The expressions look weird to me lol

Maybe if I play the games, I'll have a different opinion but I remember seeing the trailers and finding the expressions weirdly animated.

Looked mostly fine to me? Exodus on the other hand was *rough*.

OT - Tentatively excited for this one, but the rapid gameplay cuts make me think it won't feel as great to play as they're making it look.

I think we've just reached the point where character faces are so advanced that they ALMOST look real so our brain hyperfixates on the tiniest imperfections instead of viewing them as a stylized recreation.

That's the uncanny valley for you.

Making it stylized (see GTAVI, for instance) helps you escape that instead of exacerbating the problem, though, since it tends to occur when the aim is photorealism but the lighting/facial muscles are bad.

I wouldn't say that the lighting or animation here is bad, it's just that the human brain is incredibly hard to fool.

This game is so needed in this generation - the focus on visuals and atmosphere is what I've felt sorely lacking this gen.

The game is running on Unreal Engine 5, which has had a bit of a shaky track record on consoles so far, but its early days so some teething issues with the technology aren't that surprising; Hellblade definitely looks like the most polished UE5 console game thus far.

The first game was a real showcase for Unreal Engine 4 and one of the most visually impressive games on that engine.

Yeah, this is one of the few games so far this gen that I've looked at and felt like I was looking at a true gen 9 game, most games so far this gen have managed to look cross-gen, gen 8.5, even many of those that dropped PS4/XB1 and released on current gen only. 

It's also one of the first games we've seen that seems to be using all of that new Unreal 5 tech like Lumen and Nanite properly, most UE5 games so far have just looked like they are on UE4, because they probably were all games that started on UE4 and then later got ported to UE5, and the dev teams didn't feel like effectively restarting development to build in UE5 features like Nanite and Lumen. Hellblade 2 looks properly built from the ground up for UE5, which matches with the rumor that Ninja Theory was one of a select few studios given early access to UE5 back in 2019, before the first gorgeous in-engine trailer for Hellblade 2 at The Game Awards 2019. 

Was hoping for a more concrete release date by now, looks great though!

As of now, this is the best looking current gen game imo. I'm pumped for it!