This week we were able to see footage of what this generation of video games will bring us on the new consoles with the release of an Unreal Engine 5 demo running on live PlayStation 5 hardware. Before I dig into this topic I want to throw up a disclaimer that nothing I am about to say is meant to discount the hard work or how revolutionary this may be for game developers. It does in fact sound like it is going to reduce the work load significantly allowing them to directly use assets rather than trying to bake them down to usable assets in a game engine. However from a pure visual standpoint, this seems less like a generational leap and more like cranking the settings from High up to Ultra in a video game.
I am wondering if we have gotten to the point where graphics are good enough that any improvements just end up feeling marginal? We reached this point with pixel graphics during the jump from the 16 bit era to the 32 bit era with games like Castlevania Symphony of the Night, not really looking that much better than games you could have seen on the Super Nintendo. Sure you had a much wider palette and could therefore display a wider variety of colors on screen at once. However if you jump between playing SoTN and a game like Dracula X that released for the SNES there isn’t much of a noticeable difference.
We’ve been on this journey with 3D graphics that started out with something as primitive as this, and evolved rapidly over the course of a few generations. We’ve gotten used to each generation being instantly and noticeably better than the previous generation. I am starting off with the Nintendo 64, because while it technically released after the PlayStation it seems like the floor of 3D graphics that were available during this generation.
It may be a matter of preference but for me at least games like Vagrant Story showed the PlayStation 1 era to be cable of a superior experience. The Nintendo 64 games felt childish and block, whereas the PlayStation games were capable of conveying rich emotions. Now these could come entirely down to art direction and decisions made by the studios, but for me at least it felt like I was leaping forward a full generation when I moved from the 64 over to my Dual Shock Playstation.
When I moved up to the PlayStation 2 the leap was even more noticeable. The textures were smooth and gone was the blocky nature of the characters. Other than the 4:3 aspect ration of most PlayStation 2 era games, I still consider many of these to be completely playable. God of War was one of the better looking games on the system, and since I have some direct comparisons to games on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, I figured I would use this as a reference title.
To be honest, looking at these two screenshots, I would argue that this generational leap at least with this title wasn’t as big. Last of Us after all originally released on the PlayStation 3. However just between these two shots you can see higher fidelity of assets and better lighting. It is hard to tell it in a single image, but the main thing that came with the PlayStation 3 was bigger and more open worlds, whereas the PlayStation 2 mostly focused around more static scenes, you had a sense that you were roaming a living environment.
Now I realize this is a completely different type of game to the previous God of War titles, but it no less highlights something important. For me the leap forward that happened between the Xbox 360/PS3 era to the Xbox One/PS4 era was significant. This was the first time we were capable of playing in what felt to be photo realistic worlds, and the games were completely capable of carrying off that illusion. For years PC games had effectively stagnated due being tied to the 360 and PS3, but this is also the generation that 4K became a major player in gaming and with it a higher level of fidelity than we had experienced before. This generation felt like it was the biggest leap to date, for me personally.
There is no denying that the Unreal Engine Demo footage looks good, but when you compare it directly to an image coming from a game of this generation, I see higher fidelity but not enough to make it clear that we are making a generational jump.
If you compare the above image to a screenshot from Jedi Fallen Order, I am not sure if I could tell they were effectively running on different generations of hardware. I think the challenge there is that we had a half generational jump in the middle of this generation. Notice that this image is from an Xbox One X which is capable of 4K gaming, whereas the base model is still stuck in the 1080p era. I think this generation is going to feel like another incremental bump forward, and not necessarily the radical shift that I was hoping for.
Granted I am cherry picking examples of some of the best looking games from the current generation to use as contrasting evidence, and they are being placed up against a demo reel. However I do feel like it is an important question to ask ourselves as we go into this next generation. If you are already running an Xbox One X or a PlayStation 4 Pro… is this leap worth the $500 to $600 price tag that is going to come with it? For me it likely is because at least on the console front I never took the half leap and am running an original Xbox One and PlayStation 4. So yeah it probably will be a sizeable upgrade, but for those rocking a 4K capable console or PC right now, I am questioning if this is a big enough bump to make it feel worth it?
All of this said… it could just be that I am getting older and that my eyes are not capable of picking out the same level of visual fidelity that they once were. However if I went into this scenario and you threw screenshots of all of these 4k games in with the Unreal Engine footage, I am not sure if I could immediately tell the difference. Granted all of this is ultimately moot because I am mostly a PC gamer, and maybe it is just that I am used to the fidelity of games that can be produced on that platform already with significantly higher performing hardware than the consoles will likely ever have. Ultimately this has left me with a feeling that the games look great, but that ultimately I expected more in some way that I can’t quite quantify. I feel like we have maybe reached the limits to what is visually possible, and everything moving forward is going to be a battle of margins and not the big leaps forward I experienced throughout my gaming career.
As far as I’m concerned 3d graphics started to plateau noticeably with the PS3/ 360 era. Those consoles were capable of maxing out a 1080p display, and initial games on the PS4 tended to look exactly the same only with slightly more detailed dirt. Later games in the PS4 generation were really astounding, but even there the difference is nowhere near the jump from PS1 to PS2 or the jump from PS2 to PS3. Many old PS3 games still look pretty damn good to my tastes, though not as good on a 4k TV as they did at native 1080p on my last TV.
I experienced 2d graphics going from Atari to Colecovision to Nintendo to S-nintendo and beyond. 2d graphics also plateaued at some point. 2d games on the Switch look great, but the difference between that an some games that are 20+ years old is mainly one of resolution. I would say that the PS1 was probably the inflection point past which further improvements started to be extremely subtle (though it’s a bit hard to say since it was designed for CRT TVs).
I am not impressed on the gamer’s side of things for literally the same reasons as you. I like pretty games — Jedi Fallen Order and Final Fantasy VII Remake are gorgeous on my non-Pro PS4 — but there’s not a machine or screen in my house capable of 4k+ resolution.
And I am okay with that. Because honestly, there hasn’t been a single time where I have seen a 4k experience that’s wowed me enough to pay the price for a purposeful upgrade. I might get a 4k TV near Black Friday this year if there are any deals going that are worth it because of the XBX or PS5, but in terms of it being something that is a make-or-break feature, it’s just a moot point.
From a dev standpoint, the way that UE5 works is amazing and should free up some dev time to really dig in on storytelling and immersion. And that’s what I think is important. When they don’t have to concentrate on splitting up the assets and spending the person-hours on that, there’s more likely to be innovation in other areas.
I tend to prefer stylized games anyway, and I like the Breath of the Wild-style graphics over the God of War kind, honestly. On a similar note, I am terribly disappointed that Sony has gone out and stated they won’t have a handheld Vita-type machine to compete with the Switch. That is what I was wanting out of the new generation. Being tied to a TV or monitor is generally not how I want to game these days (admittedly, the Switch Lite screen has made my old-man eyes go through the ringer a few times). That also may be because we only have 1 TV in our house, too.
I agree with you. I think we are at a point where there won’t be much of a leap in graphics fidelity, at least not in traditional games (VR might be a different matter and I don’t have it to even begin discussing) and definitely not any time soon.
But I think this technology might give us environments that feel more real or at least more interesting. Also, assuming that it makes the life of artists better maybe the extra time may be spent on refining said game’s art or allowing them to make more interesting pieces they couldn’t before.
So, yeah, definitely don’t feel like an automagical leap but rather an incremental one that we’ll depend largely on how the developers use it.
I will respectfully disagree, or at least will offer a counter opinion. I’m wary of disagreeing with anyone because last time I did people started sending group hug gifs as if disagreeing on a bit of media equated to not liking the other person or being angry. But I digress (as per usual).
First. let’s point out to your other readers that the screenshots you’ve shared here of the demo are compressed by WordPress or taken from a low resolution feed. Here’s a link to a better (tho still not 4K) version, not meaning to promote this site; it just came up near the top of my google search:
http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/05/ps5_unreal_engine_5_gameplay_demo_finally_shows_us_what_next-gen_games_look_like#enlarge-1
Now I will agree with you that the character model looks fine but not amazing. Likewise things like bugs and bats. Even the water just looked good. But look at the ground near the character’s feet in that shot; it really could be a photo. The demo in general, to me, really showed off next gen-terrain and lighting (and to some extent the latter doesn’t come across as well in a static screenshot). I’m hoping the character models can be improved in final versions, though.
Look at the bush next to boy in the God of War PS4 shot you posted, or the one over Kratos shoulder. Those don’t look like real bushes. But the grass at the feed of the character in the PS5 demo looks real. Now… that demo is all rocks and very little plant life, so maybe the demo was designed that way to highlight the things the engine does best.
Details like plants and bushes you don’t “see” consciously while playing but I think your brain sees them and they help fool it into thinking a place is real.
As a primarily console gamer (and maybe one who tends to be a real tourist in games, roaming around gawking at the world), this demo made me excited for the PS5 in a way I hadn’t been before.
I will bow to your expertise when it comes to the fact that high-end PCs can already run things that look this good (in general game consoles seem to launch with graphics that equal those of a high-end, but not top-end, PC of the time they launch), but the demo looked better than anything I’ve seen on the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro.
Yeah I don’t think it is a right or wrong type of discussion at all. To be extra fair, my images are stills pulled from YouTube being run through VLC player because I can screenshot easily. So there is a lot of artifacting going on. However even in the case of that bush you point out… that is the sort of thing you see on a PC when you are running something at High preset or Ultra preset. I guess what I mean is visually all of this is impressive, but it feels like an incremental step forward rather than a leap I guess? It seems like the difference between running a game with stock textures or running a game with remastered textures that you installed from a mod website.
Now in motion… watching the lighting impact the scene in real time is plenty impressive, and it is unfair to judge this by a simple demo reel. The truth will be in what sorts of experiences we see as a result of this and the new types of worlds we can explore. I just wasn’t blown away, not in the way that I was watching the first demo footage of the PlayStation 4 for example, or when I first saw footage of the PlayStation 2 after being used to the PS1. I think we have reached this point were generations aren’t as big of a deal as they once were. That we are talking minutae rather than big jumps forward.
You know what might be really illuminating? Is when we get to see Horizon Zero Dawn running on a beefy PC. I think that’s in June, the PC release of it. That might cinch your argument and send me off with my hat in my hand.
Not that I have a “beefy pc” necessarily, but I do plan on picking it up day one and playing it again at 4k PC resolutions. I will try and figure out a way to post some uncompressed screenshots. For that matter I would be really surprised if it doesn’t support Ansel.