Very interesting video on details and interactivity.
Yeah, I haven't watched the entire video: but this is one of the main gripes I wanted to get into regarding this REmake: the lack of environmental interactivity is quite pitiful. It especially irked me when people started comparing it to the Fox Engine.
Even The Last of Us, which is 6 years old at this point, has more environmental interactivity than this game. It's quite jarring. It's not even just the lack of dynamic interactivity that's disappointing, but the lack of interesting details in the environment as well. That's something that The Last of Us pulled off in spades that adds a ton to the game's lore and atmosphere that just seems lackluster and almost anachronistic in this demo.
A perfect example is the various documents and newspaper articles strewn about the police department - their text is almost all illegible and just become blurry flat textures upon closer inspection.
To me, that's inexcusable.
In The Last of Us (I compare these two because they obviously share a lot of similarities in terms of themes and gameplay design - both games have cribbed ideas from one another [The original RE2, obviously]), the same items would have clearly legible text that would help flesh out what the world was like months or even moments just before the chaos ensued. It really adds to the oppressive atmosphere and stimulates the player.
REmake literally reminds of the original RE 2 in the atmosphere department due to the lack of environmental details and interactivity which is super-disappointing. It actually makes me think less of the engine as a whole and it hardly comes across as anything more impressive than the original GCN REmake 15 years ago.
At least, as far as this demo goes.
