Zelda BOTW sequel early graphical analysis by Brainchild

[Elfotografoalocado]

Jraphics Horse

And just to illustrate the point here, this is how the cel-shading worked in the original:

More at the link here:

https://roystan.net/articles/toon-shader.html

There was always some level of ambient light in the shaded part of the cel-shading of the original (and when characters were completely in shadow they looked really flat). Also, note how in most of the shaded areas where we would expect some ambient occlusion, it's either absent or baked into the texture data. In the BOTW2 trailer, the dynamic opaque shading mostly shows up where we would expect AO to show up.

Now, I can understand not necessarily wanting to classify "AO-like shading" as a third tone, but whatever it is you want to call it, it wasn't handled like this in the first game.

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Yeah, pretty much. The lighting kind of fell apart in unlit interiors, really. It really looks like the biggest focus was to get as much bang for the buck in rendering features for the outside with the sun or moon as a main light source. The way it does indirect lighting is amazingly effective for these scenarios, and probably very cheap, but it's clearly not suited for interiors.

The more I see the trailer, the more I realize it's a huge upgrade in visual quality.

 

[Deleted member 11276]

Seems like everything I predicted turned out to be true. Great!

The fact that they upgraded interior lighting that much basically confirms we are getting more interior areas

 

[LuigiV]

Quick question. What are your thoughts on BOTW2 possibly being a Pro enhanced title? Do you think the trailer is doing anything a stock Switch can't?

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I can't speak for what brainchild thinks but from what I can personally see, no, there's nothing here that would suggest that. The lighting improvements are nice and were immediately noticeable, but they're also pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Something that's quite posible to achieve by simply moving from a Wii U port to a ground up Switch game. We've seen bigger jumps in lighting and shader quality in other Switch sequels.

Also another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of BotW's cutscenes were pre-rendered, so we don't know at this point if we're even looking at a realtime cutscene or not. If this cutscene is pre-rendered in the final game, it's possible they're cheating a little and uping the quality settings above gameplay to make it more cinematic. We'll really need to see in game footage before we can say anything definitive.

 

[brainchild]

Quick question. What are your thoughts on BOTW2 possibly being a Pro enhanced title? Do you think the trailer is doing anything a stock Switch can't?

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There's nothing to suggest that what we're seeing in the trailer is not possible on an OG Switch, even if the in-game graphics aren't at the quality we're seeing in the trailer, imo. Doesn't mean it's not possible that we're looking at enhanced graphics on a Switch pro, but I would expect an OG Switch to still have the same base features nonetheless.

Yeah, pretty much. The lighting kind of fell apart in unlit interiors, really. It really looks like the biggest focus was to get as much bang for the buck in rendering features for the outside with the sun or moon as a main light source. The way it does indirect lighting is amazingly effective for these scenarios, and probably very cheap, but it's clearly not suited for interiors.

The more I see the trailer, the more I realize it's a huge upgrade in visual quality.

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I remember that area, yikes. Even just enabling shadow casting from those lanterns would go a long way in providing better lighting for the scene. SSAO is not enough, especially when it only applies to object silhouettes and not the grooves and crevices on the objects themselves. In the BOTW2 trailer, dynamic AO is applied to nearly every surface in shadow, which makes a huge difference for interiors.

I can't speak for what brainchild thinks but from what I can personally see, no, there's nothing here that would suggest that. The lighting improvements are nice and were immediately noticeable, but they're also pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Something that's quite posible to achieve by simply moving from a Wii U port to a ground up Switch game. We've seen bigger jumps in lighting and shader quality in other Switch sequels.

Also another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of BotW's cutscenes were pre-rendered, so we don't know at this point if we're even looking at a realtime cutscene or not. If this cutscene is pre-rendered in the final game, it's possible they're cheating a little and uping the quality settings above gameplay to make it more cinematic. We'll really need to see in game footage before we can say anything definitive.

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I agree with all of this. There is a discussion to be had about what level of quality an enhanced version might sit at, and maybe this is it, but that would just be speculation and there are other possible explanations for what we're seeing.

EDIT:

Thanks for all of the kind words and feedback, everyone!

 

[Tora]

Nintendo would not go all out optimising for a pro version. Maybe i'm wrong, but didn't Hyrule warriors on N3DSXL just run closer to 30fps compared to the 3ds version that ran at 20fps?

The only differences between a standard and pro model would be resolution/frame-rate, couldn't see much more than that.

 

[bytesized]

I honestly thought the trailer had to be prerrendered, it looked so good. I wish the switch was powerful enough to maintain those cutscene visuals during gameplay too, to me it's one of the nicest art styles I've ever seen.

 

[Pokémon]

To the Wii U's credit, the game loaded faster on the Wii U than the Switch. It's almost a lock that the Switch revision will have faster processing similar to the 3DS -> New 3DS upgrade

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I think it is no longer true.

In a recent patch, they allowed the Switch to overclock during loading screens making loading times shorter than on WiiU.

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Yep, even BotW speedrunners have changed from Wii U to Switch recently because the loading times have been improved vastly in the Switch version.

 

[Idontwantit]

Good video! Do you think Botw 2 can be 1080p on the Switch revision?

 

[Rebel-TT]

I just want to give props to Brainchild. The video is excellent, and the descriptions for laypeople like myself, spliced in between professional opinions, make the content very watchable. Great job!

 

[brainchild]

Good video! Do you think Botw 2 can be 1080p on the Switch revision?

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Thanks! If the original version is 900p, even a very modest boost in specs should be able to hit 1080p. Having said that, we still don't know what the specs are.

I just want to give props to Brainchild. The video is excellent, and the descriptions for laypeople like myself, spliced in between professional opinions, make the content very watchable. Great job!

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Thank you!

Gotta run for now, but I'll check back here later when I have time.

 

[Elfotografoalocado]

There's nothing to suggest that what we're seeing in the trailer is not possible on an OG Switch, even if the in-game graphics aren't at the quality we're seeing in the trailer, imo. Doesn't mean it's not possible that we're looking at enhanced graphics on a Switch pro, but I would expect an OG Switch to still have the same base features nonetheless.



I remember that area, yikes. Even just enabling shadow casting from those lanterns would go a long way in providing better lighting for the scene. SSAO is not enough, especially when it only applies to object silhouettes and not the grooves and crevices on the objects themselves. In the BOTW2 trailer, dynamic AO is applied to nearly every surface in shadow, which makes a huge difference for interiors.



I agree with all of this. There is a discussion to be had about what level of quality an enhanced version might sit at, and maybe this is it, but that would just be speculation and there are other possible explanations for what we're seeing.

EDIT:

Thanks for all of the kind words and feedback, everyone!

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Yeah, the upgrade is massive, and I still cannot keep thinking of the upgrade in assets and geometry that we see. If all of Hyrule has received a similar upgrade, we are certainly in front of a looker.

 

[IronFalcon1997]

So essentially, this cutscene may be cheating in upping the quality of some settings, but the features themselves and the models and textures should all be the same in the final game? Am I missing something or is that accurate?

 

[brainchild]

Yeah, the upgrade is massive, and I still cannot keep thinking of the upgrade in assets and geometry that we see. If all of Hyrule has received a similar upgrade, we are certainly in front of a looker.

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The LOD bias in the first game's cutscenes was much lower (higher quality geometric/texture detail at farther distances) than the in-game engine allowed, so I expect it to be the same in the sequel. It's one of the biggest advantages of in-engine cutscenes because the loading of the assets (and thus optimization, scene for scene) is 100% controlled by the developer.

Of course, there might be a significant bump in geometric detail in the sequel's in-game graphics, but in-engine cutscenes will always have the advantage of using the highest LODs available, so it wouldn't make sense not to take advantage of that.

So essentially, this cutscene may be cheating in upping the quality of some settings

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Yes.

but the features themselves and the models and textures should all be the same in the final game?

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Depends on what you mean by "same models and textures". From my perspective, different LODs means different assets (they can all represent the same concepts, but would be of differing quality). Rendering features should be the same though, as that was the case in the first game.

 

[IronFalcon1997]

Depends on what you mean by "same models and textures". From my perspective, different LODs means different assets (they can all represent the same concepts, but would be of differing quality). Rendering features should be the same though, as that was the case in the first game.

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Ok, that makes sense. So, technically, the models right next to the camera would be the same quality, but farther away they'll be swapped out for lower quality ones. Right? Sorry if I'm completely missing the point. Thanks for the analysis and answers! All the rendering features that you've pointed out are a huge improvement over the original and making me really excited!

 

[Bjones]

So it's running on a switch pro then.

;)

 

[brainchild]

Ok, that makes sense. So, technically, the models right next to the camera would be the same quality, but farther away they'll be swapped out for lower quality ones. Right?

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Right. Pre-rendered in-engine cutscenes don't have to worry about this. The near camera detail can be pushed all the way out in the far distance because even if the system can't handle it real-time, it can just continue rendering until it's finished, and the final result can be played back smoothly. In most cases, you can simply render the highest quality assets on a more powerful machine that can handle that level of detail across the entire scene.

You do have to be careful about showing too much detail in the distance, though; you can get shimmering artifacts as a result of the sub-pixel frequencies from high quality LOD at far distances and will have to use techniques like clamping to resolve the issue.

 

[IronFalcon1997]

Right. Pre-rendered in-engine cutscenes don't have to worry about this. The near camera detail can be pushed all the way out in the far distance because even if the system can't handle it real-time, it can just continue rendering until it's finished, and the final result can be played back smoothly. In most cases, you can simply render the highest quality assets on a more powerful machine that can handle that level of detail across the entire scene.

You do have to be careful about showing too much detail in the distance, though; you can get shimmering artifacts as a result of the sub-pixel frequencies from high quality LOD at far distances and will have to use techniques like clamping to resolve the issue.

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Cool! That's really interesting! Thanks for answering. It really cleared up some confusion. This stuff is fascinating to me, even if I know very little about it.

 

[brainchild]

Cool! That's really interesting! Thanks for answering. It really cleared up some confusion. This stuff is fascinating to me, even if I know very little about it.

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No problem! Happy to help.

 

[Tom Nook Says...]

Visually, I'd mostly like BotW2 to make some simple enhancements that keep you immersed in the world, as I feel that best serves the experience of playing a game like BotW. So if they can manage to reduce pop-in, set the texture filter (is that even the proper term?) further in front of you, decrease the "haze" that shows up when you look far in the distance, and bump the resolution to 1080p I'd be more than smitten. Considering how nice Mario Odyssey looks at a solid 60FPS, I have no doubt BotW2 will do some impressive stuff at 30FPS.

The lighting improvements and more complex geometry seen in the trailer are certainly welcome as well, and I think some of BotW1's textures could use some refinement (particularly most of the mountainous surfaces you climb on since they are a bit muddy and often occupy your entire screen whilst climbing), but for the most part I just want the extra juice in the Switch put toward those improvements that keep your suspension of disbelief in place. There were numerous instances in BotW where I was in awe of this world I was in... and then a bush would manifest into existence like 20 yards in front of me lol. Those little technical hiccups that constantly remind you you're in an artificial world would be priority #1 for me if I was in charge of BotW2, personally.

Oh, and thanks brainchild for the excellent analysis.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

Tbh Switch undocked is not leagues above a Wii U, if one is limited the other should be as well (and gamers will be anticipating Switch 2 Zelda exclusive because BotW2 is held back by the current Switch)

Despite its limitations BotW is a big achievment for Wii U and Nintendo in general, first HD Zelda, and uses 1.5GB of RAM for the overworld. Next Zelda is only building on the excellent foundation provided by their last console

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I don't know why you keep spouting this nonsense. The Switch in handheld mode is 2x a WiiU in real World performance. The CPU is a massive improvement over WiiU, probably 1.5x. 2x the RAM for games at twice the memory bandwidth. A 2008 AMD GPU vs a 2015 Nvidia GPU. Switch also uses a modified Vulkun API.

BotW was a quick and dirty port. Look at the improvement in framerate from launch to the first performance patch. They barely made launch. No one should be looking at BotW as an indication of Switch's power over WiiU.

Would WiiU run The Witcher 3?... exactly.

In short. Even in handheld mode, they still have a ton of room for improvement for the modified BotW 2 engine over the original BotW WiiU engine.

Also Nintendo games only get better with time.

 

[Wander_]

So it's running on a switch pro then.

;)

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definitely no.

 

[Simba1]

Will they be able to improve visual quality while also getting it to stick to 30fps more consistently unlike BoTW? I guess we'll see. Maybe not being tied down with a WiiU version will help optimization.

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After all patches, BotW is over 90% of time locked at 30 FPS, only part that still has not locked FPS is Korok Forest.

 

[Simba1]

-BotW is Wii U game, its build on first place for Wii U hardware on mind and port of game like that for totally different tech/architecture will not give best results in any case
-BotW is Switch launch game, so even if its not Wii U port it wouldnt push Switch hardware to limits in any case like its expected from games in later years of some platform (in later years devs know hardware/tools much better, strengths and weakness and can push that hardware for games much further than they could at launch)

With that on mind, BotW 2 should have noticeable improvements over BotW, if BotW on Switch runs at 900p (to be fair dynamic 900p) I think we could expect 1080p (dynamic 1080p) with some graphical improvements.

 

[Xeontech]

Will wait for gameplay results after launch tbh

 

[blitzblake]

I can't help but feel this fuels the "downgrade pitchfork mob". Do we really have to look at announcement trailers under a microscope?
The game literally doesn't even have a title yet but we've already analysed the volumetric lighting and open world geometry and have it ready to compare to ever other future showing of the game.

 

[ZiggyPalffyLA]

I can't help but feel this fuels the "downgrade pitchfork mob". Do we really have to look at announcement trailers under a microscope?
The game literally doesn't even have a title yet but we've already analysed the volumetric lighting and open world geometry and have it ready to compare to ever other future showing of the game.

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Nobody ever claimed this was gameplay footage. An in-engine cutscene is unlikely to get downgraded much before launch.

 

[Elfotografoalocado]

The LOD bias in the first game's cutscenes was much lower (higher quality geometric/texture detail at farther distances) than the in-game engine allowed, so I expect it to be the same in the sequel. It's one of the biggest advantages of in-engine cutscenes because the loading of the assets (and thus optimization, scene for scene) is 100% controlled by the developer.

Of course, there might be a significant bump in geometric detail in the sequel's in-game graphics, but in-engine cutscenes will always have the advantage of using the highest LODs available, so it wouldn't make sense not to take advantage of that.

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I mean, from the perspective of the assets themselves. Much of the world geometry in Breath of the Wild (Particularly the world surface) looks like was mostly made from the terrain editor itself:

The textures may be applied procedurally to an extent, the same way all the water surfaces are part of the same surface and have a shader that gives the impression of flow depending on inclination. On top of that, tiled textures seem to be hand-painted on top of the world to create roads, add rocky or muddy surfaces, etc:

Which can give the world geometry a muddy look, like you can tell from afar the grass and the cobblestone surfaces were painted with a broad brush on top of geometry that was made with a terrain editor, and that this terrain editor was rather limited in what it could do.

If you look at the GDC talks for Horizon: Zero Dawn, the terrain editor is more advanced, and they had many assets available to add detail and believability as needed. Note how their terrain editing tools can place geometry, small rocks, grass, and trees in a believable manner automatically. It can even make trodden roads, modifying the geometry around it!


My impression, watching the trailer for the new game, is that they now have exactly that, they have a better terrain editor that allows them to have more detail, believability and asset variety. The rock formations in that cave look very natural, there's detail when needed, it looks much more organic, and hopefully the same advancements have made it into the world of Hyrule itself, because the weak point of the game was not the rendering (Even if the improvements in the new game are very welcome) but rather the landscape that could be unbelievable and muddy fairly often.

 

[Alex3190]

All I can think of when watching this is that I hope this gane will have a switch pro mode.

 

[Lady Dimitrescu]

I can imagine the game getting a "dramatic" upgrade during its last 6 months of release once the full game is made. A bit like what we saw with Splatoon. It's good to know there's some upgrades already thanks to focusing on just one more modern piece of hardware.

I say that but they'll probably have to develop for the Pro too!

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

All I can think of when watching this is that I hope this gane will have a switch pro mode.

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With or without a Pro mode, I'm just hoping that the optimization will allow them to improve the draw distance of grass, etc.

Other than resolution, maybe, that was the biggest graphical weakness the game had for me, and the tower shot above just reminded me of it.

 

[Alex3190]

With or without a Pro mode, I'm just hoping that the optimization will allow them to improve the draw distance of grass, etc.

Other than resolution, maybe, that was the biggest graphical weakness the game had for me, and the tower shot above just reminded me of it.

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Yeah I agree as well, along with a higher resolution with better lighting. This game is going to look great on release.

 

[Jraphics Horse]

Specular highlights and Fresnel are both separate from the three tone shading. There's a generic one when there's only ambient light (this was true of the first game as well), but it's just for artistic purposes and is not physically based.

And in the first game, there simply is no progression from direct light to ambient tone to opaque occlusion INSIDE the radius of the direct light, so there's a pretty clear rendering difference there. That isn't to say it isn't possible there's another light source, but even if that were the case, that wouldn't change that fact that occlusion shading is present beyond just unlit surfaces, and has a slight blur around the boundary of the color band (to give off the appearance of ambient occlusion) which was not the case in the first game.

You can also check the crevices of the models (like in the ears) while they're in shadow for more obvious cases of dynamic AO-like shading on the models.

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The generic light used for artistic purposes is an important point, in the original game the 'sun' was basically always having an effect.
Even if you're inside a cave they preserve the two tone shading that aligns with the sun/moon, in reality it should disappear as soon as you go into a shadow, but the cast shadows often are often partially faded out to be lighter than the ambient only side, I'm not sure if this is controlled by the exposure or something else, but it even shows up in some of the pre-rendered cutscenes.


Anyway, going back to the main point, what I'm thinking it looks like is this artistic two tone light directional light is still there in the teaser, in every shot, and not always aligning with the torchlight, there's several shots where concentric 3 tone shading simply isn't present.
Because the way the thresholding of the torchlight works, the shapes it casts have a much smaller radius than a directional light going towards the same place, so if they're in a similar direction towards an object you get something which looks similar to concentric 3 tone shading like Symin here being lit by both the Blizzard Rod and the afternoon 'sun'.

For the ambient occlusion, I agree I think they've made some changes here, but the way I see it would be done is to modulate the edges of each two tone light. Games like Guilty gear Xrd have a hand drawn AO map which the lighting calculation is multiplied by (as a percentage) before the two tone threshold is applied, which works pretty effectively, they could do something similar here for armpits etc, but not necessarily hand drawn. It probably needs it because I can't see any sign of direct shadow testing on the toon surfaces at all in the teaser.

 

[brainchild]

The generic light used for artistic purposes is an important point, in the original game the 'sun' was basically always having an effect.
Even if you're inside a cave they preserve the two tone shading that aligns with the sun/moon, in reality it should disappear as soon as you go into a shadow, but the cast shadows often are often partially faded out to be lighter than the ambient only side, I'm not sure if this is controlled by the exposure or something else, but it even shows up in some of the pre-rendered cutscenes.


Anyway, going back to the main point, what I'm thinking it looks like is this artistic two tone light directional light is still there in the teaser, in every shot, and not always aligning with the torchlight, there's several shots where concentric 3 tone shading simply isn't present.
Because the way the thresholding of the torchlight works, the shapes it casts have a much smaller radius than a directional light going towards the same place, so if they're in a similar direction towards an object you get something which looks similar to concentric 3 tone shading like Symin here being lit by both the Blizzard Rod and the afternoon 'sun'.

For the ambient occlusion, I agree I think they've made some changes here, but the way I see it would be done is to modulate the edges of each two tone light. Games like Guilty gear Xrd have a hand drawn AO map which the lighting calculation is multiplied by (as a percentage) before the two tone threshold is applied, which works pretty effectively, they could do something similar here for armpits etc, but not necessarily hand drawn. It probably needs it because I can't see any sign of shadow testing on the toon surfaces at all in the teaser.

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If your hang up is that there's not a consistent high tone > mid-tone > low tone progression for every light source being reflected as cel-shading, I would agree.

However, in the example you use, there would technically be a four 'tone' illusion in a BOTW2 equivalent, as the AO like cel-shading would be added to Symin's model on top on the ambient two-tone and additional tone from the ice rod. I consider the AO in BOTW2 to be another cel-shaded tone because it is rendered under the same type of toon shaded color banding and has no real gradient like normal Phong shading. Technically, that is cel-shading.

Example:

Four tones here (if we're counting the ambient light as two):

1. Direct torch light on Link's face
2. Light ambient tone on Link's right cheek (appears to be on the left from our point of view)
3. Darker ambient tone on Link's neck
4. Darkest ambient occlusion tone in the crevices of Link's ear.

If your remove the torch out of the equation, you have three tones: Light, Dark, Darkest. You can pretty much see some variation of this in any shot.

I think the Ganondorf model does the best job of showing it off:

It's not just the cavity maps with dynamically toon shaded AO, but generally occluded areas in shadow as well.

 

[Jraphics Horse]

If your hang up is that there's not a consistent high tone > mid-tone > low tone progression for every light source being reflected as cel-shading, I would agree.

However, in the example you use, there would technically be a four 'tone' illusion in a BOTW2 equivalent, as the AO like cel-shading would be added to Symin's model on top on the ambient two-tone and additional tone from the ice rod. I consider the AO in BOTW2 to be another cel-shaded tone because it is rendered under the same type of toon shaded color banding and has no real gradient like normal Phong shading. Technically, that is cel-shading.

Example:

Four tones here (if we're counting the ambient light as two):

1. Direct torch light on Link's face
2. Light ambient tone on Link's right cheek (appears to be on the left from our point of view)
3. Darker ambient tone on Link's neck
4. Darkest ambient occlusion tone in the crevices of Link's ear.

If your remove the torch out of the equation, you have three tones: Light, Dark, Darkest. You can pretty much see some variation of this in any shot.

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I was having trouble identifying darker parts of the image apart from the cheek, they all average out similar brightness, but then I noticed darker parts in the blue channel so I had a look at it alone and it's really weird:

I haven't added any sharpening to it, not sure if it's the video codec or something stylistic in the rendering!

I will try and have a proper look at Ganon tomorrow!

 

[brainchild]

I was having trouble identifying darker parts of the image apart from the cheek, they all average out similar brightness, but then I noticed darker parts in the blue channel so I had a look at it alone and it's really weird:

I haven't added any sharpening to it, not sure if it's the video codec or something stylistic in the rendering!

I will try and have a proper look at Ganon tomorrow!

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That is a cropped shot of compressed video, so I'm not surprised by the results. The reason I cropped the shot was because it was one of the few shots that clearly (to my eyes) showed the torch light and 'ambient' light reflected in different directions, as well as the ambient occlusion. And even in your isolated channel shot, the brightness is clearly not the same across the same unlit surface.

I didn't crop the ganon shots, so you should have better results with those ones. In the first ganon shot, there's only one light source, and even in the shaded parts of that shot, there's plenty of AO visible along the crevices of his skin, and in some of the areas around his cheek and neck.

 

[Deleted member 40102]

I personally wouldn't trust the first teaser.

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Its sad they never recieved as much backlash as other publishers did....

 

[The Emperor]

Its sad they never recieved as much backlash as other publishers did....

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As they made the best game of all time people did not care about graphics. Which is right

Backlash over visuals is nonsensical imo. Game dev is very hard...and making trailers is often a corporate requirement

 

[Deleted member 3924]

As they made the best game of all time people did not care about graphics.

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TW3 downgrade got so much heat too and that game was another game of the generation for many people.

 

[The Emperor]

TW3 downgrade got so much heat too and that game was another game of the generation for many people.

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I guess it being on Switch the expectations for graphics are lower anyway (as they have been for nintendo games for 12 years now). There is less obsession over graphics compared to PS4/One games so the outrage was bound to be less anyway

 

[Elfotografoalocado]

I guess it being on Switch the expectations for graphics are lower anyway (as they have been for nintendo games for 12 years now). There is less obsession over graphics compared to PS4/One games so the outrage was bound to be less anyway

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I think it also has to do with the fact The Witcher 3 was getting trailers with pre-downgrade graphics months before launch, whereas that BOTW teaser was almost three years before the game was released, and ever after from the next showing of the game (TGA 2014 I believe) the game only improved.

The TGA 2014 showing was very much a preliminary version of the game with all the jank that comes with it. It was not a vertical slice, at all.

 

[Deleted member 8752]

Thanks for watching, everyone!

If anyone has questions about the analysis or the graphics presented in the trailer, feel free to post them here and I'll do my best to answer them when I have a free moment.



They're rendered with the engine used to render the game in real-time during gameplay. In the first game, there were no notable differences in rendering features, just differences in the quality of the assets/features (higher quality Bokeh, higher res textures/shadows, highest LOD parameter, etc.).

I expect it to be the same with the sequel.

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Didn't realize you worked for gamexplsin. Always loved reading your analysis of BotW's clouds and lighting effects.

I'll give this a watch.

 

[Deleted member 8752]

Its sad they never recieved as much backlash as other publishers did....

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I feel like the final game looked as impressive as this though. The camera just wasn't as zoomed out and a few stylistic changes were made.

 

[Bumrush]

Damn, I probably understood half of the video but brainchild knows what he's talking about and if he's excited I'm excited

 

[Deleted member 4093]

Its sad they never recieved as much backlash as other publishers did....

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Because they're missing a few goats in the game?

 

[Daccus]

Its sad they never recieved as much backlash as other publishers did....

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We didn't even know the name of the game at that point or that the Switch would exist. Backlash for what, exactly? Their E3 and Switch Presentation trailers were either gameplay or in-engine cutscenes, so it's not like they ever misled us.

 

[Deleted member 40102]

As they made the best game of all time people did not care about graphics. Which is right

Backlash over visuals is nonsensical imo. Game dev is very hard...and making trailers is often a corporate requirement

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Yeah watch dogs recieved huge backlash even before the game releasing. Just vompared 2012 trailer to the 2014 one before knowing if it will be best game of all time or not.

I feel like the final game looked as impressive as this though. The camera just wasn't as zoomed out and a few stylistic changes were made.

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Not even close.

We didn't even know the name of the game at that point or that the Switch would exist. Backlash for what, exactly? Their E3 and Switch Presentation trailers were either gameplay or in-engine cutscenes, so it's not like they ever misled us.

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So? You know it was advertised for the wii u before they ever mentioned the switch right ?

 

[Zedelima]

Hey brainchild , do you consider doing a video for BOTW since DF never made one?

You already analyzed everything, is just missing a video! Haha

 

[Deleted member 4093]

Yeah watch dogs recieved huge backlash even before the game releasing. Just vompared 2012 trailer to the 2014 one before knowing if it will be best game of all time or not.

Not even close.


So? You know it was advertised for the wii u before they ever mentioned the switch right ?

Click to shrink...

It does look impressive though. Its very close. If you can specify where it dont especially that point of view anybody can go in breath of the wild and find a similar area as far as grass and you get the whole thing. Wind blowing, fog, clouds showing shadows over the world, rocks and bolders, flowers in the grass. Its all in there. You really seem to be hung up on the camera and positioning of the gif. You cant play the game in that camera.

 

[Elfotografoalocado]

It does look impressive though. Its very close. If you can specify where it dont especially that point of view anybody can go in breath of the wild and find a similar area as far as grass and you get the whole thing. Wind blowing, fog, clouds showing shadows over the world, rocks and bolders, flowers in the grass. Its all in there. You really seem to be hung up on the camera and positioning of the gif. You cant play the game in that camera.

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The only thing that's missing is that the NPCs aren't as dynamic as those in the teaser, but quite honestly, the whole visual and weather package is there, the Guardians are there and they are pretty much like that, it's just a cinematic trailer, and we got a very close game. It's not like they showed a whole gameplay demo that turned out to be bullshit, like other publishers do.

 

[Deleted member 40102]

It does look impressive though. Its very close. If you can specify where it dont especially that point of view anybody can go in breath of the wild and find a similar area as far as grass and you get the whole thing. Wind blowing, fog, clouds showing shadows over the world, rocks and bolders, flowers in the grass. Its all in there. You really seem to be hung up on the camera and positioning of the gif. You cant play the game in that camera.

Click to shrink...

There were so much more grass in the gif

Way better lightning

WAY better draw distance


Look I agree the game still looks gorgeous even on the handheld and its one of my top 5 games of all time, but final visual doesn't come close to that gif.