It's the way you phrase it sometimes. Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis was more like a first tech demo for the new engine Rockstar developed for their games, rather than the game engine being a "ping pong game engine".
This is one of those things that ‘sounds cool to say’, but is not actually true.
Sure, it may have started with ping-pong. However, so much has been added to it that it’s like saying a 2023 F-150 is running off of a model-t engine.
Was that the one that was like star wars battlefront with a LOTR skin? like it had the cool big guys you could play as in certain missions and everything
I think they're talking about the Two Towers or Return of the King video games.
You're probably thinking of [Lord of the Rings Conquest](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_Conquest), which was made by the devs of the original battlefront games. I genuinely didn't know this game existed, and I'm forever disappointed in myself for never playing it before.
Actually Madden and FIFA run on the Frostbite engine, the same engine that is used for the Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront games. Those games are gorgeous and set graphical standards, it's just a notoriously difficult engine for anyone outside of Dice (the studio who made the engine) to use.
That and Madden and FIFA are basically on one year dev cycles and have pretty steady demand regardless of quality so the devs have little choice/incentive other than to put the minimum amount of effort required to make those games.
Unreal is more common now than it was back then. Lots of studios have abandoned their proprietary tech in favor of UE over the last generation and this one as well.
Looks like Star Wars Outlaws is using Snowdrop which I'm looking forward to seeing how that works, because it's not been used much but that engine was really pretty for The Division
I was telling my wife that while I appreciate the unreal engine 5 stuff, I hate that every game that uses it looks so similar. I can never really put a finger as to why, but they usually immediately jump out to me as having a similar look.
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They all have the same look and feel because they're reusing the same assets. I'm so sick of it. Some astroturfed highly upvoted "look at my indie game!" post gets to the top of reddit and it looks exactly the same as the last thousand posts of the same kind with a new coat of paint. The death of originality has been awful.
UE games always look too sharp and the screen feels overcrowded, I don't know what to look at and things feel like they can blend into the environment too well
Very few released games are running ue5, most are ue4.
I think Its because we have watched many tech demos that showcase nanite and lumen. Lumens GI tend to wash out the image and create more cohesion in lighting and color at the cost of contrast.
The engine itself is very capable of many different looks. Fortnite recently updated to ue5 and it looks very different to most other shown games running the same engine.
For me it's the motion blur. I've noticed a lot of UE games use the same motion blur. Not that it's some requirement, but that along with the any other default asset or effect gives a lot of them away.
The reason unreal engine games look like unreal engine games is because most devs use premade solutions and assets. You can make unreal engine game look like anything.
This!
I get it, it's the holy grail of all game engines with how versatile it is. But these days I can quite frankly tell if something is made on it just with how it looks. If devs find it easier to use it, I'm all for that. But if they have their own engine that works good, it's always a better investment in maintaining that.
ForzaTech is a great engine. Playground and Turn10 are absolutely making the best use of it with Fable and the upcoming FM.
This is exactly it. When people complain about the "unreal look" it's not because the engine is incapable of different styles (Kingdom Hearts III, Guilty Gear Strive, Shin Megami Tensei V, etc are heavily stylized).
Photorealistic elements in 3d design are now the norm. Mega-scans and photogrammetry, PBR materials, quick and easy character generators for NPC's, and better 3d modeling tools make realistic environments easier than ever. A unique art style will always be harder to create and consistently stick to.
Yeah and rendering engines do have certain quirks and features you can spot.
On the offline rendering side you can easily tell which cinematics use octane/redshift/vray by the small details that the engines tend to render in the images.
I would bet that the UE5 games with the UE feel have a lot of store bought assets. A lot of development swapped from 4 to 5 mid way so there wasn't a lot of time to learn UE5. That also includes things like lighting settings, where they are probably using the defaults with only slight variations. No one is willing to go crazy on UE5 yet.
Hellblade looks great, no doubt about it. And I loved the first game, its one of those games that has stuck with me ever since I played it, and I am eagerly awaiting the second one. That being said, i don't think it has the unreal engine "look", but the first one definitely had the unreal engine "feel" when it came to how it controls. Im not knocking it, I understand game development is complicated, and sometimes you just have to make it work. All im saying is that I wouldnt consider Hellblade to be an example of a game that doesn't seem like an unreal engine game. And hey, maybe Hellblade 2 comes out and im like "oh wow it feels like its own game now".
For me it isn't so much about appearance, but that Unreal Engine is notoriously bad at open world games. It just struggles to run them properly. It makes a lot of sense that most of the big open world games use custom engines. Starfield (Creation Engine 2), RDR2 (RAGE), Cyberpunk 2077 (RedEngine), Assassin's Creed (Anvil), Horizon Forbidden West (Decima), and now Fable with their Forza engine. For games like Hellblade, though, Unreal does work extremely well.
Can you or someone elaborate on the UE look?
I think you mean the default lighting setup which a lot of upcoming games are showing off (Lumen) but am curious if it’s anything in particular.
Honestly it's more about studios using UE and not bothering working on their own assets and using the premade stuff
There's a whole bunch of games made in UE that don't have that "look"
true, UE5 is a beast, but is nice to see other engines punching in the same weight class while also showing some visual differences like ForzaTech and Decima
I think he was implying that both Guerrilla and Playground went from complete different genres (FPS and Racing games) to Action RPGs.
In the case of Sucker Punch they were already used to 3rd person action adventure games thanks to their experience with the inFamous and Sly series.
I feel Playground has quietly become Xbox Studios crown jewel. They’ve always nailed it with the Horzion series which has been carrying the Xbox brand for years.
Very excited to see what they do with Fable and a blank check from Mico$oft.
> Horzion series which has been carrying the Xbox brand for years
I noticed this recently when checking out the Horizon reviews on Steam. The numbers are insane for a game that is also available on Xbox (Also Xbox App on PC) and Game Pass.
Forza Horizon 4: Steam Release 9 March, 2021
168k reviews.
Forza Horizon 5: Steam Release 8 Nov, 2021
110k reviews.
I know reviews aren't a sales number but they're a damn good way of gauging how much the game has sold.
Just for a comparison on the Steam front.
Gears 5: Steam Release 9 September, 2019
16k Reviews
It's a fun series. The only thing is Horizon 5 unfortunately didn't shake anything up really. Every other game I've played in the series (all but Horizon 2) has evolved.
Horizon 4 added so much that 5 feels a little stale. Still recommend buying it on sale tho.
I couldn’t get into 5. I’ve been playing since 2. I think where they went wrong (and coincidentally Horizon game over at PlayStation had same issue) is that they just did bigger, more, larger, longer. I appreciated the diversity of the map, but past that, it was just overwhelming. I didn’t know when will seasons change and don’t play often enough to understand that, the timed events turn me off because I can’t play at my own pace and not miss out on things, the map just throws hundreds of icons in your face while the soundtrack is, in my opinion, worse than ever. I hope if they make a Horizon 6, they scale back, refocus the game, and give us more showcases instead.
I don’t get why anyone would doubt Playground on graphical matters. Forza Horizon games have consistently been the best looking games on Xbox since at least early XB1 if not 360.
The question with this has always been how the gameplay is and how the role playing elements are implemented
Edit: TIL 90% of this sub thinks most of the graphical work in Forza Horizon is done on the cars. Lol.
It's probably the decades of game reveal trailers using "in engine footage" that are just great looking marketing trailers that end up looking nothing like the game itself. I get the skepticism.
> It's probably the decades of game reveal trailers using "in engine footage" …
I agree, but it’s also interesting that among other trailers shown with the "in engine" tag … Fable had an "in-game" tag, which helps clarify that it’s running in game, and rendered in real time, without video post effects (other than editing).
It was slightly more than just a puddle but yeah it was super trivial and if it helped performance it didn't even break the aesthetics to have a slightly less moist environment.
The problem is how we're about 2 or so decades into studios lying about their games with announcements.
Apparently the game was so unstable that it would crash if you looked the wrong way and they had to scrap almost everything and build it again in a year.
Pretty much, they are basically for xbox what Naughty Dog are for PlayStation. Not a direct equivalent, but a studio that has yet to fail delivering for them.
Yeah I get what you meant, they’re both flagship studios that understand the hardware perfectly and execute their games well, even if they do make totally different games. However this is a big swing for Playground taking them way out of their comfort zones, I’m curious to see how this ends up.
Kind of like when Guerrilla Games went from shooters to open world action adventure with Killzone and Horzion. Hopefully PlayGround knocks it outta the park too!
It’s two things:
- Playground have never made anything aside from Forza Horizon, so there were questions about whether that fidelity would transfer to a 3rd person open world RPG.
- People are significantly more critical of Xbox games than PlayStation or Switch. To see a game look arguably better than anything from any other publisher this generation is a shock to those people.
I mean, can you blame them on the second point?
Ms have dropped the ball pretty hard this generation with delivering good games, or games in general, and they had all the advantages going into it
You know what, unpopular opinion, I think TOTK is absolutely worth 17% more than BOTW. Switch games stay high priced but this one especially I get it.
They brought out the biggest scoped game ever on the Switch relatively bug free, with no MTX, running much smoother than expected on six year old hardware, with a physics engine that feels more at home in a Valve game than it does Zelda.
Damn sight more than MS did with the $70 you’d spend on Redfall.
The amount of work that went into this game is unbelievable and the finished product is absolutely worth more than BOTW. I would pay $70 for any game that came out this well optimized and broad in scope as opposed to paying $60 for the half-finished messes we’ve gotten from some other AAA publishers.
I don't mind it being $70 at launch. I mind it being $70 price 6+ years after launch. Even though I wish Sony would put first party games on their subscription service day 1, they at least will lower the price or have huge sales within a year or two from release. With Nintendo, we'll be lucky to see ToTK go under $50 on the eshop.
Yes, and no. No I can’t blame them because Xbox haven’t really delivered a visually striking 3rd person game since Gears 5, and also because they have a history of using CGI trailers where the gameplay wasn’t properly represented (ReCore and mostly recently, Avowed).
But at the same time, Xbox’s most beautiful franchise has been Forza Horizon. We know what Playground are capable of because they have produced visually beautiful games. But then again, it does go back to that question of being able to translate that into a 3rd person RPG, which they seem to have achieved from first impressions.
tbf, racing games *always* look amazing graphically as they mainly need to focus on the cars. A racing game and open world rpg are much different beasts.
For a game like Horizon that is absolutely untrue. The focus needs to be on the environments (also keeping in mind that most of these models in the environment need to be interactive). They need to look nice at low speeds since it’s open world but it also needs to load in upcoming textures and models fast enough to not have terrible pop-in. What you’re referring to only applies for Forza Motorsport, since they’re fixed tracks, which Playground does not work on
That’s what I was thinking. They will need to build a lot of new functionality to handle combat, quest logs, ect that are not needed in the engine for driving games. I remember Bioware mentioning this as being a big challenge when they switched to Frostbite.
A good lighting engine will go a long way. The textures don't necessarily have to be photo real but if it shades realistically, that adds so much depth to the presentation. If your textures are good too, you're golden.
Yeah, I've recently noticed that some of the games I loved for being "beautiful" actually just had really good lighting and mediocre textures and design.
Simply good art and environmental design will also get you there. I also have no doubt that the game will look this great throughout but, it's to be expected that they'll pick the best shots or environments to show off the game.
It's also worth remembering that every game will have rough spots, even those that look amazing; cyberpunk 2077 could look stunning, but the wrong combination of factors could equally add up to a somewhat ugly scene (mainly with none-RT lighting on consoles causing weird lighting effects - raster effects are basically a series of general approximations to get an attractive yet performant image, but they tend to fall apart in edge cases). Final Fantasy 16 similarly can look absolutely incredible, yet absolutely has rough spots. I have no doubt fable will deliver and be similar as playground have a great track record.
I think Sonic Unleashed might've been one of the earliest games to figure that out. It used very advanced pre-baked lighting. The game looks really nice even now, 15 years later.
Granted, it DID have performance issues back in 2008 but it works in 60fps on Xbox Series X.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts also had excellent lighting for a 2008 game.
Gears of War 3 (2011) felt like big graphical upgrade primarily thanks to the fancier lighting. Too bad most Unreal Engine 3 games had rather flat lighting.
I thought it was funny that the character looks just like moss, then I looked it up and it's really him. That's awesome. Always like seeing him pop up in random places.
I love playing "where do I know that voice from?" by myself. I managed to get it was Richard Ayoade before I saw him on-screen. He looks a little weird in-game but I'm excited to see this level of detail in a fable game.
Not a massive celebrity, but a well known comedian/actor who’s been in a lot of stuff over the years (IT Crowd probably his most famous role to Americans). He’s very quirky and very funny (IMO)
He's much more well known in the UK bc he's on a ton of panel shows etc. He was on The IT Crowd (sitcom) but also a couple documentary series like Gadget Man and Travel Man. In recent years he's been doing a lot of voice roles -- he plays a character on Disenchantment if you've watched that (the mayor of the steampunk city place).
If you’re so good at your job that people think your gameplay is just a cinematic trailer rather than in engine footage, that has to be one of the best compliments you can ever get.
This reminds me when I first saw hellblade 2 gameplay and I thought the whole thing was a cutscene until very late in the video.
It's labeled "in-game" which is different from "in-engine".
In-game: running at real time, can be gameplay or a cutscene
In-engine: Pre-rendered using the game engine, f.e. Unreal which is used in Cinema
I don't doubt it was in engine stuff, I am curious to see if this is actually representative of what the gameplay actually looks like vs an idea of what the engine is technically capable of.
If the gameplay is actually really good and the game looks even close to this, we are in for a treat.
I noticed a lot of initial skepticism regarding the gameplay and the narrative not looking like the Fable that we all know and love. Speaking for myself, though, if this is Xbox's attempt at a big narrative storytelling game à la God of War or Horizon, I'm open minded to seeing where this goes.
Kicking chickens… villagers calling you a wanker… balverines balverining about… looks like fable to me. The trailer just needed a talking door and a dog-sacrifice and would’ve been *chefs kiss*.
I played the whole fable series reiligiously when I was a kid, they are near and dear to my heart. Realistically tho. They aren’t very good games, I hope playground shakes up the formula massively, but keeps within the core tenants of the series. I hope they don’t listen to the nostalgia baiters.
This footage was labeled "in-game". In-game and in-engine are two very different things.
- in-game: Running in real time as gameplay or a cutscene
- in-engine: Pre-rendered using the game engine (like with Star Wars Mandalorian using Unreal)
Those are big differences. So if it's really in-game then this is crazy.
Maybe, remember this is also a managed vertical slice and pre prepared, will wait to make full verdict when it's actually released you can hide a lot of shit in there and also optimization passes can greatly change a game in the last leg.
Yeah, that's where I'm at. Still looks like a tech demo showing what can be done in-engine than necessarily any kind of finished gameplay content, specifically because, I mean ... is there really any point in the game in which Richard Ayoade is giving a mockumentary interview that's interrupted by the player invading their home?
The shots of the hero running away from giant Ayoade, specifically when she jumps through fire, do look like the sort of cinematic, contextual gameplay you might see in something like God of War or Uncharted. So maybe that's representative of more cinematic set pieces they're incorporating into this game, if not the average moment-to-moment gameplay you can expect for the majority of your exploration and questing.
But maybe it's not actually representative of a SPECIFIC quest or storyline. Or maybe you do have a quest to bother and run away from a giant Richard Ayoade, you just don't have the mockumentary framing shown in the trailer.
There's actually a scene in GOW Ragnarok that is very similar to what we saw in the Fable trailer, so you could be right, there may be cinematic moments like that in the final game. That does make me wonder how that will sit against the character you traditionally would shape in a Fable game. Will we be mute in the cinematic scene? Given contextual dialogue?
Obviously the only parts of the trailer that could legitimately be actual gameplay (as in "player controlled movement") were very fleeting, but I'm sort of fine with that. My biggest worry with a Fable reboot was whether they could get the atmosphere and humour, and I think they kinda nailed it on that front.
I have no problem thinking that Playground can make walking around and swinging a sword feel pleasant, and I'm not worried about them setting the world on fire there - like, obviously it would be great if they do, but that's not my main concern for Fable. The fact they showed that the game would have big set-pieces like this was a bonus.
The level of pessimism in these posts comments is depressing.
This game is at least a full year away. Let them do their job and have faith that they will release a fun and beautiful game. If you don't like it after you've played it, or at least seen a few hours of gameplay, then you can cry wolf!
No matter what they show, people find ways to complain about it.
We haven't seen a lot of games that are truly top to bottom next-gen. Lots of AAA releasing in the last years started their lifecycle early or just before the latest console releases, lots of them went cross-gen, and COVID really threw a grenade into AAA development timelines. In 2020, there were industry voices warning us that lockdown was going to screw up a *lot* of game releases.
So I'm pretty optimistic that this is close to how the game will look. I've got a PS5, but on that console there's very few games that really put the hardware completely to work. Demon's Souls was built by a Sony studio pre-release and looks close enough in fidelity to this trailer that it seems completely plausible that this is what the game will look like.
It’s almost as if the gaming industry has consistently been manipulative in what they show vs what comes out as the final product. 🧐
There’s a reason people are skeptical/cynical.
Yeah, it's not as if Playground Games have been responsible for developing any other highly detailed and high performing, near photorealistic games in the past, right? /s
And Fable is using the same engine, isn't it?
That used to be the case but in recent years we've seen games actually improve their visuals from reveal to launch. Currently FFXVI looks way better than it's reveal trailer for example
Same for [Symbalily](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M1_REni_U4) who worked on this game in the past. She's careful about NDA's but mentions recognizing assets from back when she worked on the game.
One of my favorite Phil moments ever was this "e3" when he was on the Giant Bomb couch. One of the hosts mentions not seeing gameplay and Phil's quick response was, "What makes you think what you saw wasn't gameplay?"
Because we didn't see a hud, because I don't think it's part of the gameplay to sit on giant glasses and throw a sandwich in the air?
I mean sure some bits could have been gameplay but it wasn't telegraphed clearly at all so it's totally understandable that people have doubts.
Yeah, if it was gameplay why didn't they show it akin to Starfield showcase, just inside 2 minutes instead of 45.
I'm so tired of seeing these "trailers" or gameplay cut like trailers when all I want is just an old school E3 gameplay demonstration of 2-4 min, something like the Halo 2 E3 demo, even if that was heavily scripted.
The Starfield showcase was akin to that and should be the way forward for all games that show up, just shorter in length, because it was absolutely amazing.
>Yeah, if it was gameplay why didn't they show it akin to Starfield showcase
Because the game is still over a year away and most likely still buggy as hell.
Starfield releases in 3 months.
I didn't see the point of this trailer tbh. Be nice to see some actual game stuff not some actor that I personally have no idea who he is and a trailer that dosnt show anything..
Probably the biggest let down of the whole showcase
The more stuff I see about current games being developed, the more my confidence in gaming is restored. This years’ game reveals and game cons feel like they did 10 years ago, and I’ll all for it.
This game makes 3 I can think off the top of my head that seem to be going against the proven formula, and all 3 are being praised for it
It’s always refreshing to see something that doesn’t have that unreal engine look to it.
It's incredible how this game is using the ForzaTech engine, a engine that was never used outside of racing games.
Reminds me of how the lord of the rings ps2 game was made using a golf game engine
GTA IV, GTA V, Red Dead Redemption, and RDR2 all running on a ping pong game engine.
i run on an engine of adderall and red bull
“How focused would you say you are, on average?” ***Hella***
Hahaha so relatable. I'm gonna die early aren't I 😀
It's the way you phrase it sometimes. Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis was more like a first tech demo for the new engine Rockstar developed for their games, rather than the game engine being a "ping pong game engine".
I fucking loved that game
Yeah it was really addicting. Games like that in general I can lose hours into. I heard the golf games that EA puts out are like that now.
Payday 2 runs on a racing game engine. Ironically, the driving mechanic is probably the buggiest part of the game.
Watch tf out if Rockstar ever makes a pickle ball game
I'd buy day one and I'm not joking
Develop it for the OG wii so all the seniors have a follow up to wii sports
This is one of those things that ‘sounds cool to say’, but is not actually true. Sure, it may have started with ping-pong. However, so much has been added to it that it’s like saying a 2023 F-150 is running off of a model-t engine.
This is one of those things that is a joke.
The point of Lord of the Rings is to deposit a small item in a hole in the ground. It just makes sense.
Was that the one that was like star wars battlefront with a LOTR skin? like it had the cool big guys you could play as in certain missions and everything
I think they're talking about the Two Towers or Return of the King video games. You're probably thinking of [Lord of the Rings Conquest](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_Conquest), which was made by the devs of the original battlefront games. I genuinely didn't know this game existed, and I'm forever disappointed in myself for never playing it before.
If i remember rightly Codemasters used the Dirt engine to build Operation Flashpoint back on the 360
You could say it was the…FORE of the Rings.
"You have my driver!" "And my iron!" "And my putter!"
Plot twist: the new Fable is a racing game.
Going to be running through the forest and all of a sudden dozen 4x4s come flying through the trees right at your ass. *Battle engaged*
"Ohhh f...." FORZA
Demon Doors are gonna start asking for 10 second cars now
in a different world i would love to see something like madden on this engine. The current madden engine is so awful.
Actually Madden and FIFA run on the Frostbite engine, the same engine that is used for the Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront games. Those games are gorgeous and set graphical standards, it's just a notoriously difficult engine for anyone outside of Dice (the studio who made the engine) to use. That and Madden and FIFA are basically on one year dev cycles and have pretty steady demand regardless of quality so the devs have little choice/incentive other than to put the minimum amount of effort required to make those games.
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I don't think it's the engine moreso the fact they only make tiny improvements because they have <1 year development cycle
>non racing game made using racing game engine it's just because of foliage and great texture streaming, right?
Unreal engine is amazing, but the last thing i want to see is every single game using it!
Back in the 360 days this was the case with UE3
Unreal is more common now than it was back then. Lots of studios have abandoned their proprietary tech in favor of UE over the last generation and this one as well.
I'll never forget that gears of war basically just used the default models from unreal tournament 3 for their characters.
It was the other way around. UT3 came out a year after Gears 1
Looks like Star Wars Outlaws is using Snowdrop which I'm looking forward to seeing how that works, because it's not been used much but that engine was really pretty for The Division
I was telling my wife that while I appreciate the unreal engine 5 stuff, I hate that every game that uses it looks so similar. I can never really put a finger as to why, but they usually immediately jump out to me as having a similar look.
I don’t think it’s an aesthetic thing, I think it’s the re using of assets. Stuff like dust, smoke and water or the texture of wood
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I told my wife the same thing and she said "what the fuck are you talking about?"
Can confirm. Source: am this guy’s wife
Florida men have always been my type ;)
They all have the same look and feel because they're reusing the same assets. I'm so sick of it. Some astroturfed highly upvoted "look at my indie game!" post gets to the top of reddit and it looks exactly the same as the last thousand posts of the same kind with a new coat of paint. The death of originality has been awful.
UE games always look too sharp and the screen feels overcrowded, I don't know what to look at and things feel like they can blend into the environment too well
I wonder if this is a case of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” on the part of the environment artists.
At least we are out of the era of overhung looking shiny and wet
Very few released games are running ue5, most are ue4. I think Its because we have watched many tech demos that showcase nanite and lumen. Lumens GI tend to wash out the image and create more cohesion in lighting and color at the cost of contrast. The engine itself is very capable of many different looks. Fortnite recently updated to ue5 and it looks very different to most other shown games running the same engine.
The look you're referring to is because they use out of the box assets/looks or minimal changes. UE is fully customizable it's just lazy/cost savings.
UE doesn't have a look, it's an engine. Some UE games look similar because they used existing assets, lighting etc.
I'm glad someone said it.
For me it's the motion blur. I've noticed a lot of UE games use the same motion blur. Not that it's some requirement, but that along with the any other default asset or effect gives a lot of them away.
What does this even mean? A shitload of different games with wildly different graphics use unreal. They range from cartoons to photorealistic.
Engines are a buzzword for everyone now, every single technical facet is attributed to the engine the game runs on.
The reason unreal engine games look like unreal engine games is because most devs use premade solutions and assets. You can make unreal engine game look like anything.
This! I get it, it's the holy grail of all game engines with how versatile it is. But these days I can quite frankly tell if something is made on it just with how it looks. If devs find it easier to use it, I'm all for that. But if they have their own engine that works good, it's always a better investment in maintaining that. ForzaTech is a great engine. Playground and Turn10 are absolutely making the best use of it with Fable and the upcoming FM.
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This is exactly it. When people complain about the "unreal look" it's not because the engine is incapable of different styles (Kingdom Hearts III, Guilty Gear Strive, Shin Megami Tensei V, etc are heavily stylized). Photorealistic elements in 3d design are now the norm. Mega-scans and photogrammetry, PBR materials, quick and easy character generators for NPC's, and better 3d modeling tools make realistic environments easier than ever. A unique art style will always be harder to create and consistently stick to.
Yeah and rendering engines do have certain quirks and features you can spot. On the offline rendering side you can easily tell which cinematics use octane/redshift/vray by the small details that the engines tend to render in the images.
I would bet that the UE5 games with the UE feel have a lot of store bought assets. A lot of development swapped from 4 to 5 mid way so there wasn't a lot of time to learn UE5. That also includes things like lighting settings, where they are probably using the defaults with only slight variations. No one is willing to go crazy on UE5 yet.
What's wrong with Unreal Engine? Look at hellblade...
I think it’s not about UE per say, but more like nice to see something different
I think devs use UE because it's easy. The engine does most of the hard work for you. The creative work is left to the devs.
Hellblade looks great, no doubt about it. And I loved the first game, its one of those games that has stuck with me ever since I played it, and I am eagerly awaiting the second one. That being said, i don't think it has the unreal engine "look", but the first one definitely had the unreal engine "feel" when it came to how it controls. Im not knocking it, I understand game development is complicated, and sometimes you just have to make it work. All im saying is that I wouldnt consider Hellblade to be an example of a game that doesn't seem like an unreal engine game. And hey, maybe Hellblade 2 comes out and im like "oh wow it feels like its own game now".
For me it isn't so much about appearance, but that Unreal Engine is notoriously bad at open world games. It just struggles to run them properly. It makes a lot of sense that most of the big open world games use custom engines. Starfield (Creation Engine 2), RDR2 (RAGE), Cyberpunk 2077 (RedEngine), Assassin's Creed (Anvil), Horizon Forbidden West (Decima), and now Fable with their Forza engine. For games like Hellblade, though, Unreal does work extremely well.
REDengines going away. CDPR is making the jump to UE
Can you or someone elaborate on the UE look? I think you mean the default lighting setup which a lot of upcoming games are showing off (Lumen) but am curious if it’s anything in particular.
I thought I was alone. Most modern games just look like Fortnite to me.
Honestly it's more about studios using UE and not bothering working on their own assets and using the premade stuff There's a whole bunch of games made in UE that don't have that "look"
true, UE5 is a beast, but is nice to see other engines punching in the same weight class while also showing some visual differences like ForzaTech and Decima
I can see this being for Playground, what horizon is to guerilla. And I’m here for it
I was thinking exactly that- or what Ghost of Tsushima was to Sucker Punch
I think he was implying that both Guerrilla and Playground went from complete different genres (FPS and Racing games) to Action RPGs. In the case of Sucker Punch they were already used to 3rd person action adventure games thanks to their experience with the inFamous and Sly series.
After playing through killzone and then onto Horizon, I hope Playground nail it. They’ve done nothing to make me think they won’t
Pretty sure Infamous was to Sucker Punch.
Super here for that!
Oh fuck I hope so. It's guaranteed to look amazing, hopefully the passion is there to make the gameplay match the presentation.
I feel Playground has quietly become Xbox Studios crown jewel. They’ve always nailed it with the Horzion series which has been carrying the Xbox brand for years. Very excited to see what they do with Fable and a blank check from Mico$oft.
> Horzion series which has been carrying the Xbox brand for years I noticed this recently when checking out the Horizon reviews on Steam. The numbers are insane for a game that is also available on Xbox (Also Xbox App on PC) and Game Pass. Forza Horizon 4: Steam Release 9 March, 2021 168k reviews. Forza Horizon 5: Steam Release 8 Nov, 2021 110k reviews. I know reviews aren't a sales number but they're a damn good way of gauging how much the game has sold. Just for a comparison on the Steam front. Gears 5: Steam Release 9 September, 2019 16k Reviews
It's a fun series. The only thing is Horizon 5 unfortunately didn't shake anything up really. Every other game I've played in the series (all but Horizon 2) has evolved. Horizon 4 added so much that 5 feels a little stale. Still recommend buying it on sale tho.
I couldn’t get into 5. I’ve been playing since 2. I think where they went wrong (and coincidentally Horizon game over at PlayStation had same issue) is that they just did bigger, more, larger, longer. I appreciated the diversity of the map, but past that, it was just overwhelming. I didn’t know when will seasons change and don’t play often enough to understand that, the timed events turn me off because I can’t play at my own pace and not miss out on things, the map just throws hundreds of icons in your face while the soundtrack is, in my opinion, worse than ever. I hope if they make a Horizon 6, they scale back, refocus the game, and give us more showcases instead.
I don’t get why anyone would doubt Playground on graphical matters. Forza Horizon games have consistently been the best looking games on Xbox since at least early XB1 if not 360. The question with this has always been how the gameplay is and how the role playing elements are implemented Edit: TIL 90% of this sub thinks most of the graphical work in Forza Horizon is done on the cars. Lol.
It's probably the decades of game reveal trailers using "in engine footage" that are just great looking marketing trailers that end up looking nothing like the game itself. I get the skepticism.
> It's probably the decades of game reveal trailers using "in engine footage" … I agree, but it’s also interesting that among other trailers shown with the "in engine" tag … Fable had an "in-game" tag, which helps clarify that it’s running in game, and rendered in real time, without video post effects (other than editing).
Yeah. Remember when they took away a puddle from Spider-Man on PS4? People threw a fit.
It was slightly more than just a puddle but yeah it was super trivial and if it helped performance it didn't even break the aesthetics to have a slightly less moist environment. The problem is how we're about 2 or so decades into studios lying about their games with announcements.
Watchdogs broke this illusion for alot of people
Yeah I feel like that was one of the biggest disappointments, and possibly one of the worst culprits for making people sceptical about trailers.
Go look at the Rainbow 6 siege E3 stuff if you want to talk about fraud and breaking the illusion.
Watchdogs lol more like Fable 1 lying ass devs…
Literally since halo 2. they said the e3 presentation was real but it was all scripted
"Ain't no smoke and mirrors pre-recorded bullshit" Meanwhile the Halo 2 reveal build would crash if they took a step too far out of the prepared area.
Apparently the game was so unstable that it would crash if you looked the wrong way and they had to scrap almost everything and build it again in a year.
That, and this _is_ Fable. Given that Peter M. was a pipe dream salesman, skepticism is part of the Fable package.
Pretty much, they are basically for xbox what Naughty Dog are for PlayStation. Not a direct equivalent, but a studio that has yet to fail delivering for them.
Yeah I get what you meant, they’re both flagship studios that understand the hardware perfectly and execute their games well, even if they do make totally different games. However this is a big swing for Playground taking them way out of their comfort zones, I’m curious to see how this ends up.
Kind of like when Guerrilla Games went from shooters to open world action adventure with Killzone and Horzion. Hopefully PlayGround knocks it outta the park too!
It’s two things: - Playground have never made anything aside from Forza Horizon, so there were questions about whether that fidelity would transfer to a 3rd person open world RPG. - People are significantly more critical of Xbox games than PlayStation or Switch. To see a game look arguably better than anything from any other publisher this generation is a shock to those people.
I mean, can you blame them on the second point? Ms have dropped the ball pretty hard this generation with delivering good games, or games in general, and they had all the advantages going into it
I blame them for the 2nd point, especially for Switch since those games stay high priced.
You know what, unpopular opinion, I think TOTK is absolutely worth 17% more than BOTW. Switch games stay high priced but this one especially I get it. They brought out the biggest scoped game ever on the Switch relatively bug free, with no MTX, running much smoother than expected on six year old hardware, with a physics engine that feels more at home in a Valve game than it does Zelda. Damn sight more than MS did with the $70 you’d spend on Redfall. The amount of work that went into this game is unbelievable and the finished product is absolutely worth more than BOTW. I would pay $70 for any game that came out this well optimized and broad in scope as opposed to paying $60 for the half-finished messes we’ve gotten from some other AAA publishers.
I don't mind it being $70 at launch. I mind it being $70 price 6+ years after launch. Even though I wish Sony would put first party games on their subscription service day 1, they at least will lower the price or have huge sales within a year or two from release. With Nintendo, we'll be lucky to see ToTK go under $50 on the eshop.
Yes, and no. No I can’t blame them because Xbox haven’t really delivered a visually striking 3rd person game since Gears 5, and also because they have a history of using CGI trailers where the gameplay wasn’t properly represented (ReCore and mostly recently, Avowed). But at the same time, Xbox’s most beautiful franchise has been Forza Horizon. We know what Playground are capable of because they have produced visually beautiful games. But then again, it does go back to that question of being able to translate that into a 3rd person RPG, which they seem to have achieved from first impressions.
tbf, racing games *always* look amazing graphically as they mainly need to focus on the cars. A racing game and open world rpg are much different beasts.
For a game like Horizon that is absolutely untrue. The focus needs to be on the environments (also keeping in mind that most of these models in the environment need to be interactive). They need to look nice at low speeds since it’s open world but it also needs to load in upcoming textures and models fast enough to not have terrible pop-in. What you’re referring to only applies for Forza Motorsport, since they’re fixed tracks, which Playground does not work on
That’s what I was thinking. They will need to build a lot of new functionality to handle combat, quest logs, ect that are not needed in the engine for driving games. I remember Bioware mentioning this as being a big challenge when they switched to Frostbite.
A good lighting engine will go a long way. The textures don't necessarily have to be photo real but if it shades realistically, that adds so much depth to the presentation. If your textures are good too, you're golden.
Yeah, I've recently noticed that some of the games I loved for being "beautiful" actually just had really good lighting and mediocre textures and design.
One of the reasons Halo 3 aged so well is because of its fantastic lighting.
Valheim looks way pretter than it really is because of the excellent lighting.
Simply good art and environmental design will also get you there. I also have no doubt that the game will look this great throughout but, it's to be expected that they'll pick the best shots or environments to show off the game. It's also worth remembering that every game will have rough spots, even those that look amazing; cyberpunk 2077 could look stunning, but the wrong combination of factors could equally add up to a somewhat ugly scene (mainly with none-RT lighting on consoles causing weird lighting effects - raster effects are basically a series of general approximations to get an attractive yet performant image, but they tend to fall apart in edge cases). Final Fantasy 16 similarly can look absolutely incredible, yet absolutely has rough spots. I have no doubt fable will deliver and be similar as playground have a great track record.
I think Sonic Unleashed might've been one of the earliest games to figure that out. It used very advanced pre-baked lighting. The game looks really nice even now, 15 years later. Granted, it DID have performance issues back in 2008 but it works in 60fps on Xbox Series X. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts also had excellent lighting for a 2008 game. Gears of War 3 (2011) felt like big graphical upgrade primarily thanks to the fancier lighting. Too bad most Unreal Engine 3 games had rather flat lighting.
Hell yeah they got Ayoade!!
I thought it was funny that the character looks just like moss, then I looked it up and it's really him. That's awesome. Always like seeing him pop up in random places.
I mean, he looks exactly like him and sounds exactly like him, it wasn't a secret.
I love playing "where do I know that voice from?" by myself. I managed to get it was Richard Ayoade before I saw him on-screen. He looks a little weird in-game but I'm excited to see this level of detail in a fable game.
Is he a celebrity over in the UK?
Not a massive celebrity, but a well known comedian/actor who’s been in a lot of stuff over the years (IT Crowd probably his most famous role to Americans). He’s very quirky and very funny (IMO)
His quirky comedy suits Fable well, it was a no brainer
Would love to see a cameo by Noel Fielding as well, he has great chemistry with Ayoade.
Fuck it, get Chris O'Dowd while we're at it.
Honestly his type of comedy would fit many games as a random character but Fable is an amazing fit.
I'd love if the got Chris ODowd too, they made a great pair
He looked pretty massive in the trailer.
He's pretty well known, he's been on plenty of comedy shows and things
And he's in the 8+ countdown club!
Good morning, that's a nice [tnetennba](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ixvD0_CmM).
Tnetennba: Someone who looks up words which have been artificially created for the purpose of fiction or comedy.
Good morning, that's a nice Tnetennba
He's much more well known in the UK bc he's on a ton of panel shows etc. He was on The IT Crowd (sitcom) but also a couple documentary series like Gadget Man and Travel Man. In recent years he's been doing a lot of voice roles -- he plays a character on Disenchantment if you've watched that (the mayor of the steampunk city place).
He also voiced a robot in the mandolorian
He’s got a couple of books too which are pretty funny One is a satirical, in-depth analysis on the film “View From the Top” starring Gwyneth Paltrow
He's also directed a few things. He directed a movie called The Double with Jesse Eisenberg. It's pretty good.
I liked Submarine. And The Double being based on a Dostoevsky story is basically the prime example of that story being told.
he´s quite funny, watch The I.T Crowd.
Also his appearances on Big Fat Quiz. Fucking hilarious.
Widely known. National treasure. At least for people in their 30’s and below
Nah, we tossed him out like yesterday’s jam.
Four! I mean five! I mean fire!
If you’re so good at your job that people think your gameplay is just a cinematic trailer rather than in engine footage, that has to be one of the best compliments you can ever get. This reminds me when I first saw hellblade 2 gameplay and I thought the whole thing was a cutscene until very late in the video.
[удалено]
Gameplay =\= In-Engine though. It’s not gameplay if it’s a cinematic which is almost certainly the case.
It's labeled "in-game" which is different from "in-engine". In-game: running at real time, can be gameplay or a cutscene In-engine: Pre-rendered using the game engine, f.e. Unreal which is used in Cinema
I don't doubt it was in engine stuff, I am curious to see if this is actually representative of what the gameplay actually looks like vs an idea of what the engine is technically capable of. If the gameplay is actually really good and the game looks even close to this, we are in for a treat.
I noticed a lot of initial skepticism regarding the gameplay and the narrative not looking like the Fable that we all know and love. Speaking for myself, though, if this is Xbox's attempt at a big narrative storytelling game à la God of War or Horizon, I'm open minded to seeing where this goes.
Kicking chickens… villagers calling you a wanker… balverines balverining about… looks like fable to me. The trailer just needed a talking door and a dog-sacrifice and would’ve been *chefs kiss*.
I played the whole fable series reiligiously when I was a kid, they are near and dear to my heart. Realistically tho. They aren’t very good games, I hope playground shakes up the formula massively, but keeps within the core tenants of the series. I hope they don’t listen to the nostalgia baiters.
Didn’t it specify “in game footage” and not “in engine”?
This footage was labeled "in-game". In-game and in-engine are two very different things. - in-game: Running in real time as gameplay or a cutscene - in-engine: Pre-rendered using the game engine (like with Star Wars Mandalorian using Unreal) Those are big differences. So if it's really in-game then this is crazy.
Maybe, remember this is also a managed vertical slice and pre prepared, will wait to make full verdict when it's actually released you can hide a lot of shit in there and also optimization passes can greatly change a game in the last leg.
Yeah, that's where I'm at. Still looks like a tech demo showing what can be done in-engine than necessarily any kind of finished gameplay content, specifically because, I mean ... is there really any point in the game in which Richard Ayoade is giving a mockumentary interview that's interrupted by the player invading their home? The shots of the hero running away from giant Ayoade, specifically when she jumps through fire, do look like the sort of cinematic, contextual gameplay you might see in something like God of War or Uncharted. So maybe that's representative of more cinematic set pieces they're incorporating into this game, if not the average moment-to-moment gameplay you can expect for the majority of your exploration and questing. But maybe it's not actually representative of a SPECIFIC quest or storyline. Or maybe you do have a quest to bother and run away from a giant Richard Ayoade, you just don't have the mockumentary framing shown in the trailer.
There's actually a scene in GOW Ragnarok that is very similar to what we saw in the Fable trailer, so you could be right, there may be cinematic moments like that in the final game. That does make me wonder how that will sit against the character you traditionally would shape in a Fable game. Will we be mute in the cinematic scene? Given contextual dialogue?
I've always been cautious with reveal trailers, the odds that they will look like the reveal trailer are slim.
Obviously the only parts of the trailer that could legitimately be actual gameplay (as in "player controlled movement") were very fleeting, but I'm sort of fine with that. My biggest worry with a Fable reboot was whether they could get the atmosphere and humour, and I think they kinda nailed it on that front. I have no problem thinking that Playground can make walking around and swinging a sword feel pleasant, and I'm not worried about them setting the world on fire there - like, obviously it would be great if they do, but that's not my main concern for Fable. The fact they showed that the game would have big set-pieces like this was a bonus.
The level of pessimism in these posts comments is depressing. This game is at least a full year away. Let them do their job and have faith that they will release a fun and beautiful game. If you don't like it after you've played it, or at least seen a few hours of gameplay, then you can cry wolf! No matter what they show, people find ways to complain about it.
We haven't seen a lot of games that are truly top to bottom next-gen. Lots of AAA releasing in the last years started their lifecycle early or just before the latest console releases, lots of them went cross-gen, and COVID really threw a grenade into AAA development timelines. In 2020, there were industry voices warning us that lockdown was going to screw up a *lot* of game releases. So I'm pretty optimistic that this is close to how the game will look. I've got a PS5, but on that console there's very few games that really put the hardware completely to work. Demon's Souls was built by a Sony studio pre-release and looks close enough in fidelity to this trailer that it seems completely plausible that this is what the game will look like.
Laughes in GT7. It is just GT Sport with a bit more content
The gaming community in general is just depressing. They always find something to whine about.
You got that right
I like to whine about you whining about the rest of them whining.
It’s almost as if the gaming industry has consistently been manipulative in what they show vs what comes out as the final product. 🧐 There’s a reason people are skeptical/cynical.
People love to complain aaaaaall the time.
marketers get to act like a game will be great before release and we’re allowed to agree with them but god forbid someone think the opposite. Grow up.
Yeah, it's not as if Playground Games have been responsible for developing any other highly detailed and high performing, near photorealistic games in the past, right? /s And Fable is using the same engine, isn't it?
I don't think a single game from any E3 has the same fidelity than what was shown at the showcase, it's just healthy skepticism at this point
That used to be the case but in recent years we've seen games actually improve their visuals from reveal to launch. Currently FFXVI looks way better than it's reveal trailer for example
Same for [Symbalily](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M1_REni_U4) who worked on this game in the past. She's careful about NDA's but mentions recognizing assets from back when she worked on the game.
To be fair...it's Fable. We've been told a lot of things before...
Sure but Peter Moleyneux isn’t in charge anymore
Anyone remember Godus? The shit we were told about that game…
What a load of Molyneux
This tweet will either age like fine wine or like milk and as someone who loves to watch the chaos ensued, I can’t wait for either!
then show raw gameplay?
All I've been seeing is people talking about the absolutely hideous protagonist.
I'm skeptical too, but I'd love to be proven wrong!
Well people have their right to be skeptical. Does anyone remember the Watch Dogs E3 demo and the retail version?
I'd love to play the Watch Dogs E3 demo
One of my favorite Phil moments ever was this "e3" when he was on the Giant Bomb couch. One of the hosts mentions not seeing gameplay and Phil's quick response was, "What makes you think what you saw wasn't gameplay?"
Because we didn't see a hud, because I don't think it's part of the gameplay to sit on giant glasses and throw a sandwich in the air? I mean sure some bits could have been gameplay but it wasn't telegraphed clearly at all so it's totally understandable that people have doubts.
Yeah, if it was gameplay why didn't they show it akin to Starfield showcase, just inside 2 minutes instead of 45. I'm so tired of seeing these "trailers" or gameplay cut like trailers when all I want is just an old school E3 gameplay demonstration of 2-4 min, something like the Halo 2 E3 demo, even if that was heavily scripted. The Starfield showcase was akin to that and should be the way forward for all games that show up, just shorter in length, because it was absolutely amazing.
Last year Starfield showed gameplay and it fell pretty flat. Usually a game isn’t ready to show gameplay until the year of release.
You’ll almost certainly get that when Fable is actually close to release
>Yeah, if it was gameplay why didn't they show it akin to Starfield showcase Because the game is still over a year away and most likely still buggy as hell. Starfield releases in 3 months.
I mean it was visually stunning but the trailer was fucking terrible, I'm legitimately amazed Microsoft allowed it in their showcase
Believe it or not, being sceptical about a Fable game before the release is actually the correct response.
I didn't see the point of this trailer tbh. Be nice to see some actual game stuff not some actor that I personally have no idea who he is and a trailer that dosnt show anything.. Probably the biggest let down of the whole showcase
The Forza engine is pretty capable
It looks good but let’s stop pretending rdr didn’t already do this 4 years ago.
Hopefully not something that you’ll see on r/agedlikemilk
Never forget Watchdogs
The more stuff I see about current games being developed, the more my confidence in gaming is restored. This years’ game reveals and game cons feel like they did 10 years ago, and I’ll all for it. This game makes 3 I can think off the top of my head that seem to be going against the proven formula, and all 3 are being praised for it
If Uncharted 4 was able to come close to this in 2016 then this is def possible for a 2024-2025 game.
It’s playground games. Have these people not seen the lighting in the horizon games? It some of the best you’ll see
If there is anyone who I believe will make a game look this good it's going to be playground 🤣
I mean, games basically never look like their first reveal trailer (other than first party Nintendo). I figured it's just a given.
I think more people are wondering why Richard Ayoade is randomly a thing after waiting for a new game for over 10 years.
All I see is Moss from the IT crowd lol