I would say they hold the crown, but with Outlaws, not avatar. They were pretty clear that the first trailer was an inengine render. Now with Outlaws, they tried to pass off gameplay which was clearly souped up.
Both outlaws and avatar got gameplay reveals at the same conference, and Avatar was shown running on PS5. You can watch that trailer. Aside from them using fancy cutscene shots that were not in the game which is largely first person, the final game is pretty much identical to that trailer. And even better on PC.
Come on, you can't let them get away with this.
It literally says "Game Footage Powered by Snowdrop"
Its avatar and its not close.
Keyword: "Game footage"
Imagine if Remedy or any other studio released their game with that label. Say for example alan wake 2.
And it comes out not looking even close. No one would give them the latitude of not crucifying them. It seems like there is ubisoft fatigue in the sense that they do this so much that no one is even interested in discussing/acknowledging their downgrades anymore.
But AC Shadows has those same volumetric effects already. I have played that game for like 70 hours and its insane how those volumetric fog effects show up in dozens of different day/night, weather, and season combinations. It's all dynamic and somehow fits in their rendering budget without completely destroying the framerate. I dont think we need to worry about a downgrade here.
James Bond was dropping frames like crazy on PS5 during the reveal so it was always going to get downgraded during the optimization period. But even there, they are adding path tracing on PC, so essentially it will look better than the reveal in most aspects.
Path tracing is just one of the many effects 15+ that contributes to a game looking nextgen.
A game doesn't just look next gen because it has path tracing. if you added path tracing to the current avatar it will still look no where near that trailer. not even close.
Why? there are dozens of other effects that made up that initial trailer that is either completely gone or complexity has been gutted.
For example while the object density is still there, the object fidelity (higher polygon / roundness) were gutted. Thats why one aspect.
Then you have cloud rendering, volumetrics, shadows, translucency, complex material shaders, water shaders, subsurface scattering, landscape quality, whether, reflections, pom/tessalation, completely different asset models, vfx with contributing lights and self shadowing, things that were complex materials are now baked down to simple textures, etc
Take for example the grass in the avatar demo is completely different from the one in the release. It looked like it was running some complex fur shader. path tracing is not gonna bring that back.
The same thing applies to 007 first light. sure you can slap pathtracing on top. but did you cut effects and shaders from the rest of the game? That's what matters. notice in the comparison you posted the difference of suit (cloth shading) of both bond and the other guy. Or the wooden staircase arm that isn't wooden in the latest trailer.
Mark my words it will be downgraded.
Skull and bones literally looks last gen compared to the blackflag reveal
