Uncharted 4: A Thief's End [PS4]

[AlNom]

Um, UC4's model is far more advanced than AC's

What does AC have to do with anything?

. It has some fancy muscle simulation going on which adds more realism,

That's nice.

it's rendering strands of beard, chest hair,

Ok?

hair gets wet and hanging down, wet shaders on the skin, normalmap blending and possibly silhouette tessellation. Yeah it's not even close.

To what and why exactly are we comparing?

It's not like we haven't seen wet shaders before or normal map blending.

I'm not sure where you're getting silhouette tessellation, but the shadows do look nice. I'm not sure there's a debate for that.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I don't really care about the technical bullet points under the game's hood. Arno Dorian doesn't look any worse than Drake. If anything I think he looks more convincing. He certainly looks a lot more convincing when climbing about the world (and so does Ms Croft), because the animation in U4 still makes Drake looks like he weighs about 10 pounds.

 

[Betanumerical]

Do we really think its fair to compare a pre alpha game to a finished polished game?.

 

[AlNom]

Are we not simply opining on what they are showing?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The guy is very impressed by the demo with the lighting, global illumination, physics, interactions with the environment, everything is top notch.

Somewhat misplaced over-enthusiasm IMO. As Al says, smoke looks 2D (tracks the camera). The GI isn't right either - there are points in the game where the lighting is visually wrong and the composition breaks. eg. when climbing up a sun-facing rock, there should be a lot of bounced light illuminating his front-side. Other observations seem exaggerated. The starting water looks very much UC2/3. You can see two static textures overlaid. The caustics on the water also look to me like a simple projected textured - it's has complete coverage everywhere on the rock so rocks behind the light source and facing away from it remain consistently lit. The destruction is also quite possibly canned as a few variations possible for each rock. It may be procedural, but I doubt all rocks are completely destroyable as the video suggests.

That's not to take anything away from ND or UC4 and what it'll likely be. Just that if we're going to do an analysis of the state of the game at the moment (a long ways from release), it should be accurate and not driven by rose-spectacled interpretations chucking in high-tech buzz-words and interpretations.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Do we really think its fair to compare a pre alpha game to a finished polished game?.

I'm told ACU is almost working by now so it's kinda starting to become fair...

(sorry couldn't resist )

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Laa-Yosh, do you also see a difference in character model quality between the recent UC4 gameplay (plus the cutscene at the end) and the reveal trailer?

I don't think there are any significant differences (some polish might have happened though).

The disparity has to do more with the rendering, lighting and shadowing during gameplay seems to be much more simple. Doesn't look like there's full proper self shadowing etc.

Photos from the BTS presentation seem to show the assets in even better lighting conditions. This matters a lot more than you guys seem to believe.

 

[AlNom]

I'm told ACU is almost working by now so it's kinda starting to become fair...

(sorry couldn't resist )

Ice-cold, man. Ice.

Photos from the BTS presentation seem to show the assets in even better lighting conditions. This matters a lot more than you guys seem to believe.

The "off-screen-hyper-contrasty effect"?

 

[Karamazov]

The model is the same as in the teaser. The major Downgrade is the halved framerate.

 

[szymku]

I watched the gameplay several times and like the graphics very, very much. J can't think of any other game (apart maybe from Order 1886 and to some extent Ryse) that offers this kind of quality.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Not just off screen effect, but for example using some real life HDR environmental probe image for the lighting and reflections, which makes it feel more real obviously, compared to the game's artificial and stylized environment.

 

[AlNom]

Not just off screen effect, but for example using some real life HDR environmental probe image for the lighting and reflections, which makes it feel more real obviously, compared to the game's artificial and stylized environment.

You think they're not using probes?

The only complaint I have about the lighting is the shiny mud (also highlighting how flat the ground is). (if anything)

(good thing they have all that fancy foliage )

 

[Billy Idol]

Thanks Laa-Yosh. I always think (with my untrained eyes) that faces in bright light are much more difficult to make right...could it also be that the reveal trailer with its darker light conditions also helped quite a lot to make it more impressive?

 

[Nesh]

Is Uncharted 4 the generational leap we were hoping for?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...ed-4-the-generational-leap-we-were-hoping-for

 

[AlNom]

The gameplay was very promising indeed. I really liked the stealth bits.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'd have no real problem if the game is not the most cutting edge, as long as it's fun to play. It's pretty much guaranteed that it will be a nice looking game, and well directed. To me, the question is whether they nail the gameplay. I thought Uncharted 2 was fantastic, but 3 started to feel a bit tired. I'm curious to see what they'll do to freshen things up, but maybe they'll take the "if it ain't broke" approach.

 

[Billy Idol]

I really am happy that the copy the sandbox type gameplay of TLoU now for the next UC4...makes also replay ability much higher and is for me a real plus for the Uncharted series.

I am also happy that they choose to show this particular section of the gameplay, as they could also show something like the UC2 reveal (fighting a Hind with collapsing everything) which was quite cool action and blew my mind and so on, but in the end was quite scripted action and plays nearly the same every single time.

If the would add also blood in UC4, the melee combat would be as brutal as the TLoU combat imo.

 

[AlNom]

I'd have no real problem if the game is not the most cutting edge, as long as it's fun to play. It's pretty much guaranteed that it will be a nice looking game, and well directed. To me, the question is whether they nail the gameplay. I thought Uncharted 2 was fantastic, but 3 started to feel a bit tired. I'm curious to see what they'll do to freshen things up, but maybe they'll take the "if it ain't broke" approach.

UC3 was a different team I thought? It certainly cannot be worse than 343i (because reasons) AHEM. UC2 was nice.

I'm just glad the gameplay was... as they presented. I'm very hopeful there.

 

[Scott_Arm]

UC3 was a different team I thought? It certainly cannot be worse than 343i (because reasons) AHEM. UC2 was nice.

I'm just glad the gameplay was... as they presented. I'm very hopeful there.

Never followed the development of Uncharted 3. I guess ND is big enough to have several teams. They must have been working on The Last Of Us at the same time.

 

[AlNom]

I think the primary team was on LoU.