Digital Foundry takes a closer look at Breath of the Wild

[curl-6]

DonFerrari said:

curl-6 said:

Only the characters in Breath of the Wild are cel shaded; rock, snow, trees, pavement, water, dirt, etc all use regular textures. And rendering a world as big and detailed as BotW takes more than just CPU grunt, it also places considerable demands on RAM and GPU power, two areas where Wii U exceeds PS3 and 360.

Also, GOW3 looks as good as it does because it is highly scripted; levels are linear, the developers control the camera so they can always micro-manage exactly what's on screen at any given time, and a lot its eye candy is smoke and mirrors. It looks flashy but its not as technically demanding as an open world game like Breath of the Wild.

I doubt resolution would be the primary downgrade; I think the most noticeable cut would have to be level of detail. With half as much RAM, you couldn't fit as many assets into play at once, leading to a lot more pop-in.

Ok, I can agree that half the RAM could affect the LoD or the size of the world. But how much opmization and tricks would make the loss smaller is another point.

This being a Nintendo game, I suspect it will already be pretty optimized by the time it releases. Nintendo tend to be efficient coders, so I doubt there would be much room for further optimization on PS3/360 without resulting in noticeable visual cutbacks.