Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is out now on Switch 1 and 2

[curl-6]

Vodacixi said:

curl-6 said:

There's multiple layers to this; on the one hand, just in terms of function, Oblivia is an environment that's meant to be full of resources to collect and enemies to fight, so it makes sense for it to be more packed full of stuff; if Prime 4's desert is more something to be traversed at high speed to get to the next point of interest, then it simply wouldn't need to be as full of "stuff" that would only get in the way or slow you down.

On a technical level, I would say that the lighting in Prime 4's desert does look much better than Xenoblade X's, and if indeed this does run at 60fps on Switch 1, including in portable mode where it has similar raw power to Wii U, then having less stuff could simply be necessary to maintain performance. 30fps as X does gives you twice as much headroom in that regard.

While mecanically it doesn't need to have as much stuff, visually would make a huge difference.

It's 30VS60 fps, sure. But it's also 900p VS 1080p and 720p VS 600p. Xenoblade also has quite more stuff going on in terms of structures, landmarks, etc.

900p/60 is more demanding than 1080p/30, not just in terms of pixels per second, but also cos a lot of other things don't scale with resolution, like draw calls.

It also might simply be that the developers were going for a sense of desolation and emptiness; take for instance this area in Nier Automata, designed for hardware a generation more powerful than Xenoblade Chronicles X; it also doesn't have much going on, because that's not what the designers wanted to convey.