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curl-6 on 01 December 2020
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AngryLittleAlchemist said:
curl-6 said:

Wolfenstein II was patched to boost the resolution; Panic Button have continued to update and improve all their Switch ports post-launch I believe.

Things like budget need to be taken into account; rebuilding the entire game with Switch-specific assets and effects, or even to "look like a PS3 game at 720p portable" would be an expensive process they likely cannot afford within the resources they're allotted. 

Games like Doom 2016, Wolfenstein II, and Doom Eternal were designed to push the limits of hardware considerably more powerful than the Switch, so the fact it can run them at all in a playable and recognizable form is a credit to PB

@Bolded Can we really consider these games as pushing the hardware of those systems? It's weird. When a game is really well optimized and pushes some technological innovations, like Doom Eternal does with iD Tech 7 for example, I guess you could say it pushes innovation. But I don't really think that's what people mean when they say it pushes a console, no? We can at least make the excuse for Doom Eternal that technically it running and looking better than Doom 2016 on the same base hardware platforms is counterbalanced by the fact that it's on a new engine which maybe less optimized for Switch, thus making the port even more impressive despite the game already running better on the same weak hardware known as the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein II though, I don't think there's any excuse for saying those were designed to "push the limits of hardware considerably more powerful". They were designed for hardware that was considerably more powerful, yes, but they didn't push the limits of that hardware. And I'm not even saying that because they're  60fps, because adding that contextualization just makes Doom Eternal more impressive on the PS4/Xbox One, but Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein II? Eh. And on Switch Eternal had half the framerate to work with, and probably about half the resolution, too. 

I think all of these ports are pretty impressive, mind you. Just ... saying that 2/3 of those games are made to push the limits of hardware considerably more powerful seems odd. My medum-end PC gaming specs (which include a GPU from 2014 and a CPU from 2015) match the recommended specs for Doom Eternal, and that's on PC where games aren't tailor-made for specific hardware configurations. Again in Eternal's case it's probably just godly optimization, but still. 

I think its fair to say they pushed PS4/Xbone; they built a whole new high end graphics engine for both Doom 2016 and Eternal, and substantial upgrade of one for Wolfenstein II in the mean time, all with PS4 and Xbox One as the baseline. Both Doom 2016 and Wolf 2 push some really great materials, shaders, and particle effects and were praised highly for their visual fidelity including by Digital Foundry. 

ID's games are just really well optimized as well as sophisticated.