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Uncharted 4 vs 007 First Light Digital Foundry comparison

What game looks better?

  • Uncharted 4

    Votes: 111 65.3%
  • 007 First Light

    Votes: 48 28.2%
  • Tie

    Votes: 11 6.5%

  • Total voters
    170
Thanks for proving my point, you showed a 13 year difference range.

The difference isn't that big, and that's just one game.

GTA VI isn't even out yet, nor we have seen real time gameplay.

Not mention, decades of work and hundreds of millions thrown into it.

2 years worth of time back then created bigger jumps than decades worth of time today.

There's a reason many don't even consider the PS5 that big of a jump, over the PS4.

Diminishing returns

In fact, many PS5 games ARE PS4 games with the settings turned a little higher.
I don't think anyone is denying diminishing returns is real, nor that modern generational jumps could be compared with previous jumps on a first, superficial glance.

But RT has been this gen's improvement and it does make a big difference. We shouldn't be using Rockstar or Naughty Dog as examples because those aren't realistic representations of what was possible to achieve last gen by regular developers, take 90% of previous gen games lighting and compare it with modern solutions. We have Indie games looking photorealistic now, when has that ever been the case in the rasterization days?

A very good Path Tracing implementation against a regular last gen game is just as real, true generational leap. Technically speaking, probably greater than some of the past.

Also, last gen games, the better looking ones, all ran at 30fps. This gen they tried to do both RT and 60fps.
 
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No, but to be fair the end result is what matters. Maybe part of the problem we have with UE5 is that devs focus a LOT ON THE HOW, maybe too much and this results in the compromises we know all too well?

Then again, I can see the reason for some of the recent pushes for RT like in the DOOM and Indiana Jones games to simplify the art pipeline too.
The bold is the key. Look as a graphics enthusiast, I might care about the how but at the end of the day, what matters is the end results.

If you hype up the use of RT and the net benefits are not immediately apparent to the average consumer, it's of no use. In this thread, someone was talking about RT enables coherent lighting.

I promise you that the average user doesn't care until they can easily identify a large enough difference. In the examples we've seen on these consoles, the differences are not immediately apparent in most cases.

What most consumers see today is ps5 games that barely look better than ps4 games.

On machines 6-8x weaker with all the constraints, devs were able to release games that are being compared to releases today. That is why this thread exists.

This has been a gen of 900p, 720p, 792p, even 540p with immortals of aveum. An embarrassing use of technical resources.
 
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Both Gonzito Gonzito and mindfreak191 mindfreak191 are right.

Game has serious texture streaming issues in some places, changing them to high and then back to ultra reloads a lot of them:

XpKVmUpxNegpbIz1.jpeg
R3T0xqCgIv5BIjIM.jpeg
b9wevyyAA1SVqzhZ.jpeg
rT2X2EycitMEaHms.jpeg
mnPW9srBL6R5K95w.jpeg
1ZxRAFvNwVqlCtIw.jpeg


At the same time, I can't replicate quality of textures seen on mindfreak191 mindfreak191 screenshots.

1h83to0b4NJHMjxC.png
f4yKPlH5ASWKGvjW.png


vs. mindfreak191 mindfreak191

ku1twqF7jPqIOg3B.jpg
 
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I feel like the game currently has texture loading issues.

Cause it doesn't make sense for this one big rock to be like this in the middle of a properly textured small garden.

Clearly something is not loading properly.


H9SzFAxOk4wAKEre.png
 
Both Gonzito Gonzito and mindfreak191 mindfreak191 are right.

Game has serious texture streaming issues in some places, changing them to high and then back to ultra reloads a lot of them:

Your computer is broken too Bojji apparently, and the digital foundry computer is broken as well, and adamsapple adamsapple xbox is broken as well

Only by some miracle that guy who made those screenshots apparently has 4k textures in his game and they all work a 100 percent correctly too
 
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Found the fucking washing machine, lol.

Yeah it looks like untextured shit. Considering there's screens showing it loading a higher grade texture, I'm gonna chalk it down to the game having streaming issues.




ZESbsmvcNoApytis.png
 
Thanks for proving my point, you showed a 13 year difference range.

The difference isn't that big, and that's just one game.

GTA VI isn't even out yet, nor we have seen real time gameplay.

Not mention, decades of work and hundreds of millions thrown into it.

2 years worth of time back then created bigger jumps than decades worth of time today.

There's a reason many don't even consider the PS5 that big of a jump, over the PS4.

Diminishing returns

In fact, many PS5 games ARE PS4 games with the settings turned a little higher.
Your point is practically a tautology. I didn't disagree with you. Diminishing returns is common law for most things in life, once you cross a certain threshold in progress. Not just graphics. It doesn't even need proof. Obviously no one would say my example is a bigger jump than your example. What I'm asking for is more nuance in the conversation.

My point is, has it reached a stage where the pursuit has become fruitless or not? I believe we aren't there yet. And until we are there, we shouldn't dismiss progress. There is nuance still worthy of discussion. It can't be dismissed with claims of diminishing returns yet.

Look at the same game in contention.

This is what they wanted to pull off with Vietnam in their prerendered-in-engine footage:

Vision:

007-first-light-screenshot-01-en-02jul25



Reality:
hQrAvb73zVDugMO0.png

Or the very opening scene

Vision:
teIGUWtV0FvVHcDV.png


Reality:

BucB1iIzZFZksgFJ.png



When the game can do so much better within its own engine, we don't even need to look elsewhere on how much further it can go before differences become hard to notice. Any layperson can still see it, so this isn't just "academic".
 
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Found the fucking washing machine, lol.

Yeah it looks like untextured shit. Considering there's screens showing it loading a higher grade texture, I'm gonna chalk it down to the game having streaming issues.




ZESbsmvcNoApytis.png

There is no way this is what the asset is supposed to look like.
Cuz it would be harder to make this asset than to just load the uncompressed texture directly into the engine.
That is abysmal.

Its TLOU all over again, the game is doing something wrong for sure.


How did DF not notice any of these hyper muddy textures?

M looks very good (it's default for performance DLSS), I didn't test L.

Hmm thats good.
Preset M has been giving me issues with RT games that have their own denoiser, I have had to manually switch off the in game denoiser or use Preset K.
If this game defaults to Preset M and it doesnt fuck with the in game denoiser pretty much means Nvidia and Devs are already on top of the denoiser clash.

Good.
 
First light does that on a machine 6 time more powerful than the ps4 which uncharted released on.
I'm not debating if First Light is good by modern standards. I take issue with the notion that Uncharted 4 a game released in 2015 is the overall better looking game which I frankly find ridiculous
Even then, uncharted had decent NPC density. Secondly the bold is either debatable or a flat out lie.
It does but First Light has Insane NPC density it dwarfs Uncharted 4 while having more NPC variety and more complex routines. It's effects the visuals massively but apparently Nathan Drake taking his jacket off is more important.

Uncharted has better:
  • Animations
Overall I would agree however...
  • Better combat animations
Not melee Uncharted 4 melee animations are dated. Last of Us 2 has much better melee animations.
  • Better contextual animations
Again not with melee. The way Bond and the goons collide and Interact with environment is top tier maybe the best.
  • Better animation blending
Overall I agree.
  • Similar levels of destruction(see the market levels, etc)
No not close Uncharted 4 is very uneven some parts like the market place and Jeep chase have lot's of physics and destruction but most of the gunfights have very little if any at all. All of First Light gun fights and fist fights have lots of destruction and objects that can be physically interacted with.
  • Asset variety is not drastically different
No Dude no just no....First Light is lightyears ahead. Take one look at the side by side of Uncharted 4 auction house in the digital foundry video it's so obvious. It's like trying to argue the Switch 2 version of FF rebirth has similar assets to the PS5 version.
  • Better textures while using half the ram
I thought this at first but after having watched proper continous gameplay of Uncharted 4 I don't agree. Uncharted 4 is clearly held back by being on PS4 although it likely does a better job at hiding it's weak spots compared to First Light.
  • Better gun play and combat scenarios
  • Better driving mechanics
These are Gameplay mechanics not sure why your bringing them up.
  • Better driving physics
  • Better boat physics
Agree the vehicle sections are clearly a weak point in First Light.
First light is a disappointing technical effort for a 2026 game. It should not trail a 10 year old game in any categories. Especially when that game is runs on a system using 6x weaker gpu, half the ram, 1/4 the cpu.
Again I'm not arguing this.
Is first light even a significant step up from the Hitman games? Not at all.
You think so? I saw this video yesterday and think First Light is a good step.

 
UC4 has aged like fine wine. The fact that there's even an attempt to make a comparison here is saying that. I do think Bond clearly has the upper hand on fine detail, textures and everything though (other than the outlier broken ones that people have posted).
 
Man if people are underwhelmed by First Light's graphics, just wait until all the multiplatform stuffs makes room for the Switch 2 and PS6P ports.
 
New video. No mention of the most impressive stuff in the game, but drives the point home very well.



John:

"It really shows them at the top of their game.
And it looks so good. Like I'm looking at footage of that chase sequence, the famous chase sequence they showed off at E3, right?
That still looks so good that it stands toe-to-toe with anything today. I mean, in some ways the footage of that running on PS5 at 60 FPS looks better than Bond that we were just looking at, right?
Like the level of detail is comparable, but there's just so much happening. The visual fidelity of all those objects, the physics, the speed, the post effects, the animation, it's just absurd.
"

"It was kind of like the height of the baked out era. And I don't mean that like in a in a drug-related way. I mean it in terms of like, lighting and such, where everything was sort of like hand-crafted and baked to become exactly what they needed when they needed it. Because it isn't a game that has things like dynamic time of day. It doesn't need to be like that. Like it's crafted to deliver a very specific vision from start to finish.
And man, it's um it really, really holds up."


Oliver:

"I really like all these Naughty Dog games and stuff like that. I really like Uncharted 4 as well. I'd probably put the TLoU games above Uncharted 4, come to think of it. But I mean I do like all of them quite a bit, I would have to say. But I definitely concur with John when it comes to like this a certain baked era of eighth gen rendering technology that we saw, especially in like single player games, single player action games, where you had like PBR materials, great lighting, volumetrics, SSR, and TAA, and all those techniques kind of came together to produce a very consistent and good visual look, especially when you look at like materials across a range of lighting conditions and environments and everything looking consistent. And then of course in Uncharted 4 you had the incredible character rendering as well, especially in cutscenes. Just absolutely fantastic. And then all the physics that John mentioned as well, like all the secondary bits of animation and like when Nathan Drake was shooting his AK-47, how the strap would jingle and jangle everywhere, and that was just so cool to me at the time."

"And then of course, I mean the propulsive sequences, like I mean I I think that what IO Interactive is doing with Hitman looks very impressive, but just like what Naughty Dog was doing in 2016 in that Madagascar chase sequence and it's something else. It really is something else."

"And I think that Uncharted 4 perhaps represents the peak, certainly a peak, if not the peak, of like this kind of very curated artist heavy game development on eighth generation consoles where we were still getting I thought reasonable returns for the time that was invested in these games cuz you know the span between Uncharted Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us was like less than a was about a 3-year span there and I tend to think that like we were seeing a deceleration of development time. We were seeing games take longer to develop but the rewards that we're getting for that increased development time were longer games with more sophisticated gameplay, more interesting systems, more like wide linear levels in the case of Uncharted 4. We were seeing much greater graphical fidelity. Like I felt like all the rewards were paying off in a big explosive way that generation and there's really no game that exemplifies that kind of trade-off more than Uncharted 4 where I really felt like that was putting in the work for gamers."

"But yeah, I think Uncharted 4 is still a fantastic looking game and compares very very favorably to a lot of games today and it represents like just an extraordinary level of artistry and just an incredible level of character driven action that really hasn't been arguably hasn't been surpassed since. I mean, there have been some games that have come close.
Obviously Uncharted The Lost Legacy expanded out on kind of the wide linear sections of Uncharted 4 and delivered something quite good as well but without the really explosive um set piece sequences that defined a lot of Uncharted 4's appeal and without as many narrative sequences. I I think there's probably a a good case to be made that Uncharted 4 is really a singular game in terms of what it achieves and in terms of the kinds of things that it was able to do on a you know, 1.8 teraflop PlayStation 4 back in, you know, 2016 and 2013 era hardware it's kind of unparalleled."
 
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