Horizon: Zero Dawn
polycounter lvl 9
Haven't seen anything here regarding this gem. Reviews are coming out and apparently, it's fun to play. Though, let's focus on the visuals here for a bit.
We're talking about the prettiest open-world ever coming to consoles yet, way beyond The Witcher and Final Fantasy XV which were the big contenders on this generation.
Replies
The art looks great tho!
The clouds and day/night cycle look amazing.
The clouds looks like ray marched volume textures.
Like this:
http://shaderbits.com/blog/creating-volumetric-ray-marcher
I'm going to buy this anyway, so im looking forward to seeing this
The near future of real time rendering is very promising.
nvm this was already linked....
At any rate, I do look forward to playing it.
I must admit I am really positively surprised.
Looks beautiful, great lead character, and nice story telling so far.
The only thing im a little afraid of, is that I can keep the rest of the game standing in a bush.
Whistle
Sneak attack.
Whistle
Sneak attack
Whistle...
Hopefully it becomes more strategic\harder later - im still just in the beginning
its the nonsensical extreme of the TITLE COLON SUBTITLE meme
Zero Dawn isn't so random. Later in the game it will make more sense.
I'm really loving the game, and will clearly soak a bunch of time into the game. My only issue is, my wife doesn't want me to play it, unless she is home to watch it. I did not get a chance to play, last night, because she had to do some shopping
Also, found this beauty that I may or may not have ordered. awwww yaaa!
http://www.projecttriforce.com/index.php?p=product&id=75
Great game though. The combat feels fantastic. Im playing on the hardest dificulty, so it's challenging without being too unforgiving. Im dying, but I never feel like I cant do it if i keep trying.
GORGEOUS game. The robots are so pretty! Their animations. Their type of attacks. Being able to ride some of them. So so fun!
It's not without it's issues. The voice acting is either really good or really bad. Doesnt seem to be an inbetween. And the run-time cinematics are just... bad. The facial animation... Oi. There was that leaked video that showed how bad they were. Everyone was hoping they wouldnt all be like that, but honestly, a LOT of them are. There are SOME decent conversations, but for the most part, it's pretty bad.
Luckily, the writing is strong, so Im able to ignore that part of it. The story is great. I was so confused at first, not sure why everything is how it is. But as you progress, it starts explaining things, and it's actually really well done. I dont want to say much about it though. Dont want to ruin any surprises.
And the rest of the game, the actual meat and potatoes of it... It's just a stellar game! Right now I`d give it probably a 9/10.
To me, it felt like The Witcher 3. Beautifully crafted, but, for my taste, completely uninspiring. I shut it off, and I'm honestly not sure I'll play it again.
Which is a bummer, since so many people are saying how much they love it. I wish I felt the same way.
That said, this type of game definitely isnt for everyone.
But it was beautiful enough that I kept playing it. Now, im just after the proving as well, and stuff seems to break away from what i thought it would be - so thats great
Everything is so abundant in the world that crafting becomes a nuisance, why am i spending time crafting AN ENDLESS SUPPLY OF ARROWS?! even the more specialized arrows seem to be abundant enough, why bother with having resource management at all if there's just so much of everything?
It would have been nice if along with combat difficulty, there were a setting for the level of survival you want in the world... how much more carefully you need to manage resources and craft things.
Also, i kinda feel like having the Focus system, AND a skyrim style compass header at the top of the screen, AND signposts on rocks all over the place is just overkill, again it would be very nice to be able to turn off everything and rely solely on the focus. I think that would have made for a much more interesting gameplay mechanic.
And to Slipsius' point, some of the facial animation almost gets painful. I think the motion capture wasn't translated properly, from the voice actor, to the model. I was pained, while having a conversation last night, where the character's mouth barely moved. Then it cuts to Aloy, who is fairly spot on.
Another odd thing I've noticed, during the conversations, is how it has sudden jumps, when it goes to a close up. Definitely something that could be smoothed out.
Those are my only real criticisms though. I'm loving the game. I definitely felt rewarded, when I first successfully defeated on the larger beasts. This game will probably have all of my focus, until I complete the story.
Gir, ya, that's been a crit of mine as well. Resource management seems a bit off. I have so much of everything. I've heard towards the end you start running out much quicker, but Ive been picking up damn near everything.
I don't think it's a mocap problem so much as it is a procedural problem. The faces seem to be all procedurally done, but their tech just isn't there yet. Clearly the time was spent elsewhere. But those sudden close ups are jarring for sure. I`m still trying to figure out what feels off about them, given that those types of jumps happen all the time in film. Not sure if it's a FOV thing or what.
Honestly, I'm not usually into open world games too much... that's why I skipped on the Witcher. The visuals, and the dino-bot concept really drew me in. It's an amazing feeling, when you hear the ground rumbling, and you turn to see a tall neck walking by
But ya, it's most noticeable when someone smiles while they are talking. You get that really creepy smile that happens when you have a procedural lip sync, with procedural happiness applied over top. like, it applies a smile over top of what is already there, which causes the corners of the mouth to extend further than they should. I could be wrong a bout this though. I havent actually seen anything on how they did their facial stuff. But it's something ive experienced before.
http://gearnuke.com/horizon-zero-dawn-conversations-generated-cdpr-bioware/
To be honest, if they want to make budget cuts in cutscenes, the proper way to do it would be like in the old PS2 JRPG. Works astonishingly well for RPG with lots of quest.
Basically, they divide the game cinmetaics into 2 types of cutscenes: dialog boxes with text and recycled animated motions (like waving,turning around,etc) and fully animated cutscenes.
I think this is still amongst the best way to divide the game into major cutscenes and minor events...I'm really wondering why no game developper wants to bring back dialog boxes for minor babbling cutscnes...it could save them so much money, the user can quickly get trought text and you don't have to endure bad voice acting/proceudral creepy animation....
But a neat trick they seem to have used on their grass is a merged solution between pro's of Mesh vs Billboard, which I haven't seen before. (Has nothing to do with billboards just found it fun) Or rather a solution to one of the visual downsides of having simple grass planes.
If you look at grass planes straight from above you usually see the planes very clearly and the illusion of grass breaks. So what I think they did, using vertex color or a gradient, is to offset the top vertices of the grass planes in the cameras relative up-vector!
So the grass looks more lush even if you look at it from a funny angle. You're much less likely to see the edges of the planes. If you keep your camera looking straight down on the grass and spin the camera you can see this. Not much unlike the effect you get when doing the same to billboards.
I might be totally out of my depth here. But more common solutions to the "If you look from above the grass looks like shit"-problem is to add a bunch of geometry and bend the grass slighty with geometry. This way a shader handles it and their grass planes can be simple 2 tri planes.
Everything was explained, brillant methods were used to cut budget while still explaining a shitload about the world and the people living in it ( mostly all the scan data, the logs, the bookbs etc) Really love the small dialogue cutscene, it feel lively even with recycled stuff, if you wanted to know you could talk to people if you didn't care, you could skip and go on with the quest and everything stay natural in the speech.
One thing i REALLY loved and not much people would realize is how the game keep on living without you. Every action you take in the game change the dialogue of the people around you, they talk about what happen, who you are, what you did,etc Sometime if you waited before talking to an npc you got extra story, same if you stick near them AFTER the quest, they keep on talking and adding more life to the events.
Not to mention it was beautiful, can't wait for the embargo to be off so we can see artstation being submerge with horizon stuff.
I really wish they make a movie. Specially about the "before the game start". (trying not to spoil here)
Good job to eveyone at guerilla.
You're kind complaining about your own way of playing a game here.
Maybe you spend too much time grinding, I did the 100% completion and it was never constant, sometime i had a shitload of component on me, sometime i was crying because i need wire for my beloved arrow, or wandering wtf i did with my metal shard. It's really just a question of how you play the game, ofc if you kill everything you meet and gather everything on your path you're always going to be full. It's a bit like complening of your speed ticket but you keep driving fast. You played the way that would make your inventor be always full, that's all.
Signpost on the rock didn't tell you much, you have map.. same as the compass, it's just like a minimap. You could have ignore everything you know ? just don't watch the compass all the time and don't read the map ? Imo it didn'T change the gameplay mecanic at all, it's a freaking map.. also you had an option to hide all the locators thingy.
Well done to those involved in the game. It's my new standard
no big secret shown, but fun to watch anyways.
Here is an alternate making of,....