Uncharted 2 - best looking environments, ever?

adam · Nov 2009

Sorry to bring up a game that's been out for a while, but with UC going on I haven't played any games as of late. I went to Jay Evans' place last night to do some gaming and he popped in Uncharted 2 for me.

Ho. Ly. FUCK.

Those environments? I think they're the best I've _ever_seen. They are the most overally complete, polished, executed and designed environments I've witnessed in a game before.

I had to sit and view the worlds to purposely find flaws, just to redeem myself in thinking they were perfect.

I only got to play it for an hour or so, to which Jay kept saying I haven't even seen the best.

Does anyone have technical information for their technology used? I want to know what sort of passes they're doing, engine name, tools used, etc. Who's got the skinny?

Drool.

Ark · Nov 2009

STALKER wins this for me. Their art isnt that spectacular, but as a whole, combined with its great atmosphere.

Uncharted does look great though.

About there engine, i believe its a deferred renderer with SSAO.

http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/games/u/uncharted-2/nd-entire-uncharted-source-code-available-sony-s-first-parties-$1308158.htm

Peris · Nov 2009

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=66952

It's a very nice looking game! Some of the best stuff I've seen

. I actually bought a ps3 to play this

. The only thing I don't like too much is their SSAO, looks good sometimes and superweird in other situations. I don't think we'll see good SSAO on current generation of consoles anyway. For the rest yeah deferred renderer with a combination of realtime lighting and baked lighting here and there, most stuff constructed out of modular pieces, and they use clever texture blending on almost all the larger environment pieces.

Firebert · Nov 2009

check out the bonuses on the game as well that you can purchase with the money you earn from trophies through the game (so many shots with X weapon, ninja takedowns, treasures collected, etc.)... there's a couple of technical bonus flicks in there that give ton of info on the engine, specs, etc.

bounchfx · Nov 2009

took long enough, adam. lol. tried to say this in the other thead..

they're fucking fantastic. the ssao does help a lot, but it looks crazy regardless.

Joao Sapiro · Nov 2009

i actually disagre, but again i havent seen the game in motion, so my opinion is biased, the thing is that to me uncharted 2 has waaay busy environments , i have headaches just looking at the screenshots, also it seems very familiar with mgs4 enviros hence i might not be as surprised haha.

I personally think left 4 dead 1 enviros are dead on about story telling and polished gameplay .

Needless to say i need to play uncharted2 even people that never played games say its awesome.

MoP · Nov 2009

Nah I've watched a few people play it and Uncharted 2 looks great.
One of the nicer things about it is they don't seem to be using too much super-high-end ground-breaking tech - they just seem to be using a few clever little technical things very well, and doing a lot of quality art work.

Jonas Ronnegard · Nov 2009

yeah i really think you need to play it ^^;

Rox · Nov 2009

Haven't played it. Looking at it, and hearing people talk about it, makes me want to buy a PS3. It's one of the first and very few games that actually made me think it'd be worth buying the console for.

The graphics aren't that busy. It's sort of like Gears of War. I thought that looked kinda bad, until I actually played it. Uncharted 2 looks kinda like... Gears of War, in color, on crack. It's incredibly beautiful, and creative too. Things like the train part, where you're not just running around on a train that follows a straight rail (like we've seen in dozens of games before), but the terrain keeps changing and you go past all kinds of interesting environments WHILE fighting on the train. It just looks brilliant. Very convincing snow stages, too. Snow seems to be hard to get right in games.

adam · Nov 2009

Johny wrote: »

i actually disagre, but again i havent seen the game in motion, so my opinion is biased, the thing is that to me uncharted 2 has waaay busy environments , i have headaches just looking at the screenshots, also it seems very familiar with mgs4 enviros hence i might not be as surprised haha.

I personally think left 4 dead 1 enviros are dead on about story telling and polished gameplay .

Needless to say i need to play uncharted2 even people that never played games say its awesome.

IMO Uncharted 2 is leaps & bounds greater at story telling in its environments than L4D - and I'm a HUGE fan of L4D.

You _need_ to see the game in motion. I was 'yea it looks good' before I saw it lastnight. Now I'm in shock at what they've done.

Joao Sapiro · Nov 2009

yeah , now i really want to check it out . Luckily i have a friend who has a PS3 so i might check with him soon

cholden · Nov 2009

Yea, originally I thought it looked pretty cool, then I saw that "first five minutes of" video Uncharted 2, and like FUUU... I need a PS3. Game looks amazing.

danshewan · Nov 2009

Johny wrote: »

I personally think left 4 dead 1 enviros are dead on about story telling and polished gameplay.

I haven't seen any of Uncharted 2, because I don't have (nor can I afford) a PS3, so I'm still in a self-imposed media blackout. If I see it, I'll want it even more than I do already. I agree about L4D's storytelling through the environment art, though - the scrawled messages in the safe houses in particular were excellent.

PS3 exclusives make me cry.

odium · Nov 2009

Left 4 Dead 3 would be amazing if they A) Made it like the first game 2) Ditched the team that made the second and D) actually bothered to update the bsp limitations so it doesnt look like Quake 2

Don't get me wrong, Left 4 Dead is a stunning game, but damn, the maps in some places are so old school...

Joshua Stubbles · Nov 2009

I think some of the environments are way better than others. The snowy mountains, the jungles and the catacombs really really shined for me. But the city wasn't nearly as impressive to me. Not sure why, just didn't do it. Overall though in conjunction with the lighting, no doubt one of the best looking games I've seen in a long time.

HonkyPunch · Nov 2009

Artistically, no, in my opinion, but from a realism and a technology standpoint?
Maybe.

TheSplash · Nov 2009

I thought the environments had good art direction and they did good job making them seem organic and natural, nice use of fog and colour grading too.
But there was a lot that could be improved, iirc there was alot of faceted meshes and the lighting was very flat in areas ( I blame the limitations of shadow mapping). Also there wasnt much variation in materials, mostly just diffuse and no normals or spec.

adam · Nov 2009

Jimmies_the_squirrel wrote: »

Artistically, no, in my opinion, but from a realism and a technology standpoint?
Maybe.

What then answers YES to those, in your eyes?

rasmus · Nov 2009

I agree that from what I've seen the city-parts are the least interesting, and the most overly "busy"in terms of colors and noise and that alpha-test razor sharpness that sometimes wants to take your eyes out. But then again I'm biased towards the less "urban warfare-y" parts of the game, and holy shit indeed that is some well-crafted stuff with fantastic lighting.

vargatom · Nov 2009

MoP wrote: »

One of the nicer things about it is they don't seem to be using too much super-high-end ground-breaking tech - they just seem to be using a few clever little technical things very well, and doing a lot of quality art work.

Actually, their tech is quite strong... The shadows are almost flawless and it seems to take some black magic to get it right in a realtime engine.

And the fact that the player, the AI, and physics can all properly interact on top of moving objects like the train or collapsing buildings is quite amazing too. It's not some trickery or scripting, the engine can actually do this, which is a first time ever.

All the artwork is super awesome in the game, too...

spahr · Nov 2009

I love the look and feel of the game. Its one thing to just see screen shots and critique, its another to put your guard down and let the game take you for a ride, and soak in the graphics they way the studio intends. Best looking game of all time in my opinion, based on how well the studio brings everything together. The settings never get stale, and it seems like they work weeks on scenes that only get 10 seconds of air time. When they continue to raise the bar in their own game, every other chapter, you know you have one of the best games of the year.

All that being said, online play isnt my cup of tea, and bring on MW2!

adam · Nov 2009

odium wrote: »

Left 4 Dead 3 would be amazing if they A) Made it like the first game 2) Ditched the team that made the second and D) actually bothered to update the bsp limitations so it doesnt look like Quake 2

Don't get me wrong, Left 4 Dead is a stunning game, but damn, the maps in some places are so old school...

What's up with the L4D 2 hate based on a.) screnshots and b.) a demo?

odium · Nov 2009

From the demo only, I just... I just don't like it. Its a step backwards for me. The new survivors are REALLY stupid and annoying, I just can't like them. The changes they made from the first game, from both a design and implementation point of view, are not as good. It all feels like thye just put stuff in "because they could". To me, Left 4 Dead was like a classic horror film, and L4D2 more like one of those horror films that mocks itself at the same time... Its all just a little bit too "inbred" for me.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, its not that its an awful game... Its just that you can tell its a different set of people who did this one compared to the original. The character models are damn good though

But holy shit, could those view weapons be any bigger/out of place on the screen

warby · Nov 2009

Uncharted 2 - best looking environments, ever?

warby: id say so !

or at least best looking environments SO FAR ...

Pankake · Nov 2009

What's up with the L4D 2 hate based on a.) screnshots and b.) a demo?

Isn't their sole reason for existance; to be judged by the end user?!

danshewan · Nov 2009

cholden wrote: »

Yea, originally I thought it looked pretty cool, then I saw that "first five minutes of" video Uncharted 2, and like FUUU... I need a PS3. Game looks amazing.

Well, I finally caved and checked out that video in HD on YouTube, and I guess I'll have to catch it in person somewhere, because it didn't look as awesome as everyone's saying. Maybe the quality of the video was partly responsible, I don't know.

Granted, it was obviously good work, and the actual action / set up of the first act was pretty cool with the train dangling off the cliff, but I'll have to see some of the later environments (like Nepal, apparently?) in some better-quality video to really appreciate it, I think.

Peris · Nov 2009

I just got to the shambala part. It's the god of war 2 of this console generation really.

dolemite · Nov 2009

I agree that these are simply the best environments I've experienced in a game. And another thing about the environments is how tightly the game play revolves around them. In every scene I feel like I'm really getting to crawl all over every wall and surface. Remember the puzzle with the gigantic dagger hanging in the air? By the end of that puzzle you have climbed over the dagger, moved the mirrors around, and then you go down down through the mouth of the statue on the ground. It was so exciting to just move around in that game.

I loved how some of the puzzles you have to climb on are so old that they fall and crumble apart as soon as they activate. Things like that put u2 beyond Indiana Jones imo.

One gripe: I wish the path was a little more open. It took a little of the fun out of it when finding a path consists of hunting for the series of hand grips conveniently jutting out in a ladder pattern.

Joshua Stubbles · Nov 2009

danshewan wrote: »

(like Nepal, apparently?)

The city of Nepal was really not that impressive, imo. The jungle was hands down the best foliage-laden level I've ever seen, though.

PixelMasher · Nov 2009

for me, the nepal village when you are walking through it was some of the most beautiful art in the game, just looked fantastic with the lighting. the jungle train part was pretty dope too.

Joshua Stubbles · Nov 2009

PixelMasher wrote: »

for me, the nepal village when you are walking through it was some of the most beautiful art in the game, just looked fantastic with the lighting. the jungle train part was pretty dope too.

The village was nice, yeah. Maybe it's not Nepal I'm thinking of. Whatever the big city level was... I dunno. It was nice, but not amazing.

danshewan · Nov 2009

Well, since I haven't seen any of it I can say for certain, but people keep going on about the rooftops level, which I thought was Nepal. I could be way off, though.

Even so, seems like the guys at ND did a great job. Hopefully I can drop enough hints to the wife between now and Christmas to make sure that Santa better be bringing a PS3 and a copy of Uncharted 2 with his fat ass this year.

If he doesn't, then it's a protein shake and a rice cake instead of his usual gin & tonic and a pepperoni pizza. Hell, he could stand to lose a few anyway. He must have a lifetime's supply of Coca Cola....

Uncharted 2 - best looking environments, ever?

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