*spin-off* God of War III Demo Impressions

[deepbrown]

Alright, let's get back to GOW3.

I think your comparison to Uncharted 2 is misleading. What GOW3 does great is showing a highly detailed character from afar...due to the camera always pulling in and out. In Uncharted 2 the camera is always close to the character...and Drake's model is more detailed up close. When looking at his character from afar (and zooming into it) the model will not look as detailed as it actually is up close (during the majority of the game).

However, SSM has retained the detail from afar, as this is needed for their camera system. Am I right in seeing SSAO in GOWIII as well?

 

[ultragpu]

I just love the way they combined high resolution textures, parallaxmappings, high quality HDR, the complex specularity and volumetric particle effects in order to output the look and feel of the game. The depth of field and AA really helped to maximize the painting feel in some places.

 

[deepbrown]

I really like the lighting when in the dark...tis tres funky having the orbs light up the space in either green, blue, or red...and the blades also lighting everything.

 

[ultragpu]

Nice use of the deferred renderer, all those orbs, torches are light sources. The engine is suppose to display hundreds of lights in the level as mentioned in the PR.

 

[Npl]

while having tons of lights is nice, what really puts me of are the inconsistent shadows. ie. they are always drawn from a single lightsource (sun or whatever), even if a local lightsource is far more intense. just looks stupid.
selfshadows also often are lacking.

I hope this will get reworked till the final game, but as it is now I would prefer blob-shadows to the current solution.

 

[SG79]

snip

SH Homecoming takes the cake. I think you can guess where this went from the title of the vids. Be warned:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8ppe95wmEU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryi-lsk4H0M

This was censored in Australia for a very good reason.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

This game is really looking better and better each day. First screen we saw where pretty depressing but now this looks amazing

 

[MazingerDUDE]

In Uncharted 2 the camera is always close to the character...and Drake's model is more detailed up close. When looking at his character from afar (and zooming into it) the model will not look as detailed as it actually is up close (during the majority of the game).

You'd rarely get to see the characters upclose in detail outside the cut scenes, since dof will obscure your vision.

 

[Iron Tiger]

I just love the way they combined high resolution textures, parallaxmappings, high quality HDR, the complex specularity and volumetric particle effects in order to output the look and feel of the game. The depth of field and AA really helped to maximize the painting feel in some places.

I don't see any parallax mapping, can you point it out?

I'm surprised to see evidence of alpha to coverage in a few of the screens, but that's a good thing, since I didn't notice it in the several playthroughs of the demo I spectated, or when I played it myself. I'd be okay with some screenshot doctoring to remove such artifacting if it's not going to be noticeable in motion.

 

[Kittonwy]

Alright, let's get back to GOW3.

What's most amazing about GOW3 is its almost bull shot like IQ. Definitely miles ahead of I've seen in console gaming.

I took few shots for comparison shake.


http://www.mazingerdude.com/KratossvsBatmanZOOM.jpg


* These shots are captured at same scale with 200% zoom


This one's Batman AA. The Batman features some of the most highly detailed characters in console gaming, but at moderate distance, it looks and is just like any other in game graphics filled with artifacts like aliasing and blurred texture.



http://www.mazingerdude.com/KratossvsNateZOOM.jpg


Now this is Uncharted 2, supposedly the highest polygon count in its character modeling with excellent texture details. Well Nate looks a lot better than Batman with help of AA, but it looks nothing extraordinary. It looks like an in game shot and it is an in game shot.



http://www.mazingerdude.com/Kratoss2.jpg


Even at further away, Kratoss retains all its bull shot like quality.




http://www.mazingerdude.com/KratossFAR.jpg


Now Kratoss is at some extreme distance, and he still looks bull shot.


Let's see some other examples, again from Batman AA


http://www.mazingerdude.com/BatmanFAR01.jpg

http://www.mazingerdude.com/BatmanFAR02.jpg


I'm impressed :smile:

Batman AA graphically is not a top-tier game by any stretch of the imagination to begin with, lots of enemies don't cast self-shadows in the GOW3 demo, and actually the Drake model looks better and better lit in that shot.

 

[Kittonwy]

while having tons of lights is nice, what really puts me of are the inconsistent shadows. ie. they are always drawn from a single lightsource (sun or whatever), even if a local lightsource is far more intense. just looks stupid.
selfshadows also often are lacking.

I hope this will get reworked till the final game, but as it is now I would prefer blob-shadows to the current solution.

Let's not go back to early last gen.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

This was censored in Australia for a very good reason.

Censorship is the root of all evil and there is never a good reason for it, if the censoship applies to everyone and not just kids etc. I hope God of War 3 survives from being censored unlike the PAL-version of the first game.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

Batman AA graphically is not a top-tier game by any stretch of the imagination to begin with, lots of enemies don't cast self-shadows in the GOW3 demo, and actually the Drake model looks better and better lit in that shot.

If Batman AA is graphically not on the top-tier, then what else is?

And this is just the IQ comparison, not graphics in general.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

God of War 3 is an interesting mix...

- What's with the dithering on that hairy animal, up close? Is that the alpha coverage stuff mentioned before?
- Lighting might be deferred, but ambient/GI component seems to be missing in some shots, resulting in lots of pitch black pixels.
- Shadows and lack of self shadowing have already been mentioned.

+ Poly counts
+ Scale
+ Nice source art

All in all it could still use some polish, seems like the team still isn't familiar enough with next-gen rendering techniques. Hopefully there's time enough to do that, the Kratos model itself has progressed considerably since its first version so they're definitely working on it.
But Uncharted 2 is still the better looking game IMHO.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

- What's with the dithering on that hairy animal, up close? Is that the alpha coverage stuff mentioned before?

The dithering artifact is probably due to logluv not being able to process alpha.

 

[Npl]

Let's not go back to early last gen.

I rather have no shadows than a game where they just dont match up/look odd (ie. the skin is lit correctly, unlit edges moving with lightsources but the creature shadow just stays unaffected).

IMHO the amount of effort and processing to get it right just aint worth it, games like U2 have a easier time than GOW with all its glowing weapons, explosions as such.

 

[Kittonwy]

I rather have no shadows than a game where they just dont match up/look odd (ie. the skin is lit correctly, unlit edges moving with lightsources but the creature shadow just stays unaffected).

IMHO the amount of effort and processing to get it right just aint worth it, games like U2 have a easier time than GOW with all its glowing weapons, explosions as such.

The lacking of proper shadowing/self-shadowing really kills the immersion when you have high quality character models and environments and fake light sources, they're better off having imperfect shadowing/self-shadowing than no shadowing at all, without self-shadowing the game simply does not look current gen, no game has gotten away with not having self-shadowing and look comparable to the visual gems this generation like Uncharted 2. Insomniac tried to do away with HDR and self-shadowing and even they are slowly trying to catch up.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I rather have no shadows than a game where they just dont match up/look odd (ie. the skin is lit correctly, unlit edges moving with lightsources but the creature shadow just stays unaffected).

IMHO the amount of effort and processing to get it right just aint worth it, games like U2 have a easier time than GOW with all its glowing weapons, explosions as such.

Have you played a game with no shadows?

I dont think you realize the implication of what you are saying. Having no shadows completely kills of any immersion whatsoever. Id much rather have some decent light\shadow model than none at all. Ive seen how games look without shadows, and tbh you might aswell play a PS1 game as you dont get any immersion from the graphics whatsoever.

A good light\shadowing model is really the holy grail of graphics. If you have good shadowing, the game becomes much more realistic, regardless of stuff like texture resolutions and what kind of pixel shaders you use.

GTA4 is a good example of this. The graphics aren't really particularly good, the texture res is low, and the shaders are not all that advanced, however, they have a light\shadow model that looks reasonably realistic and that drastically improves the perception of visual quality.

 

[2real4tv]

Just seen some scans...I think we are in-store for a visual treat.

 

[AlNom]

- What's with the dithering on that hairy animal, up close? Is that the alpha coverage stuff mentioned before?

The dithering artifact is probably due to logluv not being able to process alpha.

They're not using logluv.

It's alpha to coverage on the hair btw.

- Lighting might be deferred, but ambient/GI component seems to be missing in some shots, resulting in lots of pitch black pixels.

Artistic choice to emphasize Helios' head light (*cough*)