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Forums - Nintendo - T.Nomura: Kingdom Hearts III on Switch “maybe” possible after the game’s initial launch

Goodnightmoon on 16 July 2017
JRPGfan said:
Jumpin said:

You're comparing screenshots of totally different art styles.

Here's something closer, only it's on Wii from about 8 years ago.


Switch could definitely run Kingdom Hearts 3 with little issue.

That is not from the Nintendo Wii.

That screenshot is from a PS3/Xb360 or pc or something.

This is what the actual Wii game looks like:

 

I don't know who is more dishonest, but probably you since your picture is like 280p...



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JRPGfan on 16 July 2017
Goodnightmoon said:
JRPGfan said:

That is not from the Nintendo Wii.

That screenshot is from a PS3/Xb360 or pc or something.

This is what the actual Wii game looks like:

 

I don't know who is more dishonest, but probably you since your picture is like 280p...

Thats as big as the pictures get from Nintendo's Wii own page about the game. 475 x 285.

Feel free to check it out yourself: http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/1Y9lwaTCtRh01pjiljHkNOBky0GDXSFZ

 

Want a more honest look at it? Heres a youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mROB2M7S5HU

Its "slightly better" looking than the picture I posted, but clearly far far below the one the guy I qouted used.

 

Maybe nintendo wii just ran "Toy Story 3" at like a really low resolution?

I think Im the more "honest" one, since I actually used nintendos own pictures of it, and linked a video of a actual wii playing the game.

While he claims the picture he used is one from a Wii, when its clearly not.



Goodnightmoon on 16 July 2017
JRPGfan said:
Goodnightmoon said:

I don't know who is more dishonest, but probably you since your picture is like 280p...

Thats as big as the pictures get from Nintendo's Wii own page about the game. 475 x 285.

Feel free to check it out yourself: http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/1Y9lwaTCtRh01pjiljHkNOBky0GDXSFZ

 

Want a more honest look at it? Heres a youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mROB2M7S5HU

Its "better" looking than the picture I posted, but clearly far far below the one the guy I qouted used.





It took me 2 seconds to find a more proper pic, and is still blurred by the compresion (as you can see on the letters below)

The game looks surprisingly well for a Wii thanks to Toy Story artstyle, in fact even the 1995 movie has aged well thanks to that same artstyle, so Jumpin has a point, what you are seeing on KH3 may be less demanding than it looks



deskpro2k3 on 16 July 2017
Goodnightmoon said:
 


It took me 2 seconds to find a more proper pic, and is still blurred by the compresion (as you can see on the letters below)

The game looks surprisingly well for a Wii thanks to Toy Story artstyle, in fact even the 1995 movie has aged well thanks to that same artstyle, so Jumpin has a point, what you are seeing on KH3 may be less demanding than it looks

 

So going by your examples, this is the kind of compromise you're willing to have to play KH3... I really don't care if Switch gets a KH3 port, just as long as it doesn't effect the heavy weights in any kind of way.

 

XB360/PS3

 

Wii



Alkibiádēs on 16 July 2017

Of course this can run on the Switch if it's downgraded enough, not sure why anyone would argue otherwise.



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides

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Goodnightmoon on 16 July 2017
deskpro2k3 said:
Goodnightmoon said:


It took me 2 seconds to find a more proper pic, and is still blurred by the compresion (as you can see on the letters below)

The game looks surprisingly well for a Wii thanks to Toy Story artstyle, in fact even the 1995 movie has aged well thanks to that same artstyle, so Jumpin has a point, what you are seeing on KH3 may be less demanding than it looks

 

So going by your examples, this is the kind of compromise you're willing to have to play KH3.

 

XB360/PS3

 

Wii

Except the above picture is  not an in-game pic and comes from a different scenario

This would be more representative



But im not really saying that would be the level of difference, I'm only pointing that the artstyle makes the game looks more demanding than it is.



Nuvendil on 16 July 2017
Hiku said:
Nuvendil said:

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. 

I'm aware of Snake Pass, but I excluded it from the conversation because it's a relatively low budget and undemanding indie title.
The grass/foilage in Snake Pass looks like it's handled the same to you as in KH3?








I disagree. There is nothing impressive about Snake Pass's foilage, while I did react to the grass in the KH3 footage, and if you don't want to take my opinion into consideration, I can at least point you to some reactions where people specifically reacted to how impressive the grass looks in this footage:



I don't imagine anyone reacted that way to the grass in Snake Pass.
I did forget about Sonic Forces though. That would be a point of reference. We'll have to see how it holds up once its released though.

Mario is going for 60f, and that's part of of my point, that we lack proper games on Switch to compare with right now, as in the case of Martio they're putting emphasis in different directions. And of course Mario isn't finished, but at most the footage I used is 10 months away from release. Since SE didn't write "early" 2018 I don't expect KH3 to come out in the first quarter of 2018. Meaning it's probably at least a year away from completion, so I don't think the comparison is In KH3's favor in that regard.

I do agree that the textures and polygons in KH3 do not appear to be on the level of Horizon and FFXV though. (But I was more impressed with what I saw in this trailer than what I've seen from the previous ones.)
From what I've seen from KH3 so far, I don't think the visual fidelity by itself is impossible to scale down to an acceptable level for Switch. Not convinced that it can either. But what comes to mind is that KH often has a lot of things going on at once on screen, and KH3 seems to take that only further with characters/enemies and particle effects. And we now have 5 man parties instead of 3 as well. Because it was designed with Xbox One in mind as the lowest common denominator, they may have created scenarios that are very challenging, or straight up impossible to translate to Switch. Random example (Sort of. I expect some epic massive battles like the 1000 Heartless battle from KH2), a fight against all 13 members of Order XIII simultaneously. For a game that's probably already targeting unlocked 30f on PS4, I could see how they can paint themselves into a corner with all these factors on top of each other for a game like Kingdom Hearts, if they design scenarios with Xbox One in mind. Scaling graphics is not going to help much in those situations.

Take Gran Turismo Sport for example. In VR mode, they cose to remove all opponent cars except one so that it can only be played in a 1 v 1 mode, on top of scaling the graphics down. It's not like they have problems scaling down graphics further for the same hardware on a proprietary engine. But that wasn't an acceptable solution. They had to remove assets. And it's not really the same game in that state.

So my issue here is that it is a visually impressive game, probably targetting 30f and didn't have Switch in mind during design. When we as of yet still don't even have a current gen (non-indie) PS4-Switch game on Switch, it's difficult for me to expect this on Switch.

Actually, Snake Pass ain't a technical showcase but it isn't small potatoes either, as Digital Foundry pointed out.  It's a very different kind of set of challenges vs KH3, but noteworthy none the less.  The one challenge the two do share is probably polygonal density of scenes.  Snake Pass - which actually isn't a high effort port, they seem tl have mostly just adjusted some settings in UE4 and called it a day - does have some decently busy levels and scenery and while the Switch version isn't perfect it holds its own.

As for the grass, I wasn't saying quality is equal.  The grass SOLUTIONS are the same.  And upon closer inspection of the footage...yes, I am positive the solution is the exact same.  I've seen it about a million times.  It's just higher res textures with more grass meshes and more accurate reactions to wind.  All of which is easily adjusted.  Shoot, look at Snake Pass.  Ps4 and Switch versions have very different densities (Switch has the superior density for...some reason).  The difference with Snake Pass is their grass meshes are oblong making the indiviual meshes a bit easier to spot and the look of the grass is inherently more cartoony, which naturally looks less impressive than real grass because 1) it's less real looking (duh) and 2) results in fewer blades of grass.  However, since blades are just textured on, number of blades means absolutely nothing with regards to performance. But yes, this is the folliage system built into UE4.  And honestly, this shouldn't be a shock.  The only games that take a different route to my knowledge are Xenoblade games (which used bilboards) - which have switched actually to the meshe based system with 2 - and Breath of the Wild which uses individual, independently reactive blades that I still don't know how they got to work.  

Also, I would say the Mario comparison is more infavor of KH3.  Cold truth is that SE has a habbit of having to scale back their visuals a bit near release for their big games.  It's just how they do things within their development pipeline, they start high and adjust down.  In most cases barring a small number, Nintendo tends to start conservative and move up.  It's not really a shot at SE, that's just how they do it.  The differences won't be night and day, but together I think it pushes things in favor of KH3.  Just pointing that out.

As for impossible scenarios, that's possible I suppose though as you pointed out, highly insane scenarios were pulled off just fine in KH games and others last gen and even earlier so I'm unconvinced of that.  The particle effects is in my mind a much more immediately obvious challenge as they seem to have a fetish for the things and use them all the dang time.  

And the GT comparison is really a poor one, the issues are radically different as VR is in itself more demanding, requires a higher framerate, can only downgrade visuals so much before it becomes horendous, requires a high resolution, and of course the VR itself is a resource hog.  Just not the same thing.

So as I said, if what we have seen so far is generally representative, I am confident a good version could be had on the Switch if they want to do it.



Kowan on 16 July 2017
Goodnightmoon said:
deskpro2k3 said:

 

So going by your examples, this is the kind of compromise you're willing to have to play KH3.

 

XB360/PS3

 

Wii

Except the above picture is  not an in-game pic and comes from a different scenario

This would be more representative



But im not really saying that would be the level of difference, I'm only pointing that the artstyle makes the game looks more demanding than it is.

That's an XBOX or PC screenshot? lol

*Edit:

 Oh you were just trying to show a much better comparison of the same setting. Ok, my mistake.



Alkibiádēs on 16 July 2017
Hiku said:
Alkibiádēs said:
Of course this can run on the Switch if it's downgraded enough, not sure why anyone would argue otherwise.

Because it's not always a matter of just downgrading unless the game was designed to work that way. Removing entire assets from a game is another aspect of optimising that can be problematic. When downscaling reaches a point that no longer reflects the standards they've set for the game, they have to do things like Polyphony did with Gran Turismo Sport's VR mode. They removed all the opponent cars except for one, so that it is only a 1 v 1 racer. They could have continued to downgrade the graphics until all 12 cars would function well on the track together, but the game would probably end up looking closer to Gran Turismo 5 than Gran Turismo 7.

"Nomura also discussed why Kingdom Hearts 3 features a party system that allows for more than two additional members to fight alongside Sora. No longer will players have to make the decision of which characters to bring with them into battle. And it in part comes from the decision to do away with the Dimension Link feature included in the PSP entry Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep."

"D-Link, that has been done away with. It was actually a compromise in a previous iteration because we were not able to display multiple characters on that platform in that game," Nomura said. "We’re able to depict multiple characters. Up to five people can join, even more, multiple characters can join your party."

Why don't all action games run at 60f? There's no doubt that it's more beneficial for gameplay than resolution, but developers/publishers almost always prioritize visuals in that balance because that is what immediately stands out to potential customers.

Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't doing anything ground-breaking, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. 



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides

HyrulianScrolls on 16 July 2017

There is zero reason for it to be releasing on X1 and every reason to release it on Switch. I realize there will have to be a graphical downgrade for Switch, so it maybe isn't super convenient for them to do it, but the payoff would be well worth it for them. Could honestly see Switch being its biggest platform if Switch continues to sell so well.