The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Art Director stated that the team prioritized improved response (frame rate) over making the game prettier during development.
This is probably the closest Nintendo will get to acknowledging the graphics downgrade from the original E3 2014 trailer.
In an interview with Lex Fridman, Epic Games' Tim Sweeney shared the first details about the next version of Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 6.
It’s going to come packed with a bunch of flashy, buzzword-filled features that no one will actually be able to use without tanking performance. And just like every iteration of that engine before it, the excuse won’t be that it’s poorly optimized, no, it’s "forward-thinking" and the hardware just isn’t ready to keep up.
But since it saves studios from having to invest in developing their own internal engines, it’ll still end up being widely adopted across the industry.
What cracks me up, is a lot of games utilize Unreal 5 and yet gaming has become more expensive. So all that BS that they shoveled out the last big reveal hasn’t translated into savings and if it has, then the industry is just plain ol’ lying.
You mean like “going digital will bring down costs for customer dramatically. Because there will be no packaging/distribution.” Or maybe the “games going forward, will be cross-buy so you buy it once and will be able to access it across all platforms you own.” Or even the “if we increase the rrp it will mean we can get rid of micro transactions altogether.”
… I could be here all day quoting the lies from this industry.
Scope of games are way bigger than even just 10 years ago. Also keep in mind that Epic charges 5% for using their engine, Steam charges 30% just like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft's stores. That's 35% of your revenue gone. Steam infuriates me because they don't have nearly the overhead console manufacturers have but they know people are unlikely to migrate to Epic Games Store (which charges 15% instead but has a shit storefront compared to steam). I love UE5 (for the most part) and it has pushed the envelope in ways that would be too long to list here. I think UE6 will push things further and make it possible for devs who don't have Rockstar resources to make amazing games even further. Time will tell.
I find this odd. How am I expected to be excited with future promises when mired by the current legacy of UE5 and its myriad of technical shortcomings that have yet to be solved, even years after release.
Of course they should be working towards the future, but talking about it while UE5 still has many unsolved issues years after it has been the de facto standard? An engine used by so many, after so many years, with the backing of a company as grossly cash-rich as Epic shouldn't have so many problems still.
And the optics - even if not the truth of the matter - is you're putting time & resources into UE6 at the expense of UE5; your current product still needs quite a lot of attention. Unless the message is "we're abandoning UE5 because it's issues are systemic, and we hope UE6 can address that mess by moving on as quickly as possible".
I was attempting to reframe my comment as I watched more of the video, but the edit timed out. So here is a nearly completely different comment lol:
The number forks/fragmentations of UE5 feels like - from a laymen's perspective - a plausible explanation for why the engine, 3 years post release, has continued to have the same problems today as it did from day 1. Sounding as if they can't really find a way to cleanly coalesce each of the seven disparate variants, it seems hopes lie with being able to do so in the years leading up to the launch of UE6.
That said, if they have so many specific versions, then it does still kind of boggle the mind why issues, like compilation stutter, are still so pervasive. Seems in this specific scenario, the fragmentation could potentially be useful for at least helping to narrow down platform specific issues/solutions.
Clearly not the case, so hopefully they can make UE6 more unified to allow for more focused, streamline engine development.
Compilation stutter hasn't really been much of an issue for a couple years now if the devs know what they're doing. The problem is not all the devs know what they're doing in that regard. The real problem is traversal stutter. That is nearly universal.
I sort of ended up mentally putting both of those under the category of compilation stutter, which is surely too reductive. I should have just said "stuttering/fametime issues in all their incarnations". Because while there are improvements to comp stutter, even games that force you through long, even 30 minutes shader compilation stages before playing haven't managed to fully solve that issue. Heck, even consoles, with fixed hardware that can ship with pre-compiled shaders can't even seem to fully escape it.
Traversal stutter is definitely its own issue, though, and has only been exacerbated thanks to older cards being held onto longer, and companies - primarily Nvidia - opting to put 8GB VRAM buffers into cards for way the eff too long. If you don't have the top of the line CPU and high-end, overclocked RAM kits - most of the PC playing population - to help shuffle that info between system memory and the GPU, you're more screwed than most. And Nvidia could help the issue as well, if they could improve their years-long issue with high driver overhead. Freeing up any extra CPU usage, especially for those with weaker CPUs, would really benefit.
I really hope these things can have some kind of solution found for them sooner than later. As it is, it just feels like games are taking two steps forwards and two steps back a lot of the time. Improved pixel quality (world detail, lighting, etc), at the expense of degraded image clarity (softer image, heavy reliance on upscaling, increased artificing) and smoothness/performance (stuttering/poor frametimes).
And the fact this stuff occurs, when dev times are longer than they've ever been, with budgets creeping ever higher, it's that much worse to feel like a lot of experiences just aren't wins across the board. Especially as deep into this generation as we are, and with as much time as devs & engine makers have had to iron out issues. It feels like we may need to pump the brakes on the pace of research into graphics tech and rebalance towards optimization. Image clarity (native res, especially) continuing to fall further, with poor frametimes for a myriad of reasons, as the generation goes on doesn't feel the best.
I'm not just talking about shader compilation stages. There are games like Expedition 33 that barely have any pre-compilation stages (in the background on the main menu) and have almost zero comp stutter. It has to do with the way you use shaders and make your materials. It still has some small traversal stutter though.
It feels too soon to talk about UE6. It feels like UE5 barely got tapped, only a handfull of games really showed its potential.
The makers of a video game that even impressed the French president tell the unusual tale of its development.
If the year ended today then yes it would be my personal GOTY. Absolutely!
In my opinion some of these games might be part of the GOTY nominees.
Blue Prince
Doom- dark ages
ER- Nightreign
Midnight Walk
MK World
MGS Snake eater
Ghost of Yotei
HK- Silksong
Hades 2
I am sure there are others that might surprise us down the road but these are the ones I can think of from top of my head that could challenge Clair Obscur- E33 for GOTY.
Former Assassin's Creed and Far Cry lead Alex Hutchinson explains that Nintendo will get away with their awful Game Key Cards.
people here forget that Sony sells Collector's Editions of games (God of War, Horizon, etc) that give you a steelbook with no disc. Just a code on a piece of paper. But because some 3rd party devs are choosing this route it's all Nintendo's fault.
If the option was a physical cartridge or a game key card then that would be the best possible situation. However it’s looking increasingly like game key cards will totally phase out physical media and that is really disappointing. I have a huge physical Switch libary and was looking forward to doing the same for the Switch 2.
@Neonridr
But it was Nintendo, who introduced this game key thingy. So it's 100% their fault.
@staticall - they gave devs the option I guess, yes. But I haven't seen a single first party Nintendo game opt for this route.
yes.. they could pay full price to put their games on a cartridge, or pay less and provide a digital code and save money.
Which do you think devs would opt for?
It wasn’t about distribution… 🤦♂️
The irony being him criticizing what creates of the loss of making gaming feel “special.” You know, annual releases with a paint-by-number blue print, monetization, and in general just Ubisoft practices for the last decade.
Sorry that one went over your head.
Then maybe you should do a better job of making your point instead of readers assuming what you’re trying to say.
Yet most games these days on Blu-ray's don’t even contain the full game or the game at all. But he wasn’t complaining when he was at Ubisoft tho.
Kind of normal to not want to get fired for public complaints about your company, though.
Buying a physical box, just to open it for a glorified QR code is a shitty practice but I can absolutely see it becoming the norm sadly.
The enjoyment of owning something physically is going away, now its just a paid trial of services you never really "own".
except this is still a physical cartridge that you have to put in your console. You just have to download the entire game. But instead of it just being a code in a box (which is a one time use), you could still sell this or lend it to your friend.
It's not great no, but it's nothing like what we had with some Switch games.
Fair, its better than a one time use code but it I agree with the point in the article. It still takes away from the overall experience (especially from a nostalgia perspective).
@Duke19 - I mean we have digital edition only consoles now from MS and Sony. That's ok?
Seems like this is just a physical vs digital conversation, you can't exactly single out Nintendo here as everyone seems to be doing it.
thisnis definitely gonna bite nintendo in the arse in some way.
kids mostly use the consoles and not all parents know what to do with it.
also, what if u dont or cant use wifi ? lol
Can't believe we are still experiencing graphics downgrade in 2017! Is it so difficult to just show a video of what the actual gameplay looks like before release? Still the looks pretty anyway.
I really love the art style of BoTW. It has stunning looking vistas oozing with atmosphere
I'd much rather Nintendo focus on frame rate in the future rather than what the game looks like. Zelda runs at a stable frame rate (for the most part). I'd hate to see how it would run if the game looked better.
Yeah but the game still suffers from massive drops. Just do a jump attack when fighting two tall demons, the game freezes for a second.
And you couldnt achieved that on a cel shaded game in 2017 after 4 years making it. Imagine the work if it wasnt cel shaded game to get 30 locked frames.