Horizon Forbidden West [PS4, PS5, PC]

[Nesh]

Quality is not a term I would use to describe this game to be honest.

I think you are extremely unfair with the game.

The only thing it has going for it is the sheer amount of foliage on screen, the rest of the game is nothing special to me.

If Metro Exodus can do it at 60fps on consoles I'm sure it should be able to quiet easily on PC.

I suppose it just depends on how much work is required to get it embedded in to the engine.

Is Metro Exodus an open world game though like this one?

Depending on the game, compromises have to be made. The reason I am asking is because I m trying to find a game of similar design that had implementation of RGTI to understand if this was a sacrifice due to it's open world and dynamic daytime

Another title whose scale got larger is FF 7 Rebirth and that had similar cut backs in lighting similar to Forbidden West so there must be a trend here

 

[Karamazov]

Doesn't Avatar use RTGI ?

 

[chris1515]

Doesn't Avatar use RTGI ?

Avatar uses RTGI. HFW is a cross gen games. Death Stranding 2 and Horizon 3 will probably be much better usage of PS5, PS5 Pro hardware and DX12 Ultimate GPU on Decima Engine side

 

[Karamazov]

personnaly i think HFW still looks very good, and one of the too few games with a 40fps mode.

 

[Seanspeed]

personnaly i think HFW still looks very good

Vast majority of people do. This is one of the few places I've seen suggesting otherwise, because there's many here who seem to think that your game cannot look good if it doesn't have ray tracing.

 

[Phantom88]

It looks good, but not as good as advertised. The actual game is pretty far from the cherry picked gifs hat were always poping up online and i think Calisto Protocol was the actual best looking game of 2022. It's more impressive looking regardless of the smaller scope. And Avatar is pretty confortably ahead, so the visual impression of Horizon is pretty substantially dulled right now

 

[Jupiter]

Avatar is in a different league and The Callisto Protocol was the best looking game of 2022.

Without RT lighting games hardly appeal to me anymore visually. However, Avatar also has lighting problems indoors. At the moment the measure of all things here is CP2077 Pathtracing. Star Wars Outlaws looks promising too thanks to RTX DI and the internal GI solution.

Avatar uses RTGI. HFW is a cross gen games. Death Stranding 2 and Horizon 3 will probably be much better usage of PS5, PS5 Pro hardware and DX12 Ultimate GPU on Decima Engine side

In the Death Stranding 2 trailer you could see at the latest in the part with the opening hangar ramp that they are probably using a form of RT GI. Unless that is pre-calculated.

 

[Reynaldo]

Toggle Fake Light - Volumetric Rays - HUD __ Shader Toggler

A few shader toggler hotkeys

www.nexusmods.com

Haven't tried it, but this mod should have a toggle for disabling the "hero light" around characters. A must have mod if it works IMHO.

 

[ZebMacahan]

This game is relatively fine. Like with AC Valhalla the budget is too big, there's a big smattering of features like cooking and that dumb not chess side game that aren't interesting or fun but are there because they had the budget.

Stick with the main activities and questline it's a perfectly solid story heavy action RPG.

Yeah, many things seem like they are added just to artificialy increase the playing time. Cooking doesnt add anything, its just a time consuming chore, just like the hunting and upgrading weapons with rare parts.

 

[ZebMacahan]

Toggle Fake Light - Volumetric Rays - HUD __ Shader Toggler

A few shader toggler hotkeys

www.nexusmods.com

Haven't tried it, but this mod should have a toggle for disabling the "hero light" around characters. A must have mod if it works IMHO.

I think the hero light looks awesome

 

[Reynaldo]

I think the hero light looks awesome

If Alloy being a radioactive glow in the dark entity is your thing, more power to you! She does at some point drag a whole train wagon with her hands without much effort, so maybe she is really an enhanced superhuman and the glow is a side effect.

The hero light may look pretty but it makes her stick out from the world too much for my liking.

I did give the mod a try and it works great for outside environments, but in interiors the devs relied too much on this fake light so it makes her looks super weirdly colored.

 

[snc]

Callisto Protocol outside of great looking faces (and forbiden west has also very high quality, it amazing how good random npc are animated) was imo nothing special in terms of graphics (and if I remebmer correctly had even broken hdr, lol on so dark game)

 

[davis.anthony]

Vast majority of people do. This is one of the few places I've seen suggesting otherwise, because there's many here who seem to think that your game cannot look good if it doesn't have ray tracing.

The issue is the game has a lot of light leakage and the indoor sections can and do look bloody awful.

The lighting in general is pretty poor and the last generation roots are clear to see.

I'm personally not impressed by it's graphics as it looks like a PS4 game with foliage turned up to 11.

But to each their own.

 

[Davros]

My god your a hard man to please

 

[davis.anthony]

My god your a hard man to please

I'm sorry that I don't find this light leakage impressive....









I've not even gone out of my way to find these area's and they're not in some random part of the map you're not supposed to get too, they're on a direct path. but quality issues like this are every where.

This flying shot was captured with HDR on which is why looks overblown, but the pop-up when flying around is abysmal, just look at those trees, it's crazy how no one has ever mentioned this horrendous pop-up when flying.

I even watched PS5 videos on YouTube of people flying around to check that it wasn't a driver bug or something but no, the pop-up is just as bad on PS5 if not even worse on PS5.



The issue is the game has been hyped to hell for its visuals and my hype (and plenty others) has been equally as high to see it.

But it's nothing more than a jumped up PS4 game.

 

[Remij]

Every game has some unsightly areas. For the most part, H:FW looks phenomenal IMO. Yes, there's times where it's blaringly obvious that the lighting is not proper... but for me personally, I can overlook it. These are games.. not real life simulations. I can appreciate the absolutely stunning character models and texture work. The incredible looking cloud rendering. Some very beautiful looking environments and density.

It will definitely show it's age as lighting continues to improve in gaming, but man... I find it kind of depressing how hard it is to impress some people these days. I'm not hating or anything, but damn.. when I was a kid we used to have to use our imagination for everything.. and our minds easily filled in the gaps.. but now, nobody wants to fill in the gaps anymore and just criticize the shit out of everything.

 

[davis.anthony]

I find it kind of depressing how hard it is to impress some people these days. I'm not hating or anything, but damn.. when I was a kid we used to have to use our imagination for everything.. and our minds easily filled in the gaps.. but now, nobody wants to fill in the gaps anymore and just criticize the shit out of everything.

Alane Wake 2 with path tracing, CP2077 with path tracing and a smattering of other amazing looking games will do that.

And it's not that Forbidden West bad bad, it's just no where near the level I expected given the hype around it's visuals (And for a game that won best graphics at DF in 2022)

 

[Remij]

Alane Wake 2 with path tracing, CP2077 with path tracing and a smattering of other amazing looking games will do that.

And it's not that Forbidden West bad bad, it's just no where near the level I expected given the hype around it's visuals (And for a game that won best graphics at DF in 2022)

I agree with you. Like I've said before.. once people get used to RT and path traced lighting.. it's going to make older games look so wrong and age badly.

I just worry that in this pursuit of truly physically accurate lighting that we're going to lose the ability to appreciate anything which doesn't conform to the highest of standards.

For myself.. I would say ok, the bar has definitely been raised with games like Alan Wake 2 and CP2077.. and I would expect the next horizon game to feature much improved lighting.. and I would call out that game if it had similar issues as this one. I mean, let's just imagine what Guerrilla Games could do with proper RT/PT lighting. It's something to look forward to.

 

[Karamazov]

keep in mind that the game is still a PS4 game at its roots, came out in feb 2022, and that CP77 path tracing and AW2 are 2023 games/updates.

Without path tracing, CP77 looks worse than HFW, worse pop in (awfull sprite cars in the distance), worse character modeling, awfull water rendering.

 

[ZebMacahan]

Alane Wake 2 with path tracing, CP2077 with path tracing and a smattering of other amazing looking games will do that.

And it's not that Forbidden West bad bad, it's just no where near the level I expected given the hype around it's visuals (And for a game that won best graphics at DF in 2022)

Dont you need like a 2000 dollar graphics card to run those games with path tracing?