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Digital Foundry Forspoken analysis; hint: it sucks

Gaiff

Member


  • Ray traced Ambient Occlusion is broken on PC and PS5. Only randomly works during certain cutscenes
  • Shadow quality overall is poor with most using shadow maps. Even with RT shadows, only a small portion of shadows are ray traced
  • Some of the most lackluster RT out there
  • RT shadows have a 20% impact on performance for little visual payoff
  • Large impact on VRAM, 500MB for each RT effect
  • Does not recommend turning on RT for mid-range hardware or lower
  • FSR has multiple issues with ghosting, transparency effects dithering, and disocclusion during movement
  • DLSS is overall better but still has issues where shiny surfaces sparkle during movement with motion blur on
  • XeSS has a big problem when DOF is enabled, it flickers massively
  • TAA exhibits ghosting problems as well
  • Every image reconstruction is poor overall but DLSS is still superior to FSR
  • DRS causes more problems than it solves, introduces massive frame time variances to the point of being unplayable
  • VRS doesn't appear to be working at all. There is no visual or performance difference
  • DirectStorage is one of the few bright spots, with a capable CPU (12900K) and 3.5GB/s nvme, the PC version can load slightly faster than a PS5
  • More modest CPUs such as the 3600 are still slower than the PS5 with a 3.5GB/s nvme but still much faster with DirectStorage
  • Does not appear to use GPU decompression
  • Textures management is peculiar. 8GB GPUs or less will always load poor quality textures no matter what happens
  • Does not recommend even playing this game on 8GB GPUs because the textures look like they're from the late 90s
  • Does not matter what texture setting you choose, you can even disable ray tracing and it's the same
  • No optimized settings for 8GB GPUs because the game looks so bad already, he cannot recommend lowering settings
  • Lowering clouds, disabling RT, and lowering SSR can save performance
  • Has encountered a bugs such as crashes and LODs not loading
  • Every time he moves the camera with a mid-range rig, there are noticeable frame rate drops
  • The game is almost as demanding as Cyberpunk with DLSS performance with settings maxed out
  • Pretty bad port overall
 
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Imtjnotu

Member
Fail Just For Laughs GIF
 

LordCBH

Member
Kingdom hearts was worse. They had to stop production and move everyone over to unreal engine

And still only took 6 years in development. Versus 13 took a decade without switching engines. They realized the problem with KH and made the switch. Meanwhile Luminous released 15 and went “this is fine. Can we make a new game with the same engine?” And Square retardedly went “yep!!”
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
What an absolute piece of trash.

The only shining light, direct storage is now proven to be the real deal. If this turd can be almost as fast as a ps5 with a 3600 and a 3.5gbs nvme without gpu decompression then once this improves its going to be a game changer.

So the series x uses this with velocity architecture. Bodes well.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Glad I went with ps5 version then. It's not perfect but avoiding some issues. Not a single texture issue on ps5 in my 10 hours so far
Despite performance dips, I am having great fun with the game. Some of best open world movement and exploration honestly. Crackdown1+infamous.
Quality mode sucks ass at 120hz. RT and Performance are both fineish...
 
Square Enix should’ve dumped Luminous off a cliff after the FF15 shitshow decade of development. Luminous Productions should’ve either used Unreal, or been told to pack their things.
agreed. the faster squeenix dumps luminous, the faster they stem the bleeding. as far as I am concerned, ff14 is the only thing keeping them going. hopefully 16 is good.
 

Imtjnotu

Member
And still only took 6 years in development. Versus 13 took a decade without switching engines. They realized the problem with KH and made the switch. Meanwhile Luminous released 15 and went “this is fine. Can we make a new game with the same engine?” And Square retardedly went “yep!!”
had to do with 15 starting on ps3* and luminous being junk lol

the FF15 demo looked so much better than the full game and that demo looks better than forspoken
 
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Gaiff

Member
So 8gb of vram is not enough for the game. Very funny since Nvidia is trying to sell the overpriced 4060ti with 8gb vram. Outdated and it is not even out yet.
I wouldn't use that game as evidence. It just has a bizarre VRAM management and the game seems to just default to shit textures based upon the amount of VRAM your GPU has, not what it needs.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
It doesn't look bad, but its looks don't justify the performance costs, neither on ps5 or pc. Theres some really poor resource management going on here.
There are huge draw distances, very detailed assets, volumetric fog system, dynamic cloud shadows and so on. Not to mention particle effects.
But all in all yeah - it should run faster. Cannot disagree here. I still took 100 screenshots in my first 10 hours so far :p
 

Guilty_AI

Member
There are huge draw distances, very detailed assets, volumetric fog system, dynamic cloud shadows and so on. Not to mention particle effects.
Tons of games also have those things, perhaps minus the particle effects, and they don't run as bad.

I also have to disagree on the assets, at least on the demo all i saw were trees and rocks and the occasional prop and building, and it still ran poorly on these enviroments. From the screenshots, cities look very bland too. It does have high texture quality, perhaps unnecessarely high.
 
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ZoukGalaxy

Member
DirectStorage is one of the few bright spots, with a capable CPU (12900K) and 3.5GB/s nvme, the PC version can load slightly faster than a PS5
That's really an interesting point, a slower SSD on PC goes faster than the PS5 SSD which is twice faster. Would love to read an technical analysis about that.

Does not recommend even playing this game on 8GB GPUs because the textures look like they're from the late 90s
Late 90s ? Seriously ?
 
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winjer

Gold Member
I wouldn't use that game as evidence. It just has a bizarre VRAM management and the game seems to just default to shit textures based upon the amount of VRAM your GPU has, not what it needs.

From what I could tell from the PC demo, textures have a high resolution. But to make a good looking texture that is not the only factor, as there are several layers that have to be well implemente, like normal maps, roughness maps, etc. And then there is the shading of the whole scene, which is very lacking.
This game seems to just throw a ton of high resolution textures, but with little work beyond that. And of course, all of those textures, use vram, lot's of it.
The streaming system seems to require a lot of vram and ram. And it seems to cache a lot of stuff, avoiding streaming stuttering, like we see in other game engines, like UE4.
 
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yamaci17

Member
as you can see from the video, game only uses 6 gb out of total 8 gb budget. this also factors into making 8 gb unusable. I don't know this recent trend started but it is what it is.

8 gb is a large enough buffer that middle ground compromises can be found. a bit less texture quality or resolution, SMARTER texture streaming.
 
as i said before:

Luminous was Shit since its inception.

"Luminous Studios" gimme a break, more like:

we spent so much time and money for outdated engine that only the core team could make something out of it.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Square Enix sure backed the wrong horse in trying to make this their standout title for trying to normalize $70 PC video games.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Bro not trying to be rude here but did you invest in the ip or something? You defend this game quite fiercely even when the criticism it has received is more than valid considering its terrible technical state.
This is not terrible graphics. cmon now. I am just trying to be fair here.
No offense taken. I just like the game. Especially the movement in the open world and graphics.
I can understand people don't like these characters or story but gameplay and graphics are quite solid imo
kqGYl61.jpg

TVKGnFe.jpg

3RR7s1A.jpg

nfWMQIL.jpg


And it's not even showing the fantastic HDR. This is how it looks with HDR.... now clearly... .this is not TERRIBLE GRAPHICS.
zjVRUhm.jpg

WCxaB0s.jpg
 
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Imtjnotu

Member
This is not terrible graphics. cmon now. I am just trying to be fair here.
No offense taken. I just like the game. Especially the movement in the open world and graphics.
I can understand people don't like these characters or story but gameplay and graphics are quite solid imo
kqGYl61.jpg

TVKGnFe.jpg

3RR7s1A.jpg

nfWMQIL.jpg


And it's not even showing the fantastic HDR. This is how it looks with HDR.... now clearly... .this is not TERRIBLE GRAPHICS.
zjVRUhm.jpg

WCxaB0s.jpg
bro for your tv get one of these.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077MJZ6ZG/?tag=neogaf0e-20

made my desk set up with my 48C2 so much better. no giant hump hitting the wall in the back.
 

Matt_Fox

Member
58th in the Steam Charts in its launch week, it does look like Forspoken has been the first great gaming casualty of this gen. Never nice to see a financial disaster on this scale.
 

Hugare

Member
This is not terrible graphics. cmon now. I am just trying to be fair here.
No offense taken. I just like the game. Especially the movement in the open world and graphics.
I can understand people don't like these characters or story but gameplay and graphics are quite solid imo
kqGYl61.jpg

TVKGnFe.jpg

3RR7s1A.jpg

nfWMQIL.jpg


And it's not even showing the fantastic HDR. This is how it looks with HDR.... now clearly... .this is not TERRIBLE GRAPHICS.
zjVRUhm.jpg

WCxaB0s.jpg
Look how flat the lighting is, man

John mentioned that at times, FF XV looks better, and he wasnt joking. I have FF XV on mey PC right now, and it really looks better in most places.

Look at the last image how every building basicaly has the same texture, with no occlusion whatsoever

Character models are great, but everything else, I swear that I could take better screenshots on FF XV PC version
 

KingT731

Member
This is not terrible graphics. cmon now. I am just trying to be fair here.
No offense taken. I just like the game. Especially the movement in the open world and graphics.
I can understand people don't like these characters or story but gameplay and graphics are quite solid imo
And it's not even showing the fantastic HDR. This is how it looks with HDR.... now clearly... .this is not TERRIBLE GRAPHICS.
This is what I have been saying. I have played the game on both PC and PS5 and i haven't seen it look or running anywhere near as bad as some of these screens people are posting and I only have a 3080.
 
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