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The Ascent's cyberpunk city looks even better in first-person (1st person mode for ascent PC)

kingfey

Banned

In our review of The Ascent, Andy was particularly taken by the neon-soaked streets of the RPG's setting, a colossal tower called the Arcology. It's a cyberpunk adventure where the camera is set in a fixed top-down perspective, but YouTuber Griff Griffin (spotted by Kotaku) discovered a way to unlock the camera and explore the city on ground level.

Using a tool called the Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker you can toggle the free camera option to freely glide around and, up close and personal, The Ascent's people-packed city is stunning. There's an impressive amount of slick detail that's you would never notice in the fixed camera mode. One detail that amazed me was the tiny ripples that raindrops make as they drop on different surfaces.

The obvious comparison is Cyberpunk's 2077 Night City, but it's the striking attention to detail that makes The Ascent's metropolis way cooler. If you wanna check it out for yourself, you can find instructions on how to use the Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker in the description of Giffin's video, and if you plan on diving in and playing yourself here's some tips to get you started.



The video in the article.


This is only available for pc players as of now.

as for how to unlock it.
"Here's how to unlock the free camera in #TheAscent. The tool I use is called the Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker. You download it, open up the programme while The Ascent is running, and then you use the console window and type in commands to trigger different effects. One of these is a free camera. So if you were wondering how to zoom out the camera in The Ascent, you can do it with the Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker. Link: https://framedsc.github.io/GeneralGui... "
 

Stuart360

Member
Holy smokes, that looks incedible.:messenger_open_mouth:
You would think the graphics would probably break down a bit from this viewpoint, kind of like Flight Simulator at ground level, with the game not designed to be seen from this angle.
It would be cool if the devs patched in proper first person view for this. I mean i like issometric games but this game looks so god damn good from first person, and this world deserves to be seen like this!.

Edit. Its so weird how everything is so detailed at close range, all high rez textures etc. Its almost like the game started out as a first person game or something, and they changed to issometric mid development. Why did they bother with stuff like the magazines and newspapers, box art, kiosk readouts, etc, all stuff you cant even see from the normal viewpoint.
Very cool.
 
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Fredrik

Member
I was already impressed but this is crazy! 🤯
I don’t understand, why have they poured so much details into it? They’ve even made mockup magazines and product boxes, where you can clearly read the text!
Is everything made in good enough detail for cutscenes at any location just to avoid having to revisit an area with new assets if they want to move a cutscene?
 

Stuart360

Member
I was already impressed but this is crazy! 🤯
I don’t understand, why have they poured so much details into it? They’ve even made mockup magazines and product boxes, where you can clearly read the text!
Is everything made in good enough detail for cutscenes at any location just to avoid having to revisit an area with new assets if they want to move a cutscene?
I suppose thats why the game looks as good as it does, because there is no 'trickery' involved, everything looks great at minute deatil so it looks great at the default viewpoint.
I do wonder though if maybe the game did start out first person, or third person over the shoulder.
 

sendit

Member
RIP Cyberpunk 2077. This looks MUCH better.
Weed Blaze It GIF by MOODMAN
 
If they make a sequel I want it to be first or third person now, this looks incredible.

I already loved it before, but seeing the bots and such zipping overhead in that view with that scenery is beautiful. Surprised at how detailed some of the NPCs are when they really don't even have to be at the games actual view.
 

Fredrik

Member
I do wonder though if maybe the game did start out first person, or third person over the shoulder.
They haven’t been around for more than a few years so I doubt they’ve had time to restart it and usually you do the prototyping without any proper assets. But it’s really odd, this would seriously look good as it is with third or first person view, just needs some NPC lip sync and it would be ready to ship.
I’m glad they went with a twin stick shooter though, feels fresh these days, third and first person shooters are everywhere.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Holy smokes, that looks incedible.:messenger_open_mouth:
You would think the graphics would probably break down a bit from this viewpoint, kind of like Flight Simulator at ground level, with the game not designed to be seen from this angle.
It would be cool if the devs patched in proper first person view for this. I mean i like issometric games but this game looks so god damn good from first person, and this world deserves to be seen like this!.

Edit. Its so weird how everything is so detailed at close range, all high rez textures etc. Its almost like the game started out as a first person game or something, and they changed to issometric mid development. Why did they bother with stuff like the magazines and newspapers, box art, kiosk readouts, etc, all stuff you cant even see from the normal viewpoint.
Very cool.
12 people plus some contracting help and some favours… damn this team poured their heart out. Got it for XSX outright but I think I want to double dip if they go PS5 too.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
12 people plus some contracting help and some favours… damn this team poured their heart out. Got it for XSX outright but I think I want to double dip if they go PS5 too.
yeah, absolutely. I mean the core team is 12. It’s like naughty dog having 2500 people working on last of us 2 if you count outsourcing. Lol

a lot of outsourcing for assets now.
amazing achievement here.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
If I were Microsoft I'd get these quick fast before the team gets bigger and much more expensive. 12 people made this right?

But the team themselves said they want to remain small on purpose, because that allows for much better communication, development flow, much faster adjusting on the fly and so on. So I really don;t see the team getting any bigger than 20-30 persons in the upcoming years.
 

alienator

Member
The graphics are pretty much all this game has. its still a buggy mess (npc walking thru places/geometry i have to crouch under) and the core gameplay (just run around so u wont get hit) is basic as f.
never been so dissapointed with a title i was looking out for so much. (no i didnt buy CP2077)
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
It's nice, but fix the fucking co-op. It's probably even more buggy in that mode than Cyberpunk 2077....
 

GymWolf

Member
This game doesnt have story, and the gameplay is far more basic...atmosphere it does well in that view, but its not better than cp2077 in every aspect at all...

So why would you say rip cyberpunk 2077?
It does have a story and is the gameplay really more basic than killing everyone from afar with the super op hacking without even entering the location of the mission?! I literally did the same shit for 80 hours in cyberpunk and i had far more variations and thoughts on how to make my build in ascent than cyberpunk where you are a literal god with zero challenge whatsoever.

I had to try different strategies for the final boss in the ascent and i died like 20 times before getting it right.

Final boss on cyberpunk was done in 10 seconds on max difficulty...

They are 2 completely different game so no one rip the other except for the cyberpunk artstyle.
 
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GymWolf

Member
yeah, absolutely. I mean the core team is 12. It’s like naughty dog having 2500 people working on last of us 2 if you count outsourcing. Lol

a lot of outsourcing for assets now.
amazing achievement here.
Nope, the assets were all made by the 12 men team, the devs were proud of this on reeeee.
 
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Fredrik

Member
12 people plus some contracting help and some favours… damn this team poured their heart out. Got it for XSX outright but I think I want to double dip if they go PS5 too.
This is the way. I’ll do it too if the dualsense haptics are substantial enough. Among the top 3 games of the year for me so far.
 

th4tguy

Member
1: this looks really great with free camera
2: what a fucking waste of time and money spent into creating these resources when 90% of these details will never be seen during normal gameplay. This absolutely inflated budget for the project unnecessarily.
3: unnecessarily inflated resource requirements to run the game.

Only thing that would make sense is if they purchased all of the assets from third party source or plan to / already are reusing most of the environmental object assets for future projects.
 

hlm666

Member
So their isometric overhead shooter looks better in 1st (and by extension 3rd) person than some new 1st and 3rd person games by bigger teams. Can't wait to see where they go from here.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Game made by 12 people looks as good as any high end exclusive this year. Fucking crazy.
lol I said this like ten times when coop-ing with friends last week.

But then again the performance in this game is absolutely trash. Stuttering galore. Massive frame drops from 60 to 0 fps on explosions. Game is extremely unpolished and shows it was made by 12 people.
 
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