Gears of War 4 [XO, XPA]

[AlNom]

I'm hoping for old man Clayton Carmine to be found in a cave, telling us about his glory days and how he saved everyone.

Or we meet Claymore, son of Clayton who died heroically during the childbirth. Because reasons.

 

[Rangers]

I just noticed Gears 4 is like the 7th most viewed game on twitch right now. Did some digging apparently they gave some streamers codes early but nothing widespread.

I noticed shadows are in the graphics now though they still look pretty plain.

 

[AlNom]

Can folks take screenshots in the beta?

 

[Sh1nn]

from gamersyde

 

[Nesh]

Those graphics look underwhelming. But I expect lots of improvements since its Alpha

 

[Globalisateur]

Lets just forget graphics, effects, resolution and techniques one moment.

This looks repulsive. And I bought a launch X360 to play Gears of war 1

 

[DrJay24]

Who are the bacon people?

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Do they not have the same concept artist anymore? James Hawkins art was priceless and made Gears what it was. Is he in or not? Or is it just lack of post filters, but I am not seeing the medieval castle like structures anywhere.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I thought the weak part of the Gears games was art design. Almost everything looked stupid. The presentation was fantastic though. The roadie run, the zoom ins for the chainsaw kills etc. Gameplay wise, it was top notch. The character designs always bothered me. The golden palace at the end of Gears 3 looked great. Other than that, I didn't like the world they created, the characters or the dumb things like razor hail (wtf?). The game was just so fun to play. There was tons of room for improvement.

And with that said, Gears 4 does not look like an improvement. It looks like ... dicks. That teaser trailer was amazing, but the multiplayer is visually underwhelming. Everything just looks so ... boring. Repetitive textures, with everything at perfect right angles. Flat looking world. Uninspiring. Here's hoping for the single player, or a pretty significant change to the multiplayer maps in the retail version.

 

[ultragpu]

This is Gears 3 MP beta and it shits on the abomination that is running on XBone currently. Unbelievable..

Does 1080/60 really put such a huge strain on the Xbone?

 

[Clukos]

Oh wow, Gears 3 looks a lot better in those screens. I hope they drop to 900p and improve the visuals because it looks really bad right now. Add some sharpening with that 900p and you can get pretty respectable results with UE4 at 60 fps (look at Paragon for example). Halo 5 looked a lot better than that as well (running dynamic res at 60 fps), level lighting specifically.

 

[Clukos]

Okay, looked at some of the gamersyde footage. Some things I noted.

No motion blur (neither camera nor per object) that alone could improve how the game looks

Very low texture resolution, low AF and very sparse use of AO

Shadow distance lod very close to player, looks really weird

Not so great looking effects

Smoke can look a bit weird at times, looks okay most of the time

Right now, the game looks no different from a last gen game. I really hope they drop down to 900p and improve these areas visually, the game can look a lot better.

Just for comparisons sake Gears 3 had better looking environments and lighting
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gJN4b8eUH0Y/maxresdefault.jpg
http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com...3-Multiplayer-Beta-All-You-Need-to-Know-7.jpg
http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com...3-Multiplayer-Beta-All-You-Need-to-Know-6.jpg

And motion blur (per object and camera) of course. Some gameplay from a comparable map

 

[ultragpu]

They need to drop either one of the feature be it 1080p or 60fps as right now it's certainly doing more harm than good for the overall look. Maybe dynamic res or frame reconstruct would help too. Personally I would prefer 1080/30, Gears3 at 30fps was more than playable.

 

[Michellstar]

Don´t blame the devs, blame Ms wich gave them a 1TF machine to work with.
Too many constraints (auto-imposed or not), new studio, new engine, 1080/60 PR.

Anyway this is alpha footage from MP, it´s meant to test the net code, the load on the servers, whatever... for sure it has many graphical options switched off.

 

[Globalisateur]

Can't wait to see the game when they have switched to a more appealing color palette in a future build, after the net code is tested, of course.

 

[AlNom]

Oh wow, Gears 3 looks a lot better in those screens.

The context may be somewhat different as Epic had originally delayed the game's release in order to put out the public beta i.e. the artwork would have been near-final at that point.

The second screenshot is from the Fenix Rising add-on.

 

[Clukos]

framerate test by digital foundry

 

[AlNom]

How large is the beta download?

level lighting specifically.

I wouldn't be surprised if they've only done a quick baking pass for this.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I wouldn't be surprised if they've only done a quick baking pass for this.

Mmmm.. pies.

 

[zed]

How large is the beta download?

I wouldn't be surprised if they've only done a quick baking pass for this.

Yes theres no way the game will look like that when they release it, texture quality will be 4x resolution and lighting will be baked in (though its 2016 so why they're still baking lighting is worrying) the levels don't look large or complicated you'ld hope for better solutions nowadays