, but in the other hand this proves that a 2004 looking game is good enough.

4. Of course, we're in 2016 and not in 2004, and even when taking into account the limits of the WiiU this game isn't anything special. When compared to Naughty Gods that were able to pull this in real time on a PS3:
the-last-of-us-remasterizado-barato.jpg
 
I dunno, i really like how the new Zelda looks. And i think an upres with more stable framerate on the NX will please people. I think Oblivion was really good for its time (really the first wow factor in 360 for me when i played it, was great on PC too) but really? This is what Oblivion vanilla looks like:

QTP3_vanilla_01.jpg~original


And Zelda BoW

qcPi5NO.jpg

HCIoZ2G.jpg

yWnWxsx.jpg


The Wii U is the Wii U... Let's wait for the Nx release to judge it. With that said, i really like the Wii U version too, with AA and framerate being the most disappointing parts.
 
I know this is my first post but I think some things should be addressed:
You're being far too dismissive.
2. This new Zelda is a 2004 game in terms of technical merits. It can't compete even with 2006 games like Oblivion when it comes to graphics
How so? Oblivion had last-gen lighting, no AO, naffy grass. Look at the shadowing on the plentiful grass in Zelda - it a lushness well beyond anything I recall on PS3, and definitely beyonjd anything achieved on PS360 in 2006.

3. The WiiU is, in terms of hardware, a console halfway between the Xbox and the Xbox 360.
Although debatable, what has that got to do with the assertion that , "given the hardware Zelda is running on (crap), this is a technical masterpiece"? The praise is being levied because of the limited hardware.

4. Of course, we're in 2016 and not in 2004, and even when taking into account the limits of the WiiU this game isn't anything special. When compared to Naughty Gods that were able to pull this in real time on a PS3:
Please don't compare cutscenes of different artstyles to gameplay of different gamestyles. if you want to try and make a meaningful comparison, compare a similar situation. There are plenty of gameplay clips from LoU to choose from.

One thing I'll note about BoW is that the character lighting has taken a significant quality downgrade since the reveal. It's just a binary cell shader without the subtle gradations of the original art. It's much more in keeping with an animated feature look, and easier on the processing.
 
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I dunno, i really like how the new Zelda looks. And i think an upres with more stable framerate on the NX will please people. I think Oblivion was really good for its time (really the first wow factor in 360 for me when i played it, was great on PC too) but really? This is what Oblivion vanilla looks like:

QTP3_vanilla_01.jpg~original


And Zelda BoW

qcPi5NO.jpg

HCIoZ2G.jpg

yWnWxsx.jpg


The Wii U is the Wii U... Let's wait for the Nx release to judge it. With that said, i really like the Wii U version too, with AA and framerate being the most disappointing parts.
Technically speaking Oblivion is worlds above that Zelda. I mean, yes, Zelda has more colours (it's a Nintendo game after all) but this is just an aesthetic choice and doesn't count when speaking of graphics.

When it comes to REAL LIGHTING, Oblivion is much more defined with a more costly an realistic approach and actual real time shadowing that applies not only to trees but to the rest of the vegetation as well.
And speaking of vegetation, can anyone compare those small blades of grass to this?
oblivion2.jpg


This is a generation above anything on the WiiU.

Shifty Geezer said:
You're being far too dismissive.
I'm sorry if I seem rude, that's not my intention at all.

Shifty Geezer said:
How so? Oblivion had last-gen lighting, no AO, naffy grass.
And it's still a gen above this Zelda in those aspects besides not having AO like this Zelda. In terms of grass, it's incomparably more realistic the one in oblivion than the one in this Zelda (this is why Nintendo has to stick with the cartoony looks).


Shifty Geezer said:
Look at the shadowing on the plentiful grass in Zelda - it a lushness well beyond anything I recall on PS3, and definitely beyonjd anything achieved on PS360 in 2006.
Sorry but what? I can't believe I'm reading this. Hey, PS3 in 2006 had games like the first Uncharted that looked like this even in the worst screenshots!
uncharted-2-drakes-fortune-screenshot.jpg


You may prefer Nintendo's aesthetics, but to say this is even comparable to what the PS3 and Xbox 360 achieved on a constant basis is mistaking one's self preferences to the raw technical merits each game delivers. If it was launched on the original Xbox, then yes, Zelda would've been impressive technically speaking. On the Xbox 360 or PS3 it would've been a 5-6 out of 10 game if it had better IQ, higher polygon counts and higher resolution textures. And you may like it, that's fine and I totally respect that, but that's not objective.
 
Technically speaking Oblivion is worlds above that Zelda. I mean, yes, Zelda has more colours (it's a Nintendo game after all) but this is just an aesthetic choice and doesn't count when speaking of graphics.
If you want to make a technical argument, make reference to techniques. Presently you're just insulting and I'm regretting approving your posts...

When it comes to REAL LIGHTING, Oblivion is much more defined with a more costly an realistic approach and actual real time shadowing that applies not only to trees but to the rest of the vegetation as well.
Huh? BoW's shadowing is clearly realtime, and looks to be per blade of grass. Oblivions' grass is sprites for clumps sparsely placed. From 17 minutes, the first footage I can find of wandering around outside.

And speaking of vegetation, can anyone compare those small blades of grass to this?
No image.
oblivion2.jpg


And it's still a gen above this Zelda in those aspects besides not having AO like this Zelda. In terms of grass, it's incomparably more realistic the one in oblivion than the one in this Zelda (this is why Nintendo has to stick with the cartoony looks).
cartoony looks doesn't necessarily mean simpler rendering. The lighting and shadowing in Oblivion is pretty simplistic. There are lots of ocassions of no environment shadows, only character shadows.

Sorry but what? I can't believe I'm reading this. Hey, PS3 in 2006 had games like the first Uncharted that looked like this even in the worst screenshots!
I'm talking about grass. Show me a PS360 game with lush grass and per-blade shadowing.

You may prefer Nintendo's aesthetics
Stop raising aesthetic. This is a technical thread in the technical forum, and I (and others) are quite capable of divorcing ourselves from the art (which TBH I'm not overly fond of, although I certainly prefer it to the cold, crude lighting of early PS360 games). Raise an actual technical point. Drawing and shadowing lots of individual blades of grass is a lot more demanding than plomping down a few grass-bunch sprites on a big slab of grass-texture which was the usual solution last gen, including Oblivion and The Last of Us.

On the Xbox 360 or PS3 it would've been a 5-6 out of 10 game if it had better IQ, higher polygon counts and higher resolution textures. And you may like it, that's fine and I totally respect that, but that's not objective.
Each of those points you might be right on - try making a technical argument. I don't think lighting is radically different bewteen BoW and most PS360 games, only the contrast and 'ambient light' is different. Lighting techniques seem broadly the same. BoW has better shadowing than a lot of PS360 games. Has way better grass! IQ is terrible, but it was on plenty of PS360 games. TLoU sacrificed IQ and framerate to pull of its visuals.
 
Umm I'm late to the party and don't really understand technicalities but...

Doesn't oblivion looks really harsh? Sure it have more realistic materials but they looks like a cut paste photoshop objects.

While in zelda, the cartoon objects are bathed in realistic looking light and shades.

It's like... Make a bunch of fake cardboard character in photoshop, complete with the diorama. Print them, then photo it in real life.

It will look much more realistic.
 
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