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curl-6 on 14 April 2019
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JRPGfan said:
curl-6 said:

Yeah, I feel like more than any game previously released on the system, Hellblade really seems to indicate that the Switch has still has untapped potential and that we haven't yet seen the full extent of how far it can be pushed.

2 years ago, I never imagined Switch would ever be producing results like this.

I disagree, I think Hellblade shows what the Switch is capable of doing, if you push it all the way to its limits.
This is a port job, where its not just resolution cut backs, or halved framerates.
They used video cutscenes (because it beats what the system can do), and they scale down textures, special effects, lightning, shadows, ect ect.

They spared no effort in optimising this game for the switch.
This is as far as the switch can go.

Which is still impressive, Switch uses like ~20watts vs the PS4 slims useing like ~90watts to play a game like this.

In Switch's first year I'm sure a lot of people would've said Doom 2016 was as far as it could ever be pushed. That game itself has since gotten updates to improve performance beyond launch level. Hellblade is no doubt pushing the Switch very hard, but I don't think it's a safe bet at all to say it's the best we'll ever see from the system. There are years to go yet before Switch is discontinued, and this will not be the last game to set out to maximize the hardware.

As d21lewis points out "x platform is maxed out" has been said countless times over the years only for even better looking and more technically advanced games to come out further down the line.

HoloDust said:
curl-6 said:

Not like this though. A theoretical PS3/360 port might be able to retain the core gameplay framework but it wouldn't even look like Hellblade anymore as you'd have to gut the rendering pipeline and crush its RAM footprint down to less than 1/6th the size of even the Switch version.

As I said already, Hellblade is very, very confined game. if Rise of Tomb Raider on 360 looked quite good, Hellblade woulkd work as well.

Rise of the Tomb Raider had to strip out all the 8th gen rendering techniques of its big brother to work on 360. You'd pretty much have to do the same for Hellblade, hence fundamentally changing its core aesthetic.

Ultimately Switch is considerably more capable hardware than PS3 or 360 so if Switch can only just manage a reasonable approximation of the full fat version, PS3/360 are going to end up being rebuilt to the point where they look totally different.