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[Bitstream]

Sometimes 25 talented developers are simply better than 300-500 overpaid losers who have gotten complacent and have lost the drive to be the best.

Most of the time there were breakthroughs in a genre or tech it was done by a few geniuses, not a >500 peoples team stuck in meetings all day arguing on how to go forward.

To that end, I also wonder how many of those original naughty dog geniuses still work there. Passion or not, doing 80-90 hour weeks for months on end will lose its appeal, especially as you get married and start a family. How many of those original geniuses would stay behind and want to keep pushing the boundary while getting forced to work on mandated GAAS trash or whatever lesbian fantasy druckmann is dreaming up?

I know a lot of you are hopeful that ND still has the goods, but I think it's time to face the music. After their underwhelming and uninspired intergalactic trailer, maybe they just don't have that dog in them anymore?

After however many years they had to work on this, at best they came up a lesbians in space cowboy bebop setting with a 'souls like' combat vs uninspired robots.

Maybe their best days are behind them?

 

[Jack Howitzer]

Why this hybrid approach start to appear lately on gen even so it's the best way to achieve good performance /visuals on current gen consoles?

Skill issue? And lacking of budget/time or whatever they need to implement these stuff on hardwares properly

 

[Buggy Loop]

To that end, I also wonder how many of those original naughty dog geniuses still work there. Passion or not, doing 80-90 hour weeks for months on end will lose its appeal, especially as you get married and start a family. How many of those original geniuses would stay behind and want to keep pushing the boundary while getting forced to work on mandated GAAS trash or whatever lesbian fantasy druckmann is dreaming up?

I know a lot of you are hopeful that ND still has the goods, but I think it's time to face the music. After their underwhelming and uninspired intergalactic trailer, maybe they just don't have that dog in them anymore?

After however many years they had to work on this, at best they came up a lesbians in space cowboy bebop setting with a 'souls like' combat vs uninspired robots.

Maybe their best days are behind them?

I mean also as you say, peoples change. Almost 20 years since Uncharted. 13 years for Last of Us. Even a crazy graphic engine lead out of university or with few working experience before being a huge influence in your studio will likely change his energy a lot 20 years later with kids/family, etc.

Just a few key searches from the Uncharted 4, TLOU part 1 and 2 :

Spoiler

Christian Gyrling who was lead programmer with a massive role behind the graphic engine of Uncharted and last of us has left the place a 2 years ago. Now at Meta.

Corrine Yu, left for Amazon

Jason Gregory who is also an author for game engine architecture and school teacher at University of Southern California. He might still be there, at least he's credited in 2024 for TLOU part 2 remaster.

Carlos Gonzalez-Ocha, left for Epic games 9 years ago

Ke Xu who was on TLOU and Uncharted 4 left for Riot games.

Just a few sample of a probably much bigger team but you get the idea

Teams are organic and change, peoples leave, peoples enter, peoples age.

I also put my expectations that it's a matter of time before a super talented team dwindles down. Can happen to the best studios, nobody's immune. Can happen to Nintendo's A teams, can happen to Miyazaki's, etc. Opposite can happen too, new blood can completely change a studio.

Not saying it will happen to Naughty Dog btw, I have no idea if they'll blow our minds with whatever is next, but wasting time on gaas must have been draining the team a lot.

 

[Msamy]

Skill issue? And lacking of budget/time or whatever they need to implement these stuff on hardwares properly

Yes skill issue or laziness seems to be the case, and budget /time may affect small developers but many big studios with huge budget/ time failed to implement that hybrid solution until now and that's disappointing

 

[March Climber]

I mean also as you say, peoples change. Almost 20 years since Uncharted. 13 years for Last of Us. Even a crazy graphic engine lead out of university or with few working experience before being a huge influence in your studio will likely change his energy a lot 20 years later with kids/family, etc.

Just a few key searches from the Uncharted 4, TLOU part 1 and 2 :

Spoiler

Christian Gyrling who was lead programmer with a massive role behind the graphic engine of Uncharted and last of us has left the place a 2 years ago. Now at Meta.

Corrine Yu, left for Amazon

Jason Gregory who is also an author for game engine architecture and school teacher at University of Southern California. He might still be there, at least he's credited in 2024 for TLOU part 2 remaster.

Carlos Gonzalez-Ocha, left for Epic games 9 years ago

Ke Xu who was on TLOU and Uncharted 4 left for Riot games.

Just a few sample of a probably much bigger team but you get the idea

Teams are organic and change, peoples leave, peoples enter, peoples age.

I also put my expectations that it's a matter of time before a super talented team dwindles down. Can happen to the best studios, nobody's immune. Can happen to Nintendo's A teams, can happen to Miyazaki's, etc. Opposite can happen too, new blood can completely change a studio.

Not saying it will happen to Naughty Dog btw, I have no idea if they'll blow our minds with whatever is next, but wasting time on gaas must have been draining the team a lot.

I think the issue with this rhetoric is that it implies the old guard of a dev team teaches nothing at all to the newer developers. Most studio leads take on a new protege to pass the torch to and senior developers teach the rookies the best they can over the years that are spent together.

I'd argue that the gameplay and attention to detail at Naughty Dog never left for that 20 years. Same with Insomniac.

It's mainly the writing and narrative that are in question for both because writing is one of the few professions where it's most likely that senior writer might not teach a rookie how to do it their way.

For example Kojima can't directly teach someone how to write like Kojima. That comes from within. However there are rare times like when the writer behind MGS Rising managed to risk a huge swing and hit a home run with a near Kojima-level plot anyway.

 

[Kumomeme]

Hellblade Studio hunting for buyer, days after announcing new game for PS5

a shame
I hope they find someone who believes in them
not like what befell RAD and how Sony had the audacity to do to them what they did to Evolution,
Their only rival in terms of sheer fidelity and cinematographic prowess would be Marvel: The Rise of Hydra right now, and maybe Crossfire
if RAD were still around, they would wipe the floor with today's "stunning tech showcases" like HB2.
Critics today suddenly have no qualms about praising showcase experiences like HB2 for the very same reasons they heaped criticism on a game like The Order1886 back in the day.
That game was a generation ahead of its time and fell victim to bad timing and a forced release date

this was a BASE ps4 game mind you

this is why i actually not worry about Switch 2.

also why i said on other thread that i prefer the devs slowdown the visual focus since we at diminishing return area. better use all the resource on gameplay aspect like NPC AI, physics etc.

im not suprise best looking PS4 games would still hold on well even during PS6 era.

 

[viveks86]

GTA 6 use RT reflections on water? viveks86 what's your thoughts on this? Looks like They go with hybrid approach, I Remmber back on the beginning of this gen..me and SlimySnake keep asking why developers don't take that hybrid approach to use ray tracing whatever on gi, shadows and reflections, seeing rockstar using it on reflection and SSM on GI lately on end of current gen life cycles, keep me wounder why most dev this generation choose either go fully on RT/PT with best visuals on pc and many tradeoffs on consoles version or neglect it completely and give us at best cross gen looking titles. Why this hybrid approach start to appear lately on gen even so it's the best way to achieve good performance /visuals on current gen consoles?

GTA 6 and the Mystery of the Missing Ferris Wheel Reflection

Our experts chime in on the latest Grand Theft Auto trailer.

www.digitalfoundry.net

DF has been doing such a shit job with their analysis of late so I won't take their word for any of it. They find one evidence and don't bother seeking any counter evidence or alternative explanations before they draw conclusions. That's just confirmation bias. They might be right, just like they turned out to be right with their e-day "analysis". But no way to be claiming it with such certainty. They did this with Jason in the car in trailer 2 as well. A lot of that was quite obviously NOT RT reflections but they called it RT anyway.

There could be some RT on the water, but it's most definitely not ALL RT. And there is pretty obvious SSR artifacting in the bottom left (see shadowed buildings fading in exactly like SSR would in GIF below) that DF missed once again.

As a result, sky-scrapers do not impact the reflection as they encroach on the sides of the frame.

I don't even… that's literally what's happening on the bottom left!

But they show you another part of the screen which could just as easily be explained with cube maps.

Here's one possibility:

Given how simple they are, they could be cube maps too, generated for different times of day.

See the building reflections on the bottom left fading in as the camera is pulled back. That's classic SSR, layered on top of a base cube map. If those were newer objects being added to the BVH, they would pop-in, instead of swipe-in.

It's possible they are using a combination of all 3 techniques. Simplified proxy for RT reflection + SSR + cubemap.

They could be using low quality proxies with RT, but why bother? Cubemaps are way cheaper. Just use what SSM did with RT cubemaps and you get near perfect alignment of rough, low quality reflections. Then layer in SSR wherever there is some dynamic/unpredictable states in the world that cubemaps can't handle and you are all set.

I think they may be Ray tracing against the sky to get an accurate reflection of that, as they have dynamic day/night cycles, clouds and weather. Not mirroring that would be even more jarring, especially with camera movement. It has a greater visual impact than a Ferris wheel reflection that you would probably notice a couple of times in a whole playthrough. It's all prioritization for fixed performance budgets, so that they can focus on other heavy rendering/ray tracing workloads. Hopefully PC or next gen versions will have none of these shenanigans.

And megalights type solutions don't help RT reflections at this scale either. If there are thousands of lights, having them all in the BVH for tracing reflections becomes super heavy. So any RT reflection of anything lit up becomes a problem on large water bodies at this scale. Probably why they took a chainsaw to it and made it so basic. I actually think it's smart to do so as you are squeezing every once of optimization out of weak consoles that are unable to keep up with rapid technological progress.

Only elegant solution to all of this lies in future tech with DGF + mega geometry. BVH becomes the only source for all geometry in the scene and the clustering and partitioning keeps tracing performance up. Simplified proxies need to go extinct. It was a band aid till hardware and research could catch up.

 

[Buggy Loop]

I think the issue with this rhetoric is that it implies the old guard of a dev team teaches nothing at all to the newer developers. Most studio leads take on a new protege to pass the torch to and senior developers teach the rookies the best they can over the years that are spent together.

Yea, its true

But honestly, if I can take an example as an electrical engineer, I've been in a specific business for like 22 years and I thought I was pretty fucking good. Then I met a guy who is a legit genius. He's a lot more senior and had a golden age of learning things when they were being developed, but still, I see what the guy does, what he develops, the papers he put out, and will still put out even in his 70's with models that billion dollars corporations still had not figured out. Legit genius and its pretty rare to meet these peoples, I've met 2 in my life, where they're in such a completely different realm of knowledge that even as a super high grade engineering student, you feel dumb. Even if you made me sit down next to him and he would try to teach me before his retirement, I legit don't think I could. Yes I can read his papers, yes I can use his tools, I sorta understand what he developed and his explanations, but to actually replace the guy and be the next R&D guru that develops breakthroughs? I legit don't think I have the intelligence. I would be fake by saying I can replace him. Something that probably a lot of peoples in the industry would never admit to, get the position and then the downgrade will be felt throughout the company.

There was no John Carmack protege that even came close to him at id. These type of peoples are truely rare.

 

[SlimySnake]

To that end, I also wonder how many of those original naughty dog geniuses still work there. Passion or not, doing 80-90 hour weeks for months on end will lose its appeal, especially as you get married and start a family. How many of those original geniuses would stay behind and want to keep pushing the boundary while getting forced to work on mandated GAAS trash or whatever lesbian fantasy druckmann is dreaming up?

I know a lot of you are hopeful that ND still has the goods, but I think it's time to face the music. After their underwhelming and uninspired intergalactic trailer, maybe they just don't have that dog in them anymore?

After however many years they had to work on this, at best they came up a lesbians in space cowboy bebop setting with a 'souls like' combat vs uninspired robots.

Maybe their best days are behind them?

Yeah i had figured that the talent simply left but at GG, sucker punch, kojipro and ssm, the top directors are still there. Nd is the only place at Sony where the directors were ousted by neil. And i believe that direction of whether or not to target ray tracing comes from the top. Nearly every dev, including b tier devs handling their own engine have figured out ray tracing by now. It shouldn't be this hard if they really wanted to implement it. Especially software based ray tracing/software lumen or realtime gi that we have seen in starfield, forza 8, James Bond, kingdom come 2, etc

But yes, i wouldn't be surprised if the top tier talent left and their replacements just didn't want to bother learning how to implement new techniques like ray tracing or mesh shaders.

 

[March Climber]

Yea, its true

But honestly, if I can take an example as an electrical engineer, I've been in a specific business for like 22 years and I thought I was pretty fucking good. Then I met a guy who is a legit genius. He's a lot more senior and had a golden age of learning things when they were being developed, but still, I see what the guy does, what he develops, the papers he put out, and will still put out even in his 70's with models that billion dollars corporations still had not figured out. Legit genius and its pretty rare to meet these peoples, I've met 2 in my life, where they're in such a completely different realm of knowledge that even as a super high grade engineering student, you feel dumb. Even if you made me sit down next to him and he would try to teach me before his retirement, I legit don't think I could. Yes I can read his papers, yes I can use his tools, I sorta understand what he developed and his explanations, but to actually replace the guy and be the next R&D guru that develops breakthroughs? I legit don't think I have the intelligence. I would be fake by saying I can replace him. Something that probably a lot of peoples in the industry would never admit to, get the position and then the downgrade will be felt throughout the company.

There was no John Carmack protege that even came close to him at id. These type of peoples are truely rare.

But you're making them sound both rare and everywhere at the same time. Even in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, a ton of devs of varying quality made some pretty unique and good games, but they still didn't measure up to John Carmack, because he stands on his own mountain alone. That doesn't mean the others during his time in gaming were all a downgrade in quality.

There are so many past developer interviews out there where you'll hear devs say 'We kind of didn't know what we were doing and we stuck some things together and made it work. There were a ton of findable bugs but people mostly enjoyed the game'.

They did what they could to provide fun experiences and we all enjoyed them at a younger age.

This is still happening today, but I think people keep their eyes so adamantly glued to old guard AAA for all of this, when myself and others have been trying so very hard to turn gamers' eyesights in a different direction. A direction where the industry seems to be headed anyway as you see most of the old guard AAA slowly let go of everyone and everything around them and reel into their safest corners of profit.

Sometimes I think gamers won't actually turn their heads around in this direction until they all finally crumble apart, but I wouldn't want to actually wish that fate on anyone.

 

[SlimySnake]

Yea, its true

But honestly, if I can take an example as an electrical engineer, I've been in a specific business for like 22 years and I thought I was pretty fucking good. Then I met a guy who is a legit genius. He's a lot more senior and had a golden age of learning things when they were being developed, but still, I see what the guy does, what he develops, the papers he put out, and will still put out even in his 70's with models that billion dollars corporations still had not figured out. Legit genius and its pretty rare to meet these peoples, I've met 2 in my life, where they're in such a completely different realm of knowledge that even as a super high grade engineering student, you feel dumb. Even if you made me sit down next to him and he would try to teach me before his retirement, I legit don't think I could. Yes I can read his papers, yes I can use his tools, I sorta understand what he developed and his explanations, but to actually replace the guy and be the next R&D guru that develops breakthroughs? I legit don't think I have the intelligence. I would be fake by saying I can replace him. Something that probably a lot of peoples in the industry would never admit to, get the position and then the downgrade will be felt throughout the company.

There was no John Carmack protege that even came close to him at id. These type of peoples are truely rare.

This is definitely a possibility but why is it only impacting Sony studios? We have a lot of studios still not using ue5 but have developed their own rt systems, and added mesh shader support.
Remedy and 4a games did it in 2019
Cd project did it in 2020
Respawn, Bethesda, turn10, and Ubisoft massive in 2023
warhorse and Ubisoft Quebec in 2025
Io interactive in 2026

So why Sony? They are bigger and well funded than most of these studios. If they did bleed talent then you have to ask why only them.

I will give you the carmack example. Doom dark ages is embarrassing despite using rt. Carmack is probably suicidal watching them produce this garbage.

 

[Msamy]

DF has been doing such a shit job with their analysis of late so I won't take their word for any of it. They find one evidence and don't bother seeking any counter evidence or alternative explanations before they draw conclusions. That's just confirmation bias. They might be right, just like they turned out to be right with their e-day "analysis". But no way to be claiming it with such certainty. They did this with Jason in the car in trailer 2 as well. A lot of that was quite obviously NOT RT reflections but they called it RT anyway.

There could be some RT on the water, but it's most definitely not ALL RT. And there is pretty obvious SSR artifacting in the bottom left (see shadowed buildings fading in exactly like SSR would in GIF below) that DF missed once again.


I don't even… that's literally what's happening on the bottom left!

But they show you another part of the screen which could just as easily be explained with cube maps.

Here's one possibility:


They could be using low quality proxies with RT, but why bother? Cubemaps are way cheaper. Just use what SSM did with RT cubemaps and you get near perfect alignment of rough, low quality reflections. Then layer in SSR wherever there is some dynamic/unpredictable states in the world that cubemaps can't handle and you are all set.

I think they may be Ray tracing against the sky to get an accurate reflection of that, as they have dynamic day/night cycles, clouds and weather. Not mirroring that would be even more jarring, especially with camera movement. It has a greater visual impact than a Ferris wheel reflection that you would probably notice a couple of times in a whole playthrough. It's all prioritization for fixed performance budgets, so that they can focus on other heavy rendering/ray tracing workloads. Hopefully PC or next gen versions will have none of these shenanigans.

And megalights type solutions don't help RT reflections at this scale either. If there are thousands of lights, having them all in the BVH for tracing reflections becomes super heavy. So any RT reflection of anything lit up becomes a problem on large water bodies at this scale. Probably why they took a chainsaw to it and made it so basic. I actually think it's smart to do so as you are squeezing every once of optimization out of weak consoles that are unable to keep up with rapid technological progress.

Only elegant solution to all of this lies in future tech with DGF + mega geometry. BVH becomes the only source for all geometry in the scene and the clustering and partitioning keeps tracing performance up. Simplified proxies need to go extinct. It was a band aid till hardware and research could catch up.

This type analysis are far better than Digital Foundry unpolished articles thanks viveks86 , also I agree with you that for GTA VI rt reflections against the sky are the most important

 

[SlimySnake]

 

[Msamy]

Imagine if the best looking game this generation will come from team of 25 developers while 200+ AAA teams can't even come close

 

[Gubaldo]

Damn that looks incredible!!

 

[nkarafo]

Damn that looks incredible!!

Yeah, i wish i knew what game that is.

 

[Von Hugh]

Yeah, i wish i knew what game that is.

 

[Gonzito]

No Law looks amazing

That being said, the ascent is a buggy mess and the gameplay was quite mediocre so I am not expecting a polished game or even a very good one to be honest

I hope I am wrong but this company just seems to be good at making graphics and thats the end of it

 

[Gonzito]

Very interesting mod for FF7 rebirth on pc, it makes things look less flat which unfortunately is a big problem with the game

 

[TheRedRiders]

Very interesting mod for FF7 rebirth on pc, it makes things look less flat which unfortunately is a big problem with the game

Currently playing Remake and i'm convinced it looks way better visually than Rebirth, especially the lighting.

 

[Gonzito]

Currently playing Remake and i'm convinced it looks way better visually than Rebirth, especially the lighting.

Lighting wise absolutely

On the other hand assets and textures are both quite similar

 

[Critical Hit]

Was the damage completely dynamic and real time like beamNG

Yes. The physics in GTA 4 was quite complex, but Rockstar greatly simplified it in GTA 5.

 

[PeteBull]

Hellblade Studio hunting for buyer, days after announcing new game for PS5

a shame
I hope they find someone who believes in them
not like what befell RAD and how Sony had the audacity to do to them what they did to Evolution,
Their only rival in terms of sheer fidelity and cinematographic prowess would be Marvel: The Rise of Hydra right now, and maybe Crossfire
if RAD were still around, they would wipe the floor with today's "stunning tech showcases" like HB2.
Critics today suddenly have no qualms about praising showcase experiences like HB2 for the very same reasons they heaped criticism on a game like The Order1886 back in the day.
That game was a generation ahead of its time and fell victim to bad timing and a forced release date

this was a BASE ps4 game mind you

Still got my physical copy of that game, and it still holds up, it looks so phenomenal coz it was 30fps with rare dips corridor shooter and on top devs opted for 1920x800p resolution (25% fewer pixels yet IQ same as full 1080p, thx to black bars), that way then could push ps4 graphical fidelity to the max
That discounted 30-40$ copy(game bombed terribly and its price fell flat even 6weeks after launch) was money wellspent

 

[Rheon]

Very interesting mod for FF7 rebirth on pc, it makes things look less flat which unfortunately is a big problem with the game

I just started playing Rebirth and while I don't mind the visuals, this does look improved in certain areas.

 

[Gonzito]

I just started playing Rebirth and while I don't mind the visuals, this does look improved in certain areas.

The mod is not available yet though. The uploader says it will be uploaded at some point

 

[SlimySnake]

Very interesting mod for FF7 rebirth on pc, it makes things look less flat which unfortunately is a big problem with the game

Dear god what a garbage looking game in vanilla mode. So much better with some proper grass shadows.

Remember this game is native 4k on the base ps5. Could've easily added ray traced shadows and still hit 1800p. Its a ue4 game which has rt support . Respawn was able to add rtgi and reflections in Jedi at 1440p internal resolution before using fsr to upscale. Callisto devs were able to add rt reflections and shadows at the same resolution. Rt shadows alone should be much cheaper.

 

[Gonzito]

Dear god what a garbage looking game in vanilla mode. So much better with some proper grass shadows.

Remember this game is native 4k on the base ps5. Could've easily added ray traced shadows and still hit 1800p. Its a ue4 game which has rt support . Respawn was able to add rtgi and reflections in Jedi at 1440p internal resolution before using fsr to upscale. Callisto devs were able to add rt reflections and shadows at the same resolution. Rt shadows alone should be much cheaper.

On top of the awful textures, the lighting is bad, the lod is bad and shadow quality without mods its terrible lol

Honestly if it wasnt for the high poly character models this game could perfectly belong to the ps3 era

 

[Msamy]

 

[anyasok]

Dear god what a garbage looking game in vanilla mode. So much better with some proper grass shadows.

Remember this game is native 4k on the base ps5. Could've easily added ray traced shadows and still hit 1800p. Its a ue4 game which has rt support . Respawn was able to add rtgi and reflections in Jedi at 1440p internal resolution before using fsr to upscale. Callisto devs were able to add rt reflections and shadows at the same resolution. Rt shadows alone should be much cheaper.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation Director Explains Why The Game Is Using Unreal Engine 4 Instead Of UE5

Final Fantasy VII Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi explained why the game continues to use Unreal Engine 4, citing development efficiency, custom technology, and a faster path to release.

noisypixel.net

Whatever game engine you use, you want us to look at the final output.

Exactly, exactly. You often hear of something called Nanite* when discussing UE5, but when we made Rebirth we made our own rendering system that was basically the same as Nanite, so we were able to have a comparable quality to UE5. As a development team we've made lots of AAA games up until now, so I hope players can place their trust in us

 

[Msamy]

Final Fantasy VII Revelation Director Explains Why The Game Is Using Unreal Engine 4 Instead Of UE5

Final Fantasy VII Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi explained why the game continues to use Unreal Engine 4, citing development efficiency, custom technology, and a faster path to release.

noisypixel.net

Whatever game engine you use, you want us to look at the final output.

Exactly, exactly. You often hear of something called Nanite* when discussing UE5, but when we made Rebirth we made our own rendering system that was basically the same as Nanite, so we were able to have a comparable quality to UE5. As a development team we've made lots of AAA games up until now, so I hope players can place their trust in us

Truly fuck him and his lazy team

 

[T4keD0wN]

Final Fantasy VII Revelation Director Explains Why The Game Is Using Unreal Engine 4 Instead Of UE5

Final Fantasy VII Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi explained why the game continues to use Unreal Engine 4, citing development efficiency, custom technology, and a faster path to release.

noisypixel.net

Whatever game engine you use, you want us to look at the final output.

Exactly, exactly. You often hear of something called Nanite* when discussing UE5, but when we made Rebirth we made our own rendering system that was basically the same as Nanite, so we were able to have a comparable quality to UE5. As a development team we've made lots of AAA games up until now, so I hope players can place their trust in us

Theyve used some functions called "massive enviroment", i remember it sucking even after cranking up their multipliers pretty far.

Just awful, they couldve easily started the project in 5.4 or whatever was newest at the time.

 

[SlimySnake]

but when we made Rebirth we made our own rendering system that was basically the same as Nanite, so we were able to have a comparable quality to UE5.

 

[Bojji]

1.000.000 polygons

 

[Rheon]

1.000.000 polygons

A lot of the textures in this game are just atrocious.

The more I play, the more I'm like wtf. It's especially jarring when you see them next to the character models.

I'd download the modded HD texture pack but I only have 16GB of VRAM

 

[Lootlord]

A lot of the textures in this game are just atrocious.

The more I play, the more I'm like wtf. It's especially jarring when you see them next to the character models.

I'd download the modded HD texture pack but I only have 16GB of VRAM

I could download it but i can't justify using up 160GB for them.

 

[Gonzito]

A lot of the textures in this game are just atrocious.

The more I play, the more I'm like wtf. It's especially jarring when you see them next to the character models.

I'd download the modded HD texture pack but I only have 16GB of VRAM

Just be aware that the HD texture mod don't fix everything. It makes some parts better but it doesn't transform the game into HD. It's a bit mediocre in my opinion

I think it's worth mentioning because downloading 160gb in nexus is no joke

 

[Rheon]

Just be aware that the HD texture mod don't fix everything. It makes some parts better but it doesn't transform the game into HD. It's a bit mediocre in my opinion

I think it's worth mentioning because downloading 160gb in nexus is no joke

That's disappointing. I honestly wouldn't mind the overall visual presentation of the game if so many of the textures weren't absolute dogshit.

 

[JimRyanGOAT]

I'm not blaming the suits for this. Phil gave coalition 7 years. A ue5 license. And this is what they produced.

Herman and Jimbo gave nd 6 years and let's face it, the game is at least two more years away since they can't even get a trailer together for e3. Not to mention cerny who gave them an rt and mesh shader capable gpu, 100x faster ssd, brand new io and a 7x faster cpu. And what have they done with it?

Sometimes 25 talented developers are simply better than 300-500 overpaid losers who have gotten complacent and have lost the drive to be the best.

The problem isn't always developer skill per se. A lot of these developers probably are talented. The bigger issue is that once a team becomes massive, the work gets harder to coordinate.


Sometimes 25 focused, highly motivated developers with a clear vision can outperform 300–500 people working inside a bloated structure. Not because the larger team has no talent, but because that talent gets buried under layers of management, shifting priorities, meetings, approvals, and constant scope changes.


When you have 500 engineers each contributing a tiny piece to a huge engine, and then 50 managers pushing different agendas, changing tasks mid week, or redirecting the project based on corporate goals, things naturally become messy. The developers may be skilled, but their skills are not being used efficiently.


So I don't think it's as simple as "big studio devs are bad." It's more that big studios can become over-managed, complacent, and unfocused. Smaller teams often have clearer ownership, less bureaucracy, faster communication, and more hunger to prove themselves. That can make a huge difference.

 

[amigastar]

You can say what you want but the environments are beautiful in Gothic Remake.
It finally paid off to use UE5 (maybe besides the atrocious performance) but an AA game looking close to an AAA game

 

[SlimySnake]

The problem isn't always developer skill per se. A lot of these developers probably are talented. The bigger issue is that once a team becomes massive, the work gets harder to coordinate.


Sometimes 25 focused, highly motivated developers with a clear vision can outperform 300–500 people working inside a bloated structure. Not because the larger team has no talent, but because that talent gets buried under layers of management, shifting priorities, meetings, approvals, and constant scope changes.


When you have 500 engineers each contributing a tiny piece to a huge engine, and then 50 managers pushing different agendas, changing tasks mid week, or redirecting the project based on corporate goals, things naturally become messy. The developers may be skilled, but their skills are not being used efficiently.


So I don't think it's as simple as "big studio devs are bad." It's more that big studios can become over-managed, complacent, and unfocused. Smaller teams often have clearer ownership, less bureaucracy, faster communication, and more hunger to prove themselves. That can make a huge difference.

ok, but there are plenty of 500 person teams who arent having issues with bloated teams, and overzealous managers.
Ubisoft Massive has a 800 person dev team. Ubisoft quebec is almost 500 people. plus like 10k ubisoft employees helping out around the world. cd project had 500 person teams make a next gen cyberpunk in 2020. remedy has almost 400 devs. they have no issues embracing ray tracing and mesh shaders. io interactive. pearl abyss. plenty of other big AAA studios have gotten ray tracing in. either software or hardware.

this is an almost exclusively a sony problem. we gave them 6 years. i think its time to call a spade a spade and lazy unambitious devs, lazy. especially when we have quotes from them saying how they didnt even try to take advantage of the ps5 hardware and how they are risk averse.

 

[JimRyanGOAT]

ok, but there are plenty of 500 person teams who arent having issues with bloated teams, and overzealous managers.
Ubisoft Massive has a 800 person dev team. Ubisoft quebec is almost 500 people. plus like 10k ubisoft employees helping out around the world. cd project had 500 person teams make a next gen cyberpunk in 2020. remedy has almost 400 devs. they have no issues embracing ray tracing and mesh shaders. io interactive. pearl abyss. plenty of other big AAA studios have gotten ray tracing in. either software or hardware.

this is an almost exclusively a sony problem. we gave them 6 years. i think its time to call a spade a spade and lazy unambitious devs, lazy. especially when we have quotes from them saying how they didnt even try to take advantage of the ps5 hardware and how they are risk averse.

I think this has more to do with poor management on Sony's part than the talent of the developers. The forced GAAS push likely disrupted timelines and made the direction of certain games unclear, especially if resources and team members were being shifted toward live service projects forcefully.

The issue is that instead of letting a studio organically pursue a live service game if it made sense for them, Sony pushed some of their top teams into that model. That kind of forced direction can easily create confusion, delays, and weaker results.

 

[Dust-by-Monday]

I just started playing Hellblade 2 on PS5 Pro and holy cow I've never ever seen graphics that good before. It's like I'm already playing a PS6.

 

[analog_future]

Have that GTA-style itch so I'm finally playing Mafia 3. Really fun game so far. For a 10 year old game, visuals hold up pretty well too with a couple mods. Runs very well at native 4k, too.

Couple quick shots:

 

[SlimySnake]

I think this has more to do with poor management on Sony's part than the talent of the developers. The forced GAAS push likely disrupted timelines and made the direction of certain games unclear, especially if resources and team members were being shifted toward live service projects forcefully.

The issue is that instead of letting a studio organically pursue a live service game if it made sense for them, Sony pushed some of their top teams into that model. That kind of forced direction can easily create confusion, delays, and weaker results.

the gaas mandate likely impact gg and nd, but sucker punch? no. kojipro? no. insomanic? housemarque? SSM? no evidence to suggest they ever worked on a gaas game.

bend and bluepoint were fucked by gaas for sure, but they never ended up releasing those games. im going off of whats been released or revealed.

 

[Critical Hit]

Really fun game so far.

It won't last long. Look for a mod that cuts out most of the grind.

 

[RavionUHD]

More Death Stranding 2 in 4K Ultrawide with DLDSR, max Settings and Reshade:

 

[Gonzito]

More Death Stranding 2 in 4K Ultrawide with DLDSR, max Settings and Reshade:

The game looks fantastic in general. Shame that the gameplay its so easy, there is basically no challenge.

 

[Critical Hit]

The game looks fantastic in general. Shame that the gameplay its so easy, there is basically no challenge.

On the hardest difficulty?

 

[Gonzito]

On the hardest difficulty?

Yes. I played it back at launch

 

[Represent.]

Place your bets
Is the GTA 6 Trailer 3 captured on PS5 PRO or Base PS5?

Previous trailers have all been Base PS5.

looking back, i think racoon city was disappointing on the whole. yes, it had some cool setpieces and boss fights, but i thought they were doing open world and it was just one wide linear area. not even at the same scope as the last of us 2 open world level. fun to play, i was expecting something along the lines of the crater level in ragnorak.

Thats actually great news to me. I want nothing to do with another bland open world game, espcially in the Horror genre. Keep it linear as fuck and ramp up the atmosphere
Im absolutely loving it.

WHat Would've been dope is a dynamic day/night cycle. You're out in Raccoon City and night hits/ zombie become more active. could have been an actual game mechanic