Support NeoGAF

[Bojji]

I think this looks better than a ps4 game tbh.

PS4 Pro?

I'm joking but it obviously doesn't look like top 5 this gen, maybe with PT.

 

[analog_future]

Indoor areas fare a lot better than outdoor, but still not super impressive:

I do find it quite funny though that this game, without ray tracing, handles mirror reflections WAY better than 99% of RT or even PT-enabled games:

 

[Gonzito]

So the game doesnt have raytracing or pathtracing at all? Wtf man

 

[Bojji]

Indoor areas fare a lot better than outdoor, but still not super impressive:

I do find it quite funny though that this game, without ray tracing, handles mirror reflections WAY better than 99% of RT or even PT-enabled games:

Good old planar reflections.

So the game doesnt have raytracing or pathtracing at all? Wtf man

Software RT for lighting (like lumen). PT will come in a patch.

 

[Abysse]

 

[analog_future]

Tip for First Light: In addition to disabling film grain and CA, turn off radial blur effects. Makes the outside edges of the screen super blurry and gives the whole image a smeared-in-vasoline look.

 

[Killer8]

The thread chants: "we want playable CGI!", as they disable every cinematic effect that contributes to a CGI look.

 

[Luipadre]

Tip for First Light: In addition to disabling film grain and CA, turn off radial blur effects. Makes the outside edges of the screen super blurry and gives the whole image a smeared-in-vasoline look.

I think film grain makes this game look much better. It gives a filmic CGI look, your pictures looks raw compared to my experience with film grain on

 

[SlimySnake]

Dont know what they were thinking with that opening mission. Very bland in terms of graphics and gameplay.

The second mission is a training ground so again, not much to look at.

In terms of graphics, i do like some of the smoke effects, Bond looks fantastic during gameplay, just as good as cutscenes which is pretty impressive. Smoke effects are nice. Lighting is ok. Nothing too special. Some materials like jackets and other clothes look good but overall the detail in levels is barely above last gen. Still early on in levels with not much detail, not even close to what we saw in the reveal gameplay.

 

[analog_future]

The thread chants: "we want playable CGI!", as they disable every cinematic effect that contributes to a CGI look.

I think film grain makes this game look much better. It gives a filmic CGI look, your pictures looks raw compared to my experience with film grain on

To each their own! Film grain can be effective in some games but it's way too heavy handed here for me. Pretty much all the screen effects are.

 

[GymWolf]

PS4 Pro?

I'm joking but it obviously doesn't look like top 5 this gen, maybe with PT.

More like top 50.

 

[Gonzito]

Actually the more I pay the more I am seeing some questionable textures in 007. I think the game is an upgrade from Hitman in general though. It can looks very pretty but some assets could use an upgrade.

 

[FalconPunch]

I think this looks better than a ps4 game tbh.

 

[Killer8]

To each their own! Film grain can be effective in some games but it's way too heavy handed here for me. Pretty much all the screen effects are.

Definitely needs to be a slider for it for personal taste. Naughty Dog I think are one of the few who can pull off adding these effects into their games tastefully.

 

[Bojji]

Tip for First Light: In addition to disabling film grain and CA, turn off radial blur effects. Makes the outside edges of the screen super blurry and gives the whole image a smeared-in-vasoline look.

The holy trinity of "shit on screen" effects.

 

[analog_future]

Dont know what they were thinking with that opening mission. Very bland in terms of graphics and gameplay.

The second mission is a training ground so again, not much to look at.

In terms of graphics, i do like some of the smoke effects, Bond looks fantastic during gameplay, just as good as cutscenes which is pretty impressive. Smoke effects are nice. Lighting is ok. Nothing too special. Some materials like jackets and other clothes look good but overall the detail in levels is barely above last gen. Still early on in levels with not much detail, not even close to what we saw in the reveal gameplay.

Yeah, Bond's in-game model looks great:

I turned film grain back on. Still on the fence with it but we'll see. Definitely keeping the other effects off though

 

[GymWolf]

Yeah, Bond's in-game model looks great:

I turned film grain back on. Still on the fence with it but we'll see. Definitely keeping the other effects off though

At least his model\face looks nextgen, secondary character look much worse from the old trailers i saw.

 

[Lootlord]

Indoor areas fare a lot better than outdoor, but still not super impressive:

I do find it quite funny though that this game, without ray tracing, handles mirror reflections WAY better than 99% of RT or even PT-enabled games:

There was a clip where he walked past a glass door and there were no reflections, so i guess it's limited to actual mirrors?
Game can look quite good in screenshots but in motion you see the flaws with the flickering shadows and stuff.
I hope i can run it well enough with pathtracing on my 4090.

 

[KyoZz]

The thread chants: "we want playable CGI!", as they disable every cinematic effect that contributes to a CGI look.

Is this bait? Sorry but for me CA, grain, vignette, radial blur and motion blur all destroy image quality and often hide the fine details that developers spent years perfecting. The image is completely ruined and I hate it when a game forces them on. All these effects have nothing to do with how much fidelity an engine can push.

I can tolerate per-object motion blur, but that's it.

 

[SlimySnake]

More like top 50.

i think the first area looks a lot better if it had nanite. those rocks are everywhere in that level and while they look good, they dont look next gen like the hellblade 2 rocks in a very similar looking icelandic environment.

Twitter is posting a lot of insane looking clips of this game. Some of this shit looks next gen as fuck. I need to go on a media blackout for this game.

 

[analog_future]

Outside of visuals, I loved the opening mission and I'm having a blast with this game so far. It's exactly what I was hoping: Hitman meets Uncharted meets Bond.

 

[SupremeJ]

Forza Horizon 6 looks like it's on another level:

 

[Gonzito]

I think the 007 game would really benefit from pathtracing. The daytime training missions kinda shows that the weaknesses of their RT lighting

 

[Buggy Loop]

I think the 007 game would really benefit from pathtracing. The daytime training missions kinda shows that the weaknesses of their RT lighting

I'm not even sure if I'll even buy this in short/medium term but for sure I would have waited path tracing. I have so many games to play that day 1 means nothing to me anymore.

 

[Alex11]

Is this bait? Sorry but for me CA, grain, vignette, radial blur and motion blur all destroy image quality and often hide the fine details that developers spent years perfecting. The image is completely ruined and I hate it when a game forces them on. All these effects have nothing to do with how much fidelity an engine can push.

I can tolerate per-object motion blur, but that's it.

Exactly, you forgot lens flares or dirt, although lens flares has a charm when done right. Most of these effects were from optical defects in films and now they're branded as artistic choices.

As a 2D artist I'm all for art and whatnot, but done tastefully. You can have CA, but not so that I'm looking at the screen and wondering if this is 4K or am I drunk.

 

[Killer8]

Is this bait? Sorry but for me CA, grain, vignette, radial blur and motion blur all destroy image quality and often hide the fine details that developers spent years perfecting. The image is completely ruined and I hate it when a game forces them on. All these effects have nothing to do with how much fidelity an engine can push.

I can tolerate per-object motion blur, but that's it.

No, it isn't bait.

Watch any CGI movie and all of those effects will be present and account for a huge amount of the cinematic look. Imperfection of the image is in fact needed. This is what the director of photography at Santa Monica Studio said about chromatic aberration at a GDC conference in 2019:

We actually worked pretty hard to make our visuals look worse. The whole thing came from the problem of the "uncanny valley," and for those of you who are not familiar with the uncanny valley, the traditional thought would say that: if something looks better, than it looks more believable. Kind of like in a linear manner - the more believable, the more relatable.

What actually happens is... When something becomes very close to realistic, our psyche starts judging it in a very harsh manner - it looks for realism, and it finds all the defects. There is a giant dip in believability just before you hit photorealism. And because of the power of our game engine these days, and our amazing tech render teams, and our amazing art teams... we fell right in the middle of the uncanny valley.

So what we try to do is go back to the documentary style, and find things that we relate to as realistic footage, and slap on top of the image to try to at least, if not completely skip over the uncanny valley, kind of make it more shallow, less deep. So we added film grain. We added hand-held. We added crap hitting your lens all over the place. Lens flares. Chromatic aberration. We slipped on focus. All these things that, if you were a filmmaker shooting live action, you would try at all costs to avoid. But what it did is spike our brains and calibrate them toward a sense of realism, and help us skip over the uncanny valley, and relate to the footage without pushing back against it, and then having a giant dip in absorption.

So while these effects 'destroy' image quality, in a very narrow and subjective sense (ie. for a person wanting to see every single pixel represented on screen with razor sharp precision), I would argue that people's aversion to these effects is only going to hold them back in the long run. We will never graduate to that plane of "playable CGI" if we are going to neglect so many of the effects which CGI utilizes. It's like wanting to only ever see a raw pixelated output of a retro game and swearing never to use any sort of scanlines or CRT shaders which distort the image.

Look at the Forza Horizon 6 images posted above. Squint ever so slightly and they may as well look like real life photographs - which tells me that it's partly the razor sharpness betraying the realism.

 

[Bojji]

No, it isn't bait.

Watch any CGI movie and all of those effects will be present and account for a huge amount of the cinematic look. Imperfection of the image is in fact needed. This is what the director of photography at Santa Monica Studio said about chromatic aberration at a GDC conference in 2019:



So while these effects 'destroy' image quality, in a very narrow and subjective sense (ie. for a person wanting to see every single pixel represented on screen with razor sharp precision), I would argue that people's aversion to these effects is only going to hold them back in the long run. We will never graduate to that plane of "playable CGI" if we are going to neglect so many of the effects which CGI utilizes. It's like wanting to only ever see a raw pixelated output of a retro game and swearing never to use any sort of scanlines or CRT shaders which distort the image.

Look at the Forza Horizon 6 images posted above. Squint ever so slightly and they may as well look like real life photographs - which tells me that it's partly the razor sharpness betraying the realism.

CGI movies are 4k with infinite anti aliasing, they can apply whatever they want to them and they will still look ok.

Now try doing that to games that are barely 1080p.

 

[Vick]

I was, and probably still am excited for the game.. but there's so much cheap, ugly ass looking shit in the build they've let people play..



I mean the longer the video goes on the worse it gets. I am talking UGLY, shit, like PS3 level shit. Ridiculous looking 2D smoke that's genuinely generations behind Killzone 2, an actual PS3 game, weather conditions changing on the fly without clouds even altering their appearance, some awful animations, missing shadows, clipping, SSR disocclusion all over the place..

This last one above in motion was truly something to behold.
There's very good stuff, obviously, but I always felt Ubisoft games need at least a whole extra year to polish things, and still do.

I so wished I could have played a version of Black Flag as competent as RDR2 was almost 10 years ago..

Spoiler

Yeah he was unsufferable in this video. Pretending to like the absolute TRASH that is the new Lucy Baldwin quest (and character).

Some really good looking stuff in here, instead.

And smoke looks awsome, compared to those 2D smokebomb crap in the Hollow video. The fight in the storm at the end is EPIC.

 

[Bojji]

I'm playing bond right now. You know how this game looks like? Like splinter cell blacklist, even water shader is very similar in the first level.

Interesting...

 

[SlimySnake]

Man this game looks absolutely amazing.

 

[KyoZz]

No, it isn't bait.

Watch any CGI movie and all of those effects will be present and account for a huge amount of the cinematic look. Imperfection of the image is in fact needed. This is what the director of photography at Santa Monica Studio said about chromatic aberration at a GDC conference in 2019:

This comparison misses the core point about games. Films are passive. You're a viewer locked into a director's controlled framing, pacing, and camera work. Post-effects in these case (basically during cinematics while playing a game) don't really bother me unless overdone.

The God of War talk by Dori Arazi seems like an excuse honestly and while devs (and especially their graphics directors) can decide that the "cinematic vision" includes grain, CA, vignette, heavy filmic tonemapping etc, I can also decide to dislike them in gameplay. To me the actual lighting, materials, geometry, textures, and effects the artists and tech teams worked on should be the default. Not a stack of camera/lens imperfections layered on top.

And plenty of games look fantastic without any post-effects of these kind (which is why IMO it's pretty obvious Arazi is bullshiting). Not everyone wants their high end PC/console game to look like it's shot on old film stock by default.

So while these effects 'destroy' image quality, in a very narrow and subjective sense (ie. for a person wanting to see every single pixel represented on screen with razor sharp precision), I would argue that people's aversion to these effects is only going to hold them back in the long run. We will never graduate to that plane of "playable CGI" if we are going to neglect so many of the effects which CGI utilizes. It's like wanting to only ever see a raw pixelated output of a retro game and swearing never to use any sort of scanlines or CRT shaders which distort the image.

Look at the Forza Horizon 6 images posted above. Squint ever so slightly and they may as well look like real life photographs - which tells me that it's partly the razor sharpness betraying the realism.

Squinting at Forza Horizon shots and saying they look like photos because of sharpness is backwards. Real photos have those effects because of the camera but good racing games benefit enormously from clarity. Many players specifically turn down or disable those effects in Forza titles for cleaner visuals.
The cars, lighting, reflections, and environments are what sell the realism, not the film emulation on top.

The retro game analogy also doesn't hold perfectly. CRT shaders and scanlines are for emulating old hardware limitations on old pixel art. Modern games aren't emulating 35mm film by default. Developers can (and should) give options (which is the case in 007, thank God)

 

[Bojji]

Software RT AO



Not so great...

Other than that game has very good HDR support, overall looks good but those cube map reflections are not the best. Shadows are also pretty bad.

vs. SC BL

Gameplay in the first level was quite good.

 

[Gonzito]

Software RT AO



Not so great...

Other than that game has very good HDR support, overall looks good but those cube map reflections are not the best. Shadows are also pretty bad.

vs. SC BL

Gameplay in the first level was quite good.

Like I said before, pathtracing is going to do some good heavy lifting for this game.

 

[VeganElduderino]

I just started first light, looks fucking great at 4k maxed out at 70 fps! not having RT and a photo mode is bummer!

 

[Vick]

Man, the game is a fucking trainwreck on base consoles..



Worse (much) visuals than Uncharted 4 at the same resolution and framerate (1080p and 30fps) the game had ten years ago, and the worst 720p PS3 IQ at 60fps.

Don't play this on base consoles for the love of God.. I don't want to imagine Series S version.

 

[Bojji]

Like I said before, pathtracing is going to do some good heavy lifting for this game.

Pretty much.

That software RT is not really good, plus basic raster shadows, ugly cube map reflections etc.

 

[SlimySnake]

Pretty much.

That software RT is not really good, plus basic raster shadows, ugly cube map reflections etc.

Lumen is also software RT and looks way better than this. I think lumen in general compares favorably to hardware RT in other engines.

 

[Bojji]

Lumen is also software RT and looks way better than this. I think lumen in general compares favorably to hardware RT in other engines.

Bond seems to have much better stability of lighting than most UE5 games (with ultra GI). I have seen some boiling but it was rare compared to even HW lumen in 8020.

 

[bender]

Don't play this.

Done and done.

 

[Killer8]

This comparison misses the core point about games. Films are passive. You're a viewer locked into a director's controlled framing, pacing, and camera work. Post-effects in these case (basically during cinematics while playing a game) don't really bother me unless overdone.

The God of War talk by Dori Arazi seems like an excuse honestly and while devs (and especially their graphics directors) can decide that the "cinematic vision" includes grain, CA, vignette, heavy filmic tonemapping etc, I can also decide to dislike them in gameplay. To me the actual lighting, materials, geometry, textures, and effects the artists and tech teams worked on should be the default. Not a stack of camera/lens imperfections layered on top.

And plenty of games look fantastic without any post-effects of these kind (which is why IMO it's pretty obvious Arazi is bullshiting). Not everyone wants their high end PC/console game to look like it's shot on old film stock by default.

But games and specifically CGI movies are both computer generated imagery targeting a similar end-point (realism). This is why "playable CGI" or "CGI-like" has become the meme in this thread. The same tricks will apply in both fields to try and avoid the uncanny valley feeling. Dori Arazi has a background in film production and is taking his experience from there, where use of these effects are ubiquitous, over to games for the same end goal.

I'm not saying you cannot have preferences or that games look bad without post effects, but i'm pointing out that people wanting a very specific thing (CGI look) and simultaneously not wanting to use many of the effects to actually get that look is strange to me. I am not aiming this criticism at any one in particular, it's just extremely common to hear a large number of people express both views, even though I think they are incompatible when you break down what the CGI look actually represents.

Squinting at Forza Horizon shots and saying they look like photos because of sharpness is backwards. Real photos have those effects because of the camera but good racing games benefit enormously from clarity. Many players specifically turn down or disable those effects in Forza titles for cleaner visuals.
The cars, lighting, reflections, and environments are what sell the realism, not the film emulation on top.

There is a gameplay argument for clarity yes. In the case of actually playing a fast-paced racing game, that clarity will probably improve readability and do more for player immersion than photorealism will. But what I was saying about squinting was really just a thought experiment that clarity is not the be-all and end-all in terms of visuals. Considering so many games are a mere squint away from photo-realism, that means that all of the things you mentioned like lighting, models, textures etc are already there, and we now need to find tricks to actually sell the overall look of the whole package like CGI movies do.

The retro game analogy also doesn't hold perfectly. CRT shaders and scanlines are for emulating old hardware limitations on old pixel art. Modern games aren't emulating 35mm film by default. Developers can (and should) give options (which is the case in 007, thank God)

They are for emulating the old hardware but that isn't only for reasons of nostalgia or authenticity. Those games simply look better when distorted in such a way - which is also an argument against clarity purely for clarity's sake.

Whenever people say "I don't remember this game looking this bad" - yeah, no shit it didn't back in the day, because your TV masked those pixels like the artist's intended.

 

[Flabagast]

Am I the only one thinking that 007 looks very poor despite some next gen effect here and there, especially on consoles ?

It's really far from the best looking games this generation

 

[KyoZz]

But games and specifically CGI movies are both computer generated imagery targeting a similar end-point (realism). This is why "playable CGI" or "CGI-like" has become the meme in this thread. The same tricks will apply in both fields to try and avoid the uncanny valley feeling. Dori Arazi has a background in film production and is taking his experience from there, where use of these effects are ubiquitous, over to games for the same end goal.

The "playable CGI" goal doesn't mean we have to copy every single film technique 1:1.
Movies and games have different needs.

I'm not saying you cannot have preferences or that games look bad without post effects, but

But you keep quoting me stating that these effect are somehow good for CGI look and if I don't like them... what? I don't like photorealism in games? That's just nonsense.

i'm pointing out that people wanting a very specific thing (CGI look) and simultaneously not wanting to use many of the effects to actually get that look is strange to me. I am not aiming this criticism at any one in particular, it's just extremely common to hear a large number of people express both views, even though I think they are incompatible when you break down what the CGI look actually represents.

And again you don't need these effects to make a photorealistic game.

Breaking news: your eyes don't have CA, film grain, motion blur etc etc... As for the games, photorealism is achieved through lighting mainly, not by adding ugly post process effects. Human vision is sharp in the center with natural peripheral falloff. We don't see the world through a dirty old camera lens.

Replicating camera flaws doesn't automatically equal "more realistic", it just makes it look like a movie.

There is a gameplay argument for clarity yes. In the case of actually playing a fast-paced racing game, that clarity will probably improve readability and do more for player immersion than photorealism will. But what I was saying about squinting was really just a thought experiment that clarity is not the be-all and end-all in terms of visuals. Considering so many games are a mere squint away from photo-realism, that means that all of the things you mentioned like lighting, models, textures etc are already there, and we now need to find tricks to actually sell the overall look of the whole package like CGI movies do.



They are for emulating the old hardware but that isn't only for reasons of nostalgia or authenticity. Those games simply look better when distorted in such a way - which is also an argument against clarity purely for clarity's sake.

Whenever people say "I don't remember this game looking this bad" - yeah, no shit it didn't back in the day, because your TV masked those pixels like the artist's intended.

Are we serious now? We're talking about 40 year old games running at 240p on fuzzy analog TVs that were masking massive hardware limitations so you can justify the use of these effect in today's engines? Really?

The CRT distortion was a happy accident that hid how rough the raw image was. Now compare that to 2026 game engines pushing photorealistic with PBR materials, ray-traced lighting, 4K textures, complex geometry and insane particle/foliage density.
We're not hiding technical flaws anymore. We're deliberately adding film grain, chromatic aberration, vignette, and lens blur on top of extremely clean, high-fidelity renders.That's not the same thing at all. One was compensating for weakness. The other is a stylistic choice layered on strength.

I don't understand why it's such a big deal for you. I already gave my reasons why I don't like these effects. You do you if you like them but again, I'm a big graphic whore and I hate these. It's totally possible.

 

[analog_future]

They are for emulating the old hardware but that isn't only for reasons of nostalgia or authenticity. Those games simply look better when distorted in such a way - which is also an argument against clarity purely for clarity's sake.

Whenever people say "I don't remember this game looking this bad" - yeah, no shit it didn't back in the day, because your TV masked those pixels like the artist's intended.

This analogy doesn't work.

Retro games look better with scanlines & crt filters because they were built for 320x240 displays with convergence issues, blooming, and distortion so the developers built games around those limitations to enhance the illusion.

That is not remotely comparable to today, where we have 4k/HDR/120hz+ displays that can look extremely lifelike. You look at various demo materials that show off what these modern displays are capable of, and they aren't adding fake grain and chromatic aberration and artificial blur and distortion, yet these demo videos look perfectly lifelike.

 

[Represent.]

Fuck it i caved and bought the damn game.
Wanted to wait for photomode but fuck it.

 

[GymWolf]

Man, the game is a fucking trainwreck on base consoles..



Worse (much) visuals than Uncharted 4 at the same resolution and framerate (1080p and 30fps) the game had ten years ago, and the worst 720p PS3 IQ at 60fps.

Don't play this on base consoles for the love of God.. I don't want to imagine Series S version.

Ue5 strikes again.

 

[FalconPunch]

 

[analog_future]

Ue5 strikes again.

It's so strange how people can't come to terms with the fact that their console that came out for $399 6 years ago is underpowered and unable to handle modern games at 60fps with decent fidelity.


Nope, couldn't be that. It's all just Unreal Engine 5 and "lazy devs".

 

[Sept Terrion Of Nothing]

Ue5 strikes again.

Ummm, doesn't it use in house engine? I believe it is called Glacier Engine.

 

[GymWolf]

Ummm, doesn't it use in house engine? I believe it is called Glacier Engine.

Just a little zinger to all the people who think only ue5 run like shit on base console.

 

[GymWolf]

Caved in, i hate you people