@ NXGamer great vide. Keep the good work.
Small correction: GOW3 debut wasn't in 2009 but at the end of 2008 at VGA we got a small early rushed teaser.
GOW2 was also a technical achievement for PS2 at that time, not just for the pure graphics and details but also it had a secret mode you have to unlock by pressing certain buttons at the title screen which unlocks a HD mode on PS2, yes on PS2, but with sacrificing FPS.
Since GOW3, the series had great muscle deformations and flexes, either nose or biceps or chest etc... The cyclops had jiggly bellies too and mush more. Since the game doesn't use LOD, you can still see Kratos' muscles flex even from far away camera point when a titan was holding him and looking like an ant.
Guts and intestines were modeled inside enemies and they were jiggling inside of them until you cut their bellies and expose them.
I don't think GOW on PS4 uses the same old but refined engine from the previous installments but rather a new engine. In fact Cory said that they have been working on this for more than 5 years now.
Cory said at the E3 panel that before having their hair tech, Atreus was going to be bald, but Cory didn't like the look of him, that is why he pushed his team to develop a hair tech to get him hair. Since the hair tech was so nice, they added a full beard to Kratos.
GOW PS4 doesn't look better thanks to better textures or more polycount or increased resolution only but also the integration of PBR made the game more life-like.
You mentioned it in your vidoe about the casutics casting on Kratos at the cave.
Water caustics don't cast on him there only but also at the beginning and on the boat too.
In case some of you don't know how the trick was used before in some games for caustics: generally devs never use real water caustics physics to get reflections but settle for a trick to simulate the effect of it on the surroundings. They use dynamic textures which emulate that effect. Since those aren't real reflections, you only see the caustics on surfaces of the surroudings only and not on characters. Most of the games that ever used it are FPS games like Dear Esther, since you don't have a main character to cast caustics refelctions on but third person games who used it had the surfaces displaying that effect but not on characters like in MGS2 at the battle against Vamp.
Here in GOW, it seems water caustics are used as real light sources and if a character is obstructing them they cast the caustics on him and on other moving objects similar to any ligth source but it here it is dynamic that is why you see them on Kratos and on the moving boat.
