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Nuvendil on 16 July 2017
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Hiku said:
Nuvendil said:




They are pretty.  But nothing astounding.  Obviously adjustments would need making.  But I could see that running, probably at 30fps but working fine none the less, with downgrades but still looking fine.  

There's nothing remotely close to this currently on Switch, so I don't know how anyone can say they see it running fine without any point of reference.
We don't even have a single PS4-only port of any kind on Switch yet, do we? The only ones I know of are also on PS3 or Vita. The first one should be Dragon Quest XI.
Meanwhile we have (probably a lazy port) Dragon Quest Heroes II, which is also a PS3/Vita game, running at around 15-20f on Switch in portable mode, and the significantly less demanding looking DQ11 (compared to KH3) not even shown in its Switch form yet. None of that is encouraging at the very least.

The urban area in Mario looks like this:



The foilage, textures, lighting, shaders, particle effects, etc, and pretty much everything is leaps beyond what we see in Mario or any other Switch game I'm aware of for that matter. They don't look like they're from the same generation.

Check out the windows and reflections and look at the ones in KH3:



While this Mario area is likely a more open area, there's no comparison when it comes to the fidelity. Kingdom Hearts games used to have the type of graphics you'd see in typical Nintendo games, but they've gone in a bit of a different direction this time with KH3.
Coupling that with the fact that this game was likely designed to scale between PS4 and Xbox One, and that this is likely going to be 30fps even on PS4, as Kingdom Hearts games traditionally have been on home console, and KH 0.2 is running at an unstable/unlocked 30f on standard PS4, which is using the KH3 engine, and it also having framepacing issues, the prospects of this coming to Switch is loking very very slim to me.

Snake Pass is a PS4, Xbone, and PC game that came the Switch.  In good form.  And the Dragon Quest Heroes ports are just atrocious in every sense and representative of nothing other than their developers laziness or incompetence cause...I mean, f***.  

As for big games on Switch, do bear in mind Super Mario Odyssey is targetting 60fps with a goal to have it locked AND the game isn't done yet.  As Splatoon did, it mind see noticeable visual enhancements by launch.  In fact, some of your screens date back to the FIRST Odyssey trailer which looks noticeably inferior to gameplay recently shown.  And let's not forget Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is no slouch, even though it is also clearly unfinished and our only footage is from a compressed-out-the-ass stream.  So just saying, we don't have a clear picture of EXACTLY what it can do and your comparison is not ideal. And of course let's not forget Sonic Forces, which is a PS4 and Xbone game coming to Switch that looks great on PS4 and looks dang similar on the Switch just at a reduced framerate and resolution.

As for Kingdom Hearts, even at passing glance I can see numerous ways this could be scaled back without as heavy a compromise or as much work as you suggest.  Character models are smooth but also highly stylized (as one would expect) in a way that keeps polygon counts lower than in something like Horizon or Final Fantasy XV.  This means 1) they may not need adjustment and 2) if they do, it's a simpler process.  More fine detail complexity on the polygonal level means more headaches going down to lower polycounts as you fight to preserve detail.  These models don't face that issue to nearly the same degree.  Textures are not extraordinarily complex by virtue of the game's setting and design, despite the fact that yes, they are sharp and no doubt high res.  Texture resolution scaling is really straight forward work.  I can't be sure, but I *think* UE4 can even do it automatically, though I would have to check that.  A lot of lighting effects can be straight toggled, especially if they are from UE4's built in set (seriously, it's the flip of a switch), and a ton can be easily scaled back.  Shadows are also extremely easy to adjust in quality.  Grass here is handled literally EXACTLY like in Snake Pass (actually almost every UE4 game), Skyrim, Fallout, Horizon, pretty much every open world game since Oblivion (barring Breath of the Wild, and Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and X) and can have density and draw distance easily scaled.  And even if they have placed it "by hand", it's still literally a 1 day fix per level that needs any change at all and that's if just one guy works on it.  There are so few things, like the particle effects, that I see that are not straight forward and easy fixes.  It would just require putting in work.  Now maybe there's some stuff they haven't shown that requires a bunch of resources like complex AI (highly doubt that) or high end physics simulation, but I wouldn't count on it.  

All I'm saying is that if what all we've seen is representative, it can definitely be done.  Not saying the Toy Story segment doesn't look good, it looks great, but that's always a bit deceptive.  Look at, for example Ribbon Road in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.  It looks crazy good...but a lot of that is because of the visual design of not just the game but that specific track.  Toys and interiors have smooth surfaces and geometric shapes and when crossed with a cartoony aesthetic you can really push the details towards that "Pixar" level in real world appearance even if on close inspection there's still a very, very wide gap.

So yeah, I stand by what I said, it could be done.  Not a doubt in my mind.  It's just a question of WILL they.  Square Enix has been back and forth on the Switch.  It's getting DQXI and Lost Sphere and of course Dragon Quest X and it already got Dragon Quest Heroes (for what it's freaking worth) and I Am Setsuna but hasn't really talked about bringing anything Final Fantasy related, no word on Kingdom Hearts content, etc.  We'll just have to see.