Home General Discussion

Horizon: Zero Dawn

1
polycounter lvl 9
Offline / Send Message
Blond 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

  • rohMizuno
    open world games are starting to make me fell like trowing up.

    The art looks great tho!
  • ZacD
    Offline / Send Message
    ZacD ngon master
    Is it true there's no GI? (at about 5:00)

    The clouds and day/night cycle look amazing. 

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y8u7MvuArA
  • Anchang-Style
    Offline / Send Message
    Anchang-Style polycounter lvl 7
    It looks brilliant...eventhough, the characters look amazing but also crashed into the Uncanny Valley at the same time. And...i can't really tell why, but it's really irritating.
  • Obscura
    Offline / Send Message
    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    ZacD said:
    Is it true there's no GI? (at about 5:00)

    The clouds and day/night cycle look amazing. 

    Maybe its diffuse from the cubemap reflections?

    The clouds looks like ray marched volume textures.

    Like this:
    http://shaderbits.com/blog/creating-volumetric-ray-marcher
  • Spoon
    Offline / Send Message
    Spoon polycounter lvl 11
    Blond said:
    [...] way beyond The Witcher [...]
    Thats a bold statement!
    I'm going to buy this anyway, so im looking forward to seeing this :)
  • Eric Chadwick
    Watchdogs 2 uses ray marched volumes for its fog, and it is really amazing. Looks great far away and closeup, all angles really. Some slight stuttering as the edges draw on/off sometimes.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt_NWF_trjE
  • ZacD
    Offline / Send Message
    ZacD ngon master
    Watch dogs actually settles around mountains nicely, I didn't see it happening in Horizon, but maybe I didn't see the right clip. I'll have to see if I can get something like it working in UE4.  
  • Obscura
    Offline / Send Message
    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    It looks brilliant...eventhough, the characters look amazing but also crashed into the Uncanny Valley at the same time. And...i can't really tell why, but it's really irritating.
    Unfortunately I son't have a ps4, but I watched the all cutscenes video on youtube and I got to agree. The main characters are brilliant, but they fall in the uncanny valley, at least in some shots. Which for me is a really satisfying feeling. Its great to see that now even in game characters can be there.  The robots were also breathtaking but...We are kinda used to this by now in the hard surface topic hehe. They also had a few near photorealistic shots with the robots - towards the end of the game.

    The near future of real time rendering is very promising.
  • RyanB
    I imagine it will look fantastic on a big HD screen seen from your couch.  A solid framerate with no spikes is really impressive for such a great looking game.
  • notman
    Offline / Send Message
    notman polycounter lvl 18
    I wish I had upgraded to the PS4 Pro, but haven't been able to swing it yet. I've been loving the game, so far, and my wife loves watching it (she didn't want me to stop last night, when I had to get to bed, for work)
  • Obscura
    Offline / Send Message
    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    Do you know if we have some people from the team here? Should we expect an art dump kind of thing, or something? I do remember some tech papers, maybe even art breakdowns  from some episode of Killzone, but I'm not sure if that was here on polycount. I think it was the shadow fall episode, and I think I found it when I was researching how a pbr renderer should handle some stuff. Still , I could have found that over google. I'm not sure.
  • Obscura
    Offline / Send Message
    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    edited:
    nvm this was already linked....
  • Joopson
    Offline / Send Message
    Joopson quad damage
    Blond said:

    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.
    Nice hyperbole. It looks good, but I wouldn't say "The Prettiest open-world ever". Maybe the most technologically-demanding open world ever. Saying prettiest is definitely an opinion.

    At any rate, I do look forward to playing it.
  • leleuxart
    Offline / Send Message
    leleuxart polycounter lvl 10
    So far, the only tech paper/talk that I've seen is the one on their approach for volumetric clouds in the engine. Direct link This came out sometime last year around E3 I think.
  • Spoon
    Offline / Send Message
    Spoon polycounter lvl 11
    So I finally got time yesterday to put in a couple hours.
    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 :)
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
    Offline / Send Message
    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
    the name bugs me.... its like three words that dont relate to each other whatsoever

    its the nonsensical extreme of the TITLE COLON SUBTITLE meme
  • Obscura
    Offline / Send Message
    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    the name bugs me.... its like three words that dont relate to each other whatsoever

    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.

  • Spoon
    Offline / Send Message
    Spoon polycounter lvl 11
    And the sun is very low, to cast nice long shadows. Very Horizony!
  • notman
    Offline / Send Message
    notman polycounter lvl 18
    Spoon said:
    So I finally got time yesterday to put in a couple hours.
    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 :)
    The game starts off very slow (still in this stage myself), but it does change up a lot, later on, according to a friend of mine. Even when you go through the trials, the combat hints at changes (if you've gotten that far).

    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 :(
  • slipsius
    Just picked it up over lunch! Cant wait to sink my teeth into it tonight! 

    Also, found this beauty that I may or may not have ordered. awwww yaaa!

    http://www.projecttriforce.com/index.php?p=product&id=75 
  • notman
    Offline / Send Message
    notman polycounter lvl 18
    slipsius said:
    Just picked it up over lunch! Cant wait to sink my teeth into it tonight! 

    Also, found this beauty that I may or may not have ordered. awwww yaaa!

    http://www.projecttriforce.com/index.php?p=product&id=75 
    It's probably a good think I don't have $200 right now... because I wouldn't anymore
  • Blond
    Offline / Send Message
    Blond polycounter lvl 9
    the name bugs me.... its like three words that dont relate to each other whatsoever

    its the nonsensical extreme of the TITLE COLON SUBTITLE meme
    Thought the exact same but hey, there's worse out there..like Metal Gear Solid, 
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Okay, I'll take the bait. Metal Gear is the name of the fictional weapon program the story revolves around, and Solid marks the transition of the series from 2d to 3d. Boom !
  • slipsius
    (no spoilers, i dont think) ok, Great F'ing game!!!! Played it a bunch over the weekend. Did a lot of exploring, and side quests, so i didnt make it too far into the story just yet.  I just got the ability to mount robots. 

    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. 
  • Joopson
    Offline / Send Message
    Joopson quad damage
    I played it for around 4 hours, on Friday night, and just couldn't get into it. :'(

    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.
  • slipsius
    How far did you get into the story, Joopson? Did you make it past the proving? I found once i got there, it drew me in, because it started explaining the world / religion more. 

    That said, this type of game definitely isnt for everyone.
  • Joopson
    Offline / Send Message
    Joopson quad damage
    No, I actually didn't make it past the proving yet. So you think it's worth toughing it out until that?
  • Torch
    Offline / Send Message
    Torch interpolator
    Insta-buying this mofo:

  • Spoon
    Offline / Send Message
    Spoon polycounter lvl 11
    Joopson said:
    I played it for around 4 hours, on Friday night, and just couldn't get into it. :'(

    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.
    I felt a bit the same way.

    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 :)
  • almighty_gir
    Offline / Send Message
    almighty_gir ngon master
    My current biggest disliking is the crafting and collecting system...

    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.
  • notman
    Offline / Send Message
    notman polycounter lvl 18
    Joopson said:
    No, I actually didn't make it past the proving yet. So you think it's worth toughing it out until that?
    That's one criticism I have... it does take a bit to get started. They try to ease you in, while getting to the proving. After that, the story gets more interesting. The gameplay remains fairly easy, but then exponentially gets difficult, until you get your equipment ramped up.

    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.
  • slipsius
    Ya, if the story isn't interesting you yet, play till after the proving, when you're in a cave. That's when the story starts to show you what it really is, and what really peaked my interest. I laughed pretty hard, but in the best way possible. If you're just not into open world games, ya, don't bother. To each their own!

    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.
  • notman
    Offline / Send Message
    notman polycounter lvl 18
    I thought I read they did mocap on the faces, but I may be confusing with something else. I thought it might explain why some mouth movements match fairly well (for a video game), and other animations look like no effort was made to match the track. 

    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
  • slipsius
    It's possible they did mocap the faces. Would explain why the non-runtime cine's are pretty decent. They probably also mocapped a bunch of facial stuff, but then in their editting, and plugging it into their procedural system, quality was lost. That's my guess, at least.  

    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. 
  • slipsius
  • Blond
    Offline / Send Message
    Blond polycounter lvl 9
    slipsius said:


    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....
  • slipsius
    I personally hate dialog boxes in these types of games. The new Zelda has them, but my friend and i even commented on it the other day where we thought it was weird how some characters had voices, some just had text. I think it feels like they cheaped out. 
  • notman
    Offline / Send Message
    notman polycounter lvl 18
    the name bugs me.... its like three words that dont relate to each other whatsoever

    its the nonsensical extreme of the TITLE COLON SUBTITLE meme
    So I'm much further in the game now and, as I figured, the title begins to mean something. I won't spoil anything, but the name does make sense... not that I ever had an issue with it
  • Jakob Gavelli
    Offline / Send Message
    Jakob Gavelli interpolator
    I don't know if this is mentioned in the video. 
    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. 

  • Hito
    Offline / Send Message
    Hito interpolator
    I'm sure motion matching tech will make its way into facial animations and improve things by leaps and bounds.
  • Odow
    Offline / Send Message
    Odow polycounter lvl 8
    Just completed it, I fucking loved it.

    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.

    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?

    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.
    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.
  • notman
    Offline / Send Message
    notman polycounter lvl 18
    After roughly 50 hours, I've completed the game (and still completing some side stuff). It had a refreshing story, that wasn't the typical generic evil villain. Every time I thought I was reaching the end of the game, it threw in a new mission, but at no time was I distressed by the additions. 
    Well done to those involved in the game. It's my new standard
  • notman
    Offline / Send Message
    notman polycounter lvl 18
    Here are a couple screenshots... I love the photo mode btw








  • notman
    Offline / Send Message
    notman polycounter lvl 18
    This I just found funny, because of the expression, with the dialog


  • rohMizuno
    just gonna leave this here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0eaGRcdwpo

    no big secret shown, but fun to watch anyways.
  • kanga
    Offline / Send Message
    kanga quad damage
    The above vid doesnt appear to be available in Europe.
    Here is an alternate making of,....
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV7Fhm79FB8

  • almighty_gir
    Offline / Send Message
    almighty_gir ngon master
    kanga said:
    The above vid doesnt appear to be available in Europe.

    Which is hilarious because it's all in dutch, which is a very silly language :wink:

  • kanga
    Offline / Send Message
    kanga quad damage
    Which is hilarious because it's all in dutch, which is a very silly language :wink:

    No disagreement here!
  • Torch
    Offline / Send Message
    Torch interpolator
    Have been waiting for ages to play it, ordered last week but Amazon delivery got messed up, just got a copy now and playing it tonight. Haven't been that excited about a game since Shadow of Mordor, I'm sure it'll be awesome!
  • chrisradsby
    Offline / Send Message
    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    Anybody have a clue as to how their GI-works? Are they using any kind of GI system or just "manually" controlling the ambient in certain areas? I know it starts to look funky sometimes in the game.
1
Sign In or Register to comment.