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[analog_future]

Gotta say, Directive 8020 is one of the first games to make me really think that maybe the UE5 haters aren't completely off-base.


I played/completed Directive 8020 and it was okay/fine, but it got me interested in going back and playing the Dark Pictures Anthology as I'd never played through those games. I started Man of Medan and it's shocking how good it looks and how well it runs compared to Directive 8020.

Same dev, same type of game, Man of Medan had a significantly smaller budget and sold for a lower MSRP than 8020, but someone this 7 year old game looks 90% as good as Directive 8020 and runs waayyyyyy better.

On my 9800X3D / 9070 XT rig:

• Native 4K Man of Medan w/RT - 85-110 FPS
• Native 4K Directive 8020 w/RT - 25-40 FPS

So Man of Medan was ~3-4x more performant than Directive 8020 while looking 90% as good.

Animations are definitely better in Directive 8020, and the density of overall detail is improved. Nothing even remotely justifies the performance delta though. And frankly the depth of field in Directive 8020 looks worse and the shadows do too. DoF doesn't trace in-focus objects as precisely which makes them look more like cutouts. Shadows can look inconsistent and flickery in Directive 8020 but are pretty much perfect in Man of Medan.


A few of my comparison shots:

Directive 8020

Man of Medan

Directive 8020

Man of Medan

 

[SlimySnake]

Gotta say, Directive 8020 is one of the first games to make me really think that maybe the UE5 haters aren't completely off-base.


I played/completed Directive 8020 and it was okay/fine, but it got me interested in going back and playing the Dark Pictures Anthology as I'd never played through those games. I started Man of Medan and it's shocking how good it looks and how well it runs compared to Directive 8020.

Same dev, same type of game, Man of Medan had a significantly smaller budget and sold for a lower MSRP than 8020, but someone this 7 year old game looks 90% as good as Directive 8020 and runs waayyyyyy better.

On my 9800X3D / 9070 XT rig:

• Native 4K Man of Medan w/RT - 85-110 FPS
• Native 4K Directive 8020 w/RT - 25-40 FPS

So Man of Medan was ~3-4x more performant than Directive 8020 while looking 90% as good.

Animations are definitely better in Directive 8020, and the density of overall detail is improved. Nothing even remotely justifies the performance delta though. And frankly the depth of field in Directive 8020 looks worse and the shadows do too. DoF doesn't trace in-focus objects as precisely which makes them look more like cutouts. Shadows can look inconsistent and flickery in Directive 8020 but are pretty much perfect in Man of Medan.


A few of my comparison shots:

Directive 8020

Man of Medan

Directive 8020

Man of Medan

Its not just rt, its path tracing. And like with most path traced games, its likely implemented by nvidia so take it up with them.

From the benchmarks I've seen, hradware lumen in this game is over 60 fps at native 4k which isn't too bad considering man of medan did not have rtgi, only reflections and AO.

I do agree that the game doesn't feel like a big leap over their previous games but that's a developer issue.