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Is Horizon: Zero Dawn the best looking open world game ever?

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Crossing Eden said:
Artistically, creating a well realized world that looks realistic and believable is an incredible hard task, especially when there's no real world structures to draw from since we're dealing with a sci-fi setting. Filling that world with unique tribes and such is an even more difficult task. People should really stop pretending like realism=lack of creativity, especially when we're talking about a post apocalyptic sci-fi world filled with robot animals.
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Yep, which is why I totally validated that. I couldn't speak to whether it's more creatively difficult to work on something that looks more realistic to real world environments or something more fantasy-like and surreal, but I'm sure both are worthy of praise and acknowledgment.

Again, I just seldom ever find them interesting because it all just feels...idk, familiar? Even with the tribal science fiction architecture. However: Filling the world with robot dinosaurs? That's pretty interesting. And that's what will sell me on the game, if anything. Hunting giant robot dinosaurs like a badass. But that doesn't mean I'll appreciate the open world more than something more in the realm of BOTW (because, again, opinions).
 
I don't know how anyone could watch the demo from e3 2016 and say that the game doesn't look really unique visually, especially the way the geometry of the world is built. You know, despite the devs being lazy bastards who're so creatively lazy that they went for a realistic art style instead of a stylized one. /s
 
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Just your typical open world game; nothing stands out.
 
I think maybe the Pro version can do it (if you don't count the fps advantage of W3 on PC as graphics - which I do). It does look pretty phenomenal.

Strange to see Breath of the Wild mentioned in here. Though I certainly think it definitely has a better artstyle, and I guess the wording of the thread title includes subjective views, so fair enough I guess.
 
shinobi602 said:
Wha...

I felt like The Witcher 3 had one of the most enjoyable open worlds to explore...so much detail, hidden locations, items, quests, archiectures, towns...they were so well thought out and implemented into the maps.

Ya'll on crazy pills.
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Few games, if any, I've enjoyed just walking/running from point to point more than that one.
 
Da-Kid said:
screenshot.legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild.1280x720.2016-06-15.67.jpg

Horizon just looks boring, its technical feats are OK. But it has nothing that makes it stand out whereas Zelda looks breathtaking.
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Umm what about this looks "breathtaking".

I'm seeing some pretty crappy looking foliage, small res and blurry textures.
 
SlimySnake said:
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where is this from? it looks much more crisp and clear than other gifs.
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Yeah, that shot I don't believe.

But hell, I didn't believe some of the Shadowfall shots either until I saw it for myself.

And I know its been brought up a ton of times already, but everytime I revisit the Witcher 3 - the game I'll spend a ton of time in and probably never finish - I'm always floored by just how damn gorgeous it's open world is. Every time.
 
Dalibor68 said:
Agreed. And we shouldn't judge until Horizon has been released. Still haven't seen forest footage and I don't think we've seen snow footage and 2seconds of a Canyon shot isn't exactly "desert gameplay" either. So wait and see.
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You should really get a forest tag or something.
 
Phediuk said:
Umm what about this looks "breathtaking".

I'm seeing some pretty crappy looking foliage, small res and blurry textures.
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I'll buy Zelda Day 1. I'll also buy an NX for it without seconds toughts. And yes, it surely will look breath of the wild-taking
for a mobile game. But graphically Horizon is just a whole other level, come on now.
 
NullPointer said:
Yeah, that shot I don't believe.

But hell, I didn't believe some of the Shadowfall shots either until I saw it for myself.

And I know its been brought up a ton of times already, but everytime I revisit the Witcher 3 - the game I'll spend a ton of time in and probably never finish - I'm always floored by just how damn gorgeous it's open world is. Every time.
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Yeah... and also I think the believability of the Witcher's world contributes to how impressive it is. In the Witcher, you know that if you see a far off hill with a small hamlet around it, that you'll be able to travel there and there will be some quest or person of interest. You know that the town in one area will be different and unique from a town in the other area.

Without knowing much about Horizon other than big mech fights, it's tough for me to get a sense of what's going to be on that mountain top... Can you go there? Can you climb it? Is there anything there?

This is also what makes me less impressed by Ubisoft's open world games. Assassins Creed Paris looked incredible, but I knew that at every street corner, it would be the same cookie cutter parisians standing in a circle, the same hay piles, the same roof tops placed just in the right way for me to sprint across them. One city block wouldn't look any different from another city block... If you dropped me in the middle of city block A I probably couldn't tell it from city block Z because buildings from A are identical to the buildings at Z, and so on.
 
I have no idea why Horizon: Zero Dawn looks uninteresting to me because by most accounts, it's pretty fresh. Matthewmatosis has similar sentiments, and it's weird.
Maybe the heroine gives me subconscious flashbacks to Heavenly Sword, and the setting with Journey to the West. Both graphically pretty games, but boring as shit.
 
People posting screens of Zelda. That's precious.

Anyway, honestly, I haven't actually seen a big open space in Horizon game yet. That's something that Zelda has actually demonstrated with ease. Everything in Horizon seems to be relatively enclosed spaces, trails or tight canyons and whatnot, in terms of what they have shown as a playable area, not a place in the horizon, far into the distance. As far as I can see it remains to be seen how much of an open world game this is.
 
I think Fable Legends looks better:

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Not really. But trying to show that when you know a game is a Zelda game, it helps you appreciate the environment more because you know "Oh, I can go explore that distant mountain and there's probably something unique over there..." so it makes you appreciate the world more. If you think of this as a shitty game like Fable Legends, where the world is a boring cutout of a fantasy world and not crafted with care, then it makes an otherwise fine looking screenshot seem less interesting
 
jett said:
People posting screens of Zelda. That's precious.

Anyway, honestly, I haven't actually seen a big open space in Horizon game yet. That's something that Zelda has actually demonstrated with ease. Everything in Horizon seems to be relatively enclosed spaces, trails or tight canyons and whatnot, in terms of what they have shown as a playable area, not a place in the horizon, far into the distance. As far as I can see it remains to be seen how much of an open world game this is.
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HStallion said:
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???
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.
 
Zelda is clearly not as good looking a game. Vanilla Skyrim looks better then Zelda.

The more interesting comparisons are things like Star Citizen.

I've yet to see anything as impressive as it including Horizon but neither game is released. I'm only comparing the best footage I've seen of SC vs. the best I've seen of Horizon.

The funny thing is that to experience either game you are going to drop some pretty real cash on new GPUs on the PC side or 4K HDR capable TV's on the console side.

I've already done both so bring these games on.
 
Da-Kid said:
http://m.imgur.com/vMAkDXp?r
Just because I think Zelda looks better doesn't mean I'm trolling.
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Doesn't mean you're trolling but you're being incredibly disengenous with your arguments.

jett said:
People posting screens of Zelda. That's precious.

Anyway, honestly, I haven't actually seen a big open space in Horizon game yet. That's something that Zelda has actually demonstrated with ease. Everything in Horizon seems to be relatively enclosed spaces, trails or tight canyons and whatnot, in terms of what they have shown as a playable area, not a place in the horizon, far into the distance. As far as I can see it remains to be seen how much of an open world game this is.
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The e3 demo was a really big playable area. The ps4pro footage however was a lot more linear looking than I would've expected.
 
On the technical side probably yes, but subjectively I still don't think anything has topped GTAV's re-releases.

The sheer amount of detail in every single corner still blows my mind every time I boot it up.

Horizon looks good, no doubt about it, but it doesn't seem to have that macro/micro balance from everything I've seen.
 
Technically it seems really impressive. More impressive than Witcher on PC? I'm not sure....

The world is a bit bland (but still very nice to look at, and it's what you do there that matters most to me anyway).

I don't like the art design of the robo dinos. I know they get most gaffers really hot and bothered, and, conceptually, robo + dino = awesome. However, they're way too visually noisy to me. Too many different planes, tubes, lights, facets, etc. They scan as just amalgamations of random machine stuff. Their movement is very nice, but it's still hard for me to read visually w/ all the extraneous details.

They remind me, in terms of unnecessary visual complexity, of less egregious Bayformers.
 
I forgot about Forza Horizon 3, that gives Horizon: Zero Dawn a run for its money. Horizons are great. Horizon, Horizon, Horizon.
 
HStallion said:
I wish more games had worlds as well realized as the Witcher 3. The actual way it transitions from forests to inhabited areas to cities is incredibly realistic and well done. Its never just forest and the suddenly a town, its a very gradual natural transition.
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Oh, the world in The Witcher 3 was very well made, but I still found it incredibly dull and ultimately prefer the hub design of The Witcher 2.

The city hub in Deus Ex Mankind Divided is exactly what I like - it's large enough to warrant exploration but not so big that you ignore most of it. It's extremely dense and interesting.
 
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