*spin-off* God of War III Demo Impressions

[ultragpu]

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

The stone pavement at the start of the demo, definitely have some kind of parralax effect.

I know I was also one of the individual who complained about the lack of self shadows on certain characters. Looking at games like Dante's Inferno which has the SS, makes me wonder why hasn't Santa Monica team implemented it yet. There's still hope though, seeing how Resistance 2 fixed that in the last minute. Also there are more shadow casting light sources than people are suggesting here, check out the hall way with all the torches, they cast shadows, the fire projectiles from the bow also cast shadows if you go back to see, as for the orbs I imagine them be some sort of self illuminating objects which don't cast shadows as seen in real life.

 

[Crossbar]

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

Played the demo last night, the image is butter smooth and the character model of Kratos when zoomed in, just wow. Hack´n slash isn´t really my bag, but I might buy this just because of the smooth epic scenery.

Given that the demo is from June, I think there may be quite a few improvements that will have been added at the time of release next spring.

 

[Kittonwy]

The centaur has self-shadowing but it doesn't seem like the skeletons or the cyclops has.

 

[phat]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't God of War's camera on rails? This immediately disqualifies it from being compared with Uncharted 1 or 2. A camera that only moves forward or backward on a fixed glide path is a huge simplification of the rendering problem. GOWIII should be mopping the floor with UC2 in terms of visuals, but it doesn't even look consistently as good.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't God of War's camera on rails? This immediately disqualifies it from being compared with Uncharted 1 or 2. A camera that only moves forward or backward on a fixed glide path is a huge simplification of the rendering problem. GOWIII should be mopping the floor with UC2 in terms of visuals, but it doesn't even look consistently as good.

two things

1. it's an early build

2. GOW3 runs at higher frame rate

Not to mention, it's got much higher IQ

 

[Crossbar]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't God of War's camera on rails? This immediately disqualifies it from being compared with Uncharted 1 or 2. A camera that only moves forward or backward on a fixed glide path is a huge simplification of the rendering problem. GOWIII should be mopping the floor with UC2 in terms of visuals, but it doesn't even look consistently as good.

Have you played both games? I personally think GOWIII is more visually pleasing, less aliasing etc.

 

[ultragpu]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't God of War's camera on rails? This immediately disqualifies it from being compared with Uncharted 1 or 2. A camera that only moves forward or backward on a fixed glide path is a huge simplification of the rendering problem. GOWIII should be mopping the floor with UC2 in terms of visuals, but it doesn't even look consistently as good.

Really fair to compare the whole game to a 20minutes demo which didn't even show the Titan boss fight, which I'm sure would look epic as hell. We should all hold horses before they release at least some new footage.

 

[deepbrown]

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

I disagree...since your picture is 200% zoomed in....you get to see Drake as close as your picture almost all the way through, but at 1:1. Whenever you take cover...you can see his facial expressions very closely.

The point is, GOWIII is about having the character look good far away and close. U2 is about the character looking good close up...because the camera is usually always over the shoulder.

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.

Heavenly Sword?

 

[assurdum]

I disagree...since your picture is 200% zoomed in....you get to see Drake as close as your picture almost all the way through, but at 1:1. Whenever you take cover...you can see his facial expressions very closely.

The point is, GOWIII is about having the character look good far away and close. U2 is about the character looking good close up...because the camera is usually always over the shoulder.



Heavenly Sword?

GOW 3 is impressive how as uncharted 2 imho even little more, thanks to smart use of AA and HDR. True, not have dynamic camera but again graphically it isn't second to any others and it's just a build.

 

[czekon]

hmmm is non-dynamic camera rly an issue? i dont think so, it solves many problems (ng2 ), and gfx should always be to produce best visuals by "cheating an eye", so non-dynamic camera is one of them. To bad i dont have ps3 im big fan of GoW .

 

[assurdum]

hmmm is non-dynamic camera rly an issue? i dont think so, it solves many problems (ng2 ), and gfx should always be to produce best visuals by "cheating an eye", so non-dynamic camera is one of them. To bad i dont have ps3 im big fan of GoW .

Well you have time until next march

 

[tha_con]

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.

To an enthusiast gamer, yes, shadowing can "break the immersion".

To everyone that matters to a publisher (you know, the masses of people that will buy the game)...no.

CoD4 didn't have fantastic shadows or lighting, and to this very day people think it is one of the best looking games ever created, even though there are a many games with better lighting, shadows, character models, and textures.

You're too concerned with bullet points instead of the total package.

God of War III doesn't need perfect shadows, etc, because it's got other things, like animation, enemy count, art style, and that oh so wonderful blood. Ratchet and Clank doesn't need perfect shadows or HDR, because it's art style, animation, frame rate, and "eye candy" are enough to create a pretty image.

Checking off bullet points does not a pretty game make.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

I disagree...since your picture is 200% zoomed in....you get to see Drake as close as your picture almost all the way through, but at 1:1. Whenever you take cover...you can see his facial expressions very closely.

This is where that 200% zoomed Drake came from, as you can see it's just as far as you'd see him taking cover.

This is as close as you could get without dof blur.

This one's at neutral camera, this probably is the distance you'd see Drake most the time.

 

[Kittonwy]

To an enthusiast gamer, yes, shadowing can "break the immersion".

To everyone that matters to a publisher (you know, the masses of people that will buy the game)...no.

CoD4 didn't have fantastic shadows or lighting, and to this very day people think it is one of the best looking games ever created, even though there are a many games with better lighting, shadows, character models, and textures.

You're too concerned with bullet points instead of the total package.

God of War III doesn't need perfect shadows, etc, because it's got other things, like animation, enemy count, art style, and that oh so wonderful blood. Ratchet and Clank doesn't need perfect shadows or HDR, because it's art style, animation, frame rate, and "eye candy" are enough to create a pretty image.

Checking off bullet points does not a pretty game make.

COD4 did have shadows and self-shadowing, and while technically it's not the best lighting out there, for the kind of atmosphere they were aiming for they had lighting that worked, and MW2 looks like IW is trying to bring it up a notch, I don't want to praise COD4 too much since I'm not even a COD4 or an IW fan.

It can be argued that Ratchet didn't have enough eye candy, it sure could have used better shadows and HDR, it would have made a HUGE difference in terms of making the lighting look way more convincing and lighting/shadowing has been the biggest thing that has kept the game from achieving that "pixar quality", given the game has so much water, realistic-looking water would have added alot to the overall look.

Yes, it's all about the overall package but the overall package is made up of individual features that work to bring the image together, it's not about "checking off bullet points" per se but then having that immersion is what separates a graphically top-tier game and everything else, people might not look specifically for those things but they do notice, otherwise developers wouldn't try to incorporate expensive features like HDR lighting, GI and more dynamic shadowing/self-shadowing if they don't make a difference in overall visuals, because it's not and has never been a technical exercise, lack of self-shadowing and HDR lighting makes a game looks flat.

 

[Kittonwy]

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.

Uncharted 2, Killzone 2 and Gears 2. Batman AA isn't even remotely in the same league. It's never just about image quality. Your images basically highlighted just how detailed the Drake model is and how convincing the lighting and shadowing is. Uncharted 2 has set a new bar in terms of graphics on the PS3, if God of War 3 wants to be top-tier, it has to at least reach that bar, right now it hasn't yet, not quite.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

Uncharted 2, Killzone 2 and Gears 2. Batman AA isn't even remotely in the same league. It's never just about image quality. Your images basically highlighted just how detailed the Drake model is and how convincing the lighting and shadowing is. Uncharted 2 has set a new bar in terms of graphics on the PS3, if God of War 3 wants to be top-tier, it has to at least reach that bar, right now it hasn't yet, not quite.

IMO, Batman AA is at least on par with Gears 2, and it's got more detailed in game character models than both Gears2 & KZ2 with more polys and higher res textures.

My images are to highlight the artifacts produced in game graphics like aliasing and blurred texture, and to show how GOW3 is displaying almost bullshot like IQ when compared to other best looking games.

I feel Uncharted 2's visual is more of jack of all trades, but master of none. It's got better than average of almost everything you could think of in graphics with some crazy action scenes, but that's about it. I think KZ2's visual is just more impressive with its very distinct atmospheric look and feel. So is GOW3 is with its uncanny IQ and paint like art direction.

 

[djskribbles]

From what I've seen, GoWIII definitely deserves to be mentioned among the greatest. IMHO, it looks better than KZ2. It's difficult to compare to Uncharted 2 as the art direction is completely different, but I'm very impressed with how GoW looks, and that's based on a (I'm assuming) older E3 build.
Batman has high quality in-game character models -- I'm just not a fan of it's art direction, but it's a good fit for a Batman game.

 

[Love_In_Rio]

IMO, Batman AA is at least on par with Gears 2, and it's got more detailed in game character models than both Gears2 & KZ2 with more polys and higher res textures.

My images are to highlight the artifacts produced in game graphics like aliasing and blurred texture, and to show how GOW3 is displaying almost bullshot like IQ when compared to other best looking games.

I feel Uncharted 2's visual is more of jack of all trades, but master of none. It's got better than average of almost everything you could think of in graphics with some crazy action scenes, but that's about it. I think KZ2's visual is just more impressive with its very distinct atmospheric look and feel. So is GOW3 is with its uncanny IQ and paint like art direction.

I don´t agree. Uncharted 2 is the best in every aspect except for lighting in which Killzone 2 is IMHO unsurpassed, but still in lighting is second. In fact the best engine for me is the Killzone in-engine realtime advertising ( bullet dance ? ), whose technical improvements applied on the new game plus SSAO will give easily KZ3 the crown again.

GOW 3 will be better than the demo by a mileage, as scans of a recent build show ( Game-pro i think ). We will see but as far as the demo i could say one thing for sure: is the game that gives me the nearest sensation of playing a CGI ( well, and the mountains town chapter in U2 also... ).

 

[Kittonwy]

IMO, Batman AA is at least on par with Gears 2, and it's got more detailed in game character models than both Gears2 & KZ2 with more polys and higher res textures.

Are you serious?

My images are to highlight the artifacts produced in game graphics like aliasing and blurred texture, and to show how GOW3 is displaying almost bullshot like IQ when compared to other best looking games.

GOW3 doesn't have as much of that because the lighting in the demo is either cast top down or towards the player, limiting the amount of self-shadowing on Kratos and the centaur as compared to Uncharted 2 which has a completely free camera, the self-shadowing on Kratos that one CAN see still has some degree of aliasing, and skeletons don't cast self-shadows. You can't have aliasing for shadows you don't have. God of War 3 doesn't look like it has a better implementation of self-shadowing, basically it's just getting around the problem both by limiting the use of it on the main characters by taking advantage of the fixed camera and not having self-shadowing for the majority of enemies because it could be possible that it can't support self-shadowing on the skeletons without further sacrificing the framerate, and having only one shadow-casting light.

I feel Uncharted 2's visual is more of jack of all trades, but master of none. It's got better than average of almost everything you could think of in graphics with some crazy action scenes, but that's about it. I think KZ2's visual is just more impressive with its very distinct atmospheric look and feel. So is GOW3 is with its uncanny IQ and paint like art direction.

But then you also feel that Batman AA is on par with Gears 2. Not sure how you came to the conclusion that Uncharted 2 is a master of none when basically it does things better than most if not all of the console games out there, KZ2 has the edge in terms of the number of possible light sources but Uncharted 2 has better and more realistic lighting quality (sky light as well as objects that give off light such as flames) due to HDR, and better shadowing quality than KZ2, and GOW3 doesn't even have self-shadowing for the majority of the enemies presented on screen and basically it's limiting the self-shadowing by the angle the light is being cast because the camera is fixed on a rail. It's not like the other two teams aren't sharing the Edge tools developed at Naughty Dog.

 

[SG79]

IMO, Batman AA is at least on par with Gears 2, and it's got more detailed in game character models than both Gears2 & KZ2 with more polys and higher res textures.

Agreed. I think some may have a bit of a mental block because AA's animations aren't quite on par with the others, but the modeling itself is superb.