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Nuvendil on 05 January 2018
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curl-6 said:
Nuvendil said:

Yeah, I can see that on a minor level.  I still think overall it works out on the positive side.  It reminds me more of something like The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion.  A clear step up from what there was previously on a technical level, but still more to be done.  And I think some of this is also coming from Monolith Soft working with new techniques and the strains those new techniques bring I think took them off guard.  Grass system changes are one of them.  I think lighting is another.  The most distinct new feature is the cloud simulation which is dang impressive.  Another reason Leftheria looks so awesome since it really is a great showcase of the cloud sea.  

Yeah I will say the cloud simulation is freaking awesome. Forgot about that for a sec.

Oblivion is a good comparison point actually cos it has that same sense of having one foot in the current gen and one in the previous, so to speak. Like, some stuff like materials, reflections, and foliage got upgraded but other stuff looks like legacy Wii U code left over from X. Similar to what we saw in a lot of early PS3/360 and PS4/Xbone games where they were kinda a mix of old and new tech.

By contrast, a game like say Mario Odyssey very much feels like a full-blooded Switch game, head and shoulders above its Wii U predecessor.

Well in XC2's defense, it has to contend with more technical complications under the hood than Mario Odyssey.  It's not by coincidence that platformers, shooters, racers, etc are the launch titles to flex a system's muscles.  Fewer moving parts under the hood means more time can be devoted to the technical polish you can see.  

And yeah, Oblivion is a good comparison as well in the sense that you can clearly see the developers are coming to grips with certain techniques and capabilities previously unavailable.  I know I keep harping on it, but I think the foliage system changes were the cornerstone of a lot of the struggles.  It can't be overstated how much a leap in demand it was to go from billboard grass to grass made with multi-plane meshes.  Or going from having few if any proper trees with numerous leaf planes to shooting realistic(ish) trees with dense leaf planes.  And the shadow improvements also seem to have taken their toll.  Honestly, because of how the development worked out timeline wise, we get a cool window into all this with the trailers.  You can see how they struggled to come to grips with how to optimize some of these things by looking at the various videos.  

Also worth pointing out this is the first time they've had a launch window/launch year game, so that's probably part of it.  Usually Monolith Soft works later in the system's lifespan.  

Anyway, I do think the upgrades and new systems found in this iteration of the engine are very promising.  Once they iron out the wrinkles, they should have a hell of an open world engine.  I'm excited to see what they do with it later in the Switch's lifespan.