DF Direct Weekly #265: The End of Destiny 2, Lego Batman Tested, Yoshi Switch 2

[00:04] Yes, the warmest possible welcome to this the 265th edition of DFT Weekly, our weekly show where we discuss the latest gaming and technology news. Uh joining me first of all, John. Hello, >> Rich. Good to see you again. Looking uh

[00:19] >> Still got the Radeon 7 in the background, which is great, but there's there's something else over your other shoulder that I'm not sure about, but >> ah okay. opposite the PlayStation fives. >> Yeah, that's just a couple of graphics

[00:32] cards. Uh, and I think that one is a Radeon RX970XT. Uh, which is going to be extremely fascinating, of course, as usual to our,

[00:47] for that. >> Yes. >> And we're also joining Oliver McKenzie. Hello. Yes. We can't forget the podcast listeners, but of course we do produce the show in 4K 60

[01:03] glorious 4K 60 form for anyone who doesn't want to see the visual references and jokes on screen that John is referencing. >> Good stuff. Okay. Um, well, lots to get through this week. Uh, so I suggest we

[01:15] through this week. Uh, so I suggest we uh just kick off. But first, this DF Direct Weekly is brought to you in partnership with Alienware. The latest state-of-the-art Alienware Area 51 delivers a flagship reborn with a focus

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[02:37] Okay, so um first news story of the week. Bad news has uh fallen upon us. Um Bungie has announced that Destiny 2 is going to be uh well there's going to be no further content coming for that after the upcoming expansion. Uh big question

[02:52] marks therefore over the entire future of the company, I'd say because no new Marathon have been announced. No idea what's going on there. There have been various um uh sort of leaks and reports

[03:05] but there's no firm project in development as far as we're aware. Um John, I mean, I don't really know what to say about this one. I mean, it's it's

[03:17] about the history of this particular developer, the the heritage, >> the quality that this company is capable of. For, you know, for Bungie to be in

[03:29] that position right now, it's it's kind of shocking. >> Yeah, this is a real sad one, I think, because um and this is one I actually feet of PlayStation even. I think this is just a failure of Bungie management.

[03:46] Um, talking to people that I know personally that are ex Bungie now, like the way the management has started to approach things in the last decade really makes it seem like they genuinely

[04:00] didn't like understand how to move forward and view Destiny as this like forever thing that they could just rely on. Uh there was a line about anything single player being a dead boxed game, not worth touching. Uh there's just like

[04:15] this this attitude just kind of sucks and it seems like as expected they and it seems like as expected they eventually ran out of gas. But uh we've expressed plenty of distaste for service games over the years, but I do want to

[04:28] give a shout out to Destiny for being one of the few, one of the first and one of the few that genuinely did it really well. Like I really think Destiny was an awesome experience through and through like both visually and gameplay-wise.

[04:42] like both visually and gameplay-wise. Like it's still it played like Halo in a way, right? It has its own sort of like feel to it, but like they really brought that knowhow to Destiny. So the core gunplay I think is among the best that

[04:55] ever existed in the space. >> And then the worlds you explored were actually worlds worth exploring from like they're just beautiful, right? these huge open landscapes and gorgeous skies, something Bungie's always known

[05:08] for. Uh, I mean, I just feel like every area you visited in this game was just like pure eye candy. Like even if you go back to those original areas of Destiny 1, which kind of were existing in Destiny 2 after a while, like they're

[05:22] just awesome looking, right? It's beautiful, beautiful stuff. And I actually think that um they created something that was engaging in the sense that it just had this like sense of mystery to it, especially early on. Like

[05:36] I actually did play a lot of Destiny. And the thing about most service games is that they just feel like services, right? Like you can just see it through it's all designed. It just feels like,

[05:50] first and they built a game around it. But Destiny actually feels like this mysterious thing where the developers are also learning how to make it as they produced content. Uh, and there was just

[06:03] this like layer of mystery and like weirdness to it. And some of that stuff could be viewed in a negative way, but I actually think it made the game kind of compelling because it didn't feel like everything had been like perfectly

[06:15] planned out in this like elaborate we just want to sell you stuff way, but like an an genuinely like a mysterious cool experience. Uh, which is something they excelled with throughout the years with their other games. And like those

[06:28] Destiny raids, like have either of you guys done any of those raids? this point. I mean the some of the rate like I remember like the vault of glass at the beginning and just like that general

[06:43] that and you get your team together and you have to go through that like it just felt like you were in this weird uncharted territory of like experiencing challenges and things that you just never seen before and it was really

[06:57] really interesting and I think it's some of the best like co-op stuff that I've ever seen and like all of it was so good that it really made a case for this type of game and I think most developers were not able to take lessons from Destiny

[07:13] and they didn't actually manage to make it work. Uh and then clearly I guess I feel like Bungie's management also didn't understand this and that's ultimately what led us here today and that's really really sad to see. So I

[07:28] think just they needed they couldn't just run on this forever. I mean, Destiny 2 itself, I mean, it's become a whole like just thing, even though it's called two, like clearly it was running out of gas. They needed a place to go

[07:40] next, and they don't have that. Marathon is a side project. And I'm also a bit Marathon is like really, really interesting and well done. Uh, it's just like ultra hardcore. It's too much for me even, I would say.

[07:55] Like the people playing it right now and the the numbers aren't that good. But I think the reason is is that even though it's conceptually really cool, like it's so brutal, right? It's found this like super hardcore base. Um, but there's a

[08:10] lot of things going on in it that makes it pretty good. So, they've never really it pretty good. So, they've never really had a bad game, but I think the down. And so when they talk about all these huge layoffs, it's like I'd say

[08:23] wipe out the management team first before all the the key people before everyone's gone, right? Like try to leverage that DNA because I still think there's a chance they could make something truly great.

[08:36] >> And uh I hope that they can manage to do that. But I do fear for them at this point, especially with the way Sony is so quick to like cut their investments >> Right. Like after what they did for Blue did to Bluepoint and other studios in

[08:51] the past, it feels like nobody's technically safe, right? So it it could all just end. But they did pay a lot of money for Bungie, way more than I think they probably should have. Uh and so I hope they actually try to rescue it,

[09:07] be, >> right? Um Oliver, what's your take on all of this? Well, I I certainly agree with John that the early days of Destiny were quite something. And I remember certain things that were kind of a

[09:20] little bit exploitative really, like the like loot cave that people are shooting into and getting all kinds of goodies out of that and just some fun times and a lot of bosses that you could cheese, right? Aka uh use unintentional exploits

[09:34] to manipulate them and and make them rather easy to defeat, which me and my friends certainly did back in the days of Destiny 1. Um, that was part of the game's charm and I really do feel like some of that perhaps was lost. But yeah,

[09:46] winding down Destiny 2 development to some degree after the release of the final shapes. Failed to sustain like really high uh player count for a long time there. Um, but in general it seems to me like there were some significant

[09:59] Difficulties with content production that made them stretch out the timelines of when they were delivering things. And then also infamously issues with content vaultting over the years like in 2020 vaulted a bunch of content. That's stuff

[10:13] that you know we don't do not see with other games like World of Warcraft for different kind of game but it's still live service game still kind of an MMO style game. They deliver content updates major ones every 8 weeks huge expansions

[10:26] every 2 years or they're even accelerating that down to 18 months or so now with the latest expansion. They deliver a ton of game content and game content and indeed they make it

[10:38] and go through any of those old expansions and old content as like a leveling experience which is really cool. So, I always felt like in Destiny there was this absence of the expanding world that we saw in World of Warcraft

[10:51] in part because the technical limitations they seem to have had with world and I think they were talking about also just disc space limitations where the game was expanding in size by like 15 gigs or 20 gigs a year and

[11:06] ultimately, right? World of Warcraft figured out various streaming solutions could have figured out something similar to this. But I I feel like there was just an issue with Destiny 2 where after 9 years it's kind of a hard game to jump

[11:19] back into and you establish so much content over that period. I think a lot opportunity with maybe a new entry like a Destiny 3 as was the original plan, right? The original plan was to do I

[11:32] an expansion every one year. You know, perhaps that was a bit ambitious, but I Destiny 3 that brought players back into the fold that introduced new concepts, new ideas, uh, introduced, I think more importantly, a new technical foundation

[11:46] iterate on and develop over time. I think that's really important. So, I think Destiny 2, like I don't know, it's a fun game. I played a fair bit of it when it launched, but I was really looking forward to something Destiny 3

[11:59] unfortunately, it seems like that will never materialize. On the plus side leaving the game in in a reasonable state. Like they're rebalancing items. They're adding some remix style gameplay systems and they're retooling it to

[12:13] standalone permanently and adding a bunch of content in at the end here. So, that's at least a reasonable way to end the game uh get end the game's live little bit of what the developers did of Wayfinder back I think a couple years

[12:26] ago where they basically retoled the game as a single player title. this have kind of left it in a position where hopefully it won't need too much active development. So yeah, I think this is I mean maybe ultimately this is for the

[12:40] best, but I'm not really seeing any particularly promising projects given that it seems based on the reporting that Destiny 3 has not been green lit, know what players are interested in is the new Destiny title. And then of

[12:53] course, Marathon, Marathon's concurrent player numbers on Steam probably tell you a lot of the story there. And then also their uh rankings on Xbox and whatnot. They don't seem to be doing too well with that title. So, the prospect

[13:05] over to Marathon to help write that sinking ship. Um, you know, it's a bit of a long shot at the moment, I think, given player interest in Marathon. They have to change a lot of things. Even just the core concept behind it, which

[13:19] is that it's the extraction shooter. I don't think it's very promising for of luck there. >> Yeah, I mean, I can't really comment on where I just don't have the time to invest in it. Um, however, um, a couple

[13:35] of people on my timeline, on my Twitter timeline certainly do and are both timeline certainly do and are both equally devastated by the uh, demise of Destiny 2. And um, one of them, well, let's one of them has quite a negative

[13:48] outline on the way the game has progressed over the years. the other um somewhat positive. Going to start here with Tim Clark, the brand director of PC Gamer. Now, in terms of journalism, um Tim commands a lot of respect uh

[14:01] certainly from me. Uh his reaction, awful, awful news. Books can and should Destiny 2, which I maintain is one of the greatest games ever made and one which still has vast potential, but it has become utterly impossible to trust

[14:15] Bungie to deliver. I'm so angry at how fast it has been left to rot. No doubt the final shape should have been the endpoint, but the self-inflicted wounds since then have been so depressing to watch. The design of the portal will go

[14:27] down as one of the all-time mistakes in game development, but the catastrophic errors date all the way back to the first days of D1 and the idiotic decision to launch with double primaries and fixed perk rolls. We're getting deep

[14:39] into the law here. Partly thanks to the same devs who went on to make Concord, it took a year to unpick that blindingly obvious mistake. I say all of this as somebody for who Destiny is still my favorite game of all time. I forged

[14:53] friendships and had experiences I never thought possible thanks to a video game. The work done by the art team, the raid team, the sound team, and often the sandbox team was peerless. If you only know Destiny 2 by its deservedly

[15:05] terrible reputation, then you have missed out on one of, if not the best one of the most important games ever made, as time will reflect. Its death is a tragedy but an overdue one. Um and

[15:20] a tragedy but an overdue one. Um and conversely uh Thomas Pa the um commun u the communications director of remedy uh has a somewhat different take. Uh Destiny 2 has kept me going when the going has been hard at remedy for my 11

[15:33] hard for a workaholic like me. That's what making video games is. Being able to load into D2 was a blessing, a relationship. It was always there and brought so many of us together for incredible moments of triumph triumphs

[15:46] and despair for example uh when it was the sixth hour of Nezar in Pantheon for the second day in a row or was it third having known many of the key D2 devs. It's been tiring to read over the years how much Bungie management got. It's

[16:01] never that clearcut. What Destiny 2 has done won't be repeated. This was a groundbreaking game. But Activision uh the Activision bankrolled in a crazy way and cudos for that. Never was it possible to upkeep the kind of game D1

[16:15] and e early D2 were. Way way too expensive. Small miracle it has lasted expensive. Small miracle it has lasted this long. Um I guess in due course going to happen to to Bungie. Um Bloomberg are talking about layoffs. Um

[16:31] there are game concepts in development at Bungie. Um, but I think the takeaway is that there doesn't seem to be a clear um, strategy or outlook for the future of the studio. I think you're right, John. It's it's deeply worrying when you

[16:45] consider what happened to to to Bluepoint in particular, right? Bluepoint in particular, right? >> Absolutely. Uh, I mean, it may not I I it's going to take some serious leadership to get this back on track,

[16:57] right? I don't think it's over, but it could be. And we're going to see what >> Mhm. >> But I don't think they can just spin up and do Destiny again either. Like they think they need to do something else.

[17:11] >> But >> we'll see how it goes. I do think one of the problems I think they faced with Destiny is that the way that these games users that like chew through all the content you made in like super fast

[17:26] amount of time. And then you're going to have other users that are that take a play it differently. Because some users would feel like uh they don't play it enough so that when

[17:39] totally lost, right? There's all this new stuff. It's not really that well I'm out of this now. But then you have the other users that get through it so update? Where's the update? Where's the update? and like making something for a

[17:54] that such a different audience like that is seems pretty tough. So I feel for them in that personally and I don't know if this would this probably wouldn't save the studio. I would I would really like to see them do like a Halo class

[18:07] product again where it's like a really good single player game with a really good multiplayer component. >> If they could pull that off that would >> Mhm. Yeah. >> Okay. Well, um, thoughts with Bungie,

[18:22] final thoughts there, Oliver? Yeah, I do feel like uh I don't want to come back to World of Warcraft again, but like I do feel although although I I I do from time to time, unfortunately. Uh but I do feel like Blizzard maybe has the right

[18:35] attitude here where they basically gives them a lot of overlapping reasons to log back into games like this, especially like really dedicated players like offering obviously new content, but on top of that remixing old content and

[18:48] adding difficulty ladders into new content. So you might have like mythic versions, heroic versions, all kinds of different uh elements of the same raid. Um, and then also you might have like different kinds of remixes of old

[19:01] content, which it sounds like they are doing in Destiny 2, but in World of Warcraft they have all kinds of old expansions, all kinds of old stuff. No vaulting here, you know, all kinds of stuff that's added into the gameplay

[19:13] rotation from many expansions ago. And given that every expansion adds like multiple raid tiers and many dungeons and things like this, there's a ton of content to go through. Um, and then also like stuff that's in Destiny 2 as well,

[19:25] but obviously cosmetic farming and things like that are a big part of it as well. So, I think what John's saying is absolutely true. You'll never be able to feed the most dedicated players with a stream of new content to site their

[19:38] stream of new content to site their appetites all the time. And Destiny 2 in to get anywhere remotely close to doing that. But I think you can keep people grinding on the ladder. If they're invested enough in your game, if they

[19:51] experiences in your game, I think you can do it. And there are like tried and tested ways to do it. I think Bungie's problem was just iterating and shipping on that content without breaking things. Like I think they had a lot of problems

[20:04] relatively small team. I don't think they could have done it because of the built up into their gameplay systems. Not a very good situation there. But situation with Bungie is a little bit

[20:18] situation and I'd love to see a Destiny 3. I don't think it's very likely. I considerably for that project or perhaps pull a lot of resources for Marathon, which it sounds like they're trying to save. May maybe a version of Marathon

[20:31] could expand out to be like this really cool, you know, properly marathon styled perhaps PVE shooter that we all I think want to see from Bungie. But they seem very toolled as a multiplayer focused studio and that's what I think

[20:45] PlayStation intends them to be. So hopefully they do get the opportunity content uh for whatever they work on next. I hope it's substantially a single player uh adventure if it's not Destiny 3. Mhm. Okay, good stuff. Um, well, as I

[21:01] said, all the best to to to Bungie and the staff there. Um, let's move on. a lot about Unreal Engine 5 in this particular episode of DF Direct Weekly. Lots of games to discuss. Uh, we're going to kick off with the release uh

[21:15] going to kick off with the release uh this week as we tape this of um Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight. uh embargo was a few days ago. Um and uh weirdly we didn't receive any code and uh chasing up we never received any code

[21:28] uh chasing up we never received any code either which is slightly strange. Um yeah, but it did weirdly have an early access period if you bought the game. So going to be taking a look at it at PlayStation 5 and the PC. Um where

[21:44] should we begin? Oliver, should we talk about PlayStation 5 here? Yeah. So, because I remember pre-release people were really spooked by the concept that

[21:56] they would demand frame generation for a 30fps experience, even if that meant low-end graphics hardware because obviously the PC specs, I think, spec stipulated that low-end GPUs would have to use frame generation to hit 30 fps,

[22:08] which would obviously imply an internal frame rate of 15 fps. Not very was like Unreal Engine 5 with all the bells and whistles and kind of pushed up to the nines, but it doesn't really seem to be that way because in terms of

[22:22] visual features, I don't know that it's using lumen in any form based on what we're seeing here for a few reasons like the the visual results don't resemble lumen. Like there's no large scale occlusion, no obvious light balance,

[22:35] soft light materials, and it has even an SSAO option in the console settings, which is quite remarkable. So, you can actually turn on or off SSAO on this game, which obviously would not be something you would expect if it was

[22:48] the game has an extremely uniform lighting appearance, indicating that for the diffuse indirect lighting, they really are depending heavily on on SSAO. And then the reflections appear to be uh SSR based with no SDF fallback that I

[23:01] manipulating the camera and adjusting perspective and things like that. But in too bad overall. But just the fact that the lighting presentation is taken back in those respects by it seems like not really relying on lumen. It does bring

[23:17] of a more improved lighting presentation which I think you can tell in this footage here as I'm panning around. But on the plus side, the Lego bricks that and built into interesting structures that looks cool. The brick work is

[23:31] detailed and has plenty of surface imperfections and things like that. Um, areas. I think one issue with these Traveler's Tales games that I think John also will probably echo here is that because they are larger scale games,

[23:45] they aren't being made exclusively or obviously the game isn't being made out they're being given the appearance of being made exclusively out of Lego bricks. Unlike in some other titles like Lego Horizon Adventures, another UE5

[23:58] title, but one that does make use of Lumen for instance. um that title Lego bricks themselves. Also with a title like Lego Builder's Journey again very small scale even relative to Horizon Adventures but they everything

[24:12] including elements that are fluid like water. They find a way to do that. So that's quite a cool look. Um I also ran into one area early on where there was didn't get capture of it unfortunately, but there was some kind of like frame

[24:27] possibly frame pacing issue or issue with camera jutter or another similar issue during an intense sequence that was not too promising. Um, but overall was not too promising. Um, but overall it's like 30 fps by default fidelity

[24:39] mode. Um, runs okay outside of that one issue. does have a 60 fps mode as well, which feels kind of heavy in the hand, but I did check around for frame generation. I didn't spot obvious signs of it in my footage, so I'm presuming

[24:52] that's not frame gen, although I did suspect that briefly. Might be the case. fidelity mode. In performance mode, it's little bit oversharp with a default sharpness, which you can adjust, by the

[25:04] story here is more of like production efficiency and moving away from what were apparently according to people who spoke to media um who work inside the studio a very troubled engine that

[25:17] Traveler's Tales was using before. Moving over to Unreal probably eased a lot of those production burdens and made this game actually feasible to deliver don't really think there's like a really strong rendering story in the sense that

[25:30] moving from basically last generation um last generation technology that was more primitive in terms of its rendering features. I don't think we're seeing a huge upgrade in terms of the core

[25:42] rendering probably just because if you're not using Lumen and you're using going to get a tremendous result in a necessarily going to get that real next generation visual appearance. uh when it

[25:55] are are kind of really looking to to see improved here. think? >> So, what's the first thing that struck me then is that this is one of many Lego

[26:09] Batman games, I guess, right? Lego Batman goes back to PlayStation 2 and on there it actually looks quite good, I would say. I was I I took a look at that as well. And obviously there's a pretty significant evolution here, but those

[26:24] older games, they still hold up really well. Um, and this new one, uh, I was indeed disappointed by the fact that they switched to Unreal. I understand why for their process given what they've said in interviews, but you know,

[26:39] Traveler's Tales was known as a company that sort of used their own technology for a long time. So, this does feel like a step back in some ways, but they've done a good enough job. As Oliver noted, I don't think it looks as good as the

[26:52] I don't think it looks as good as the Horizon LEGO game overall, but you know, Lumen has its own issues today and a lot of people don't like it, specifically with the way it temporally resolves and >> the extra requirements often reduce

[27:05] >> the extra requirements often reduce image quality significantly. So, but still Hardware Unbox actually did a really interesting video basically pointing out that yeah, the requirements were nonsense and it doesn't require

[27:20] frame generation to get to 30 fps. And this bears out in my uh look at the PC. So, the game runs great on high-end PCs, but it's also still playable on something like a Steam Deck. So, it's

[27:33] not something that you need to have a super high-end machine to handle. But, of course, the 5090 experience, you know, of course, the ultra high-end are going to be playing with, but it's nice to see it that you can run this

[27:49] with full resolution. You don't even need DLSS if you don't want to. Uh, it's very easy to run this game on a powerful PC and the image quality is extremely sharp, which does help a lot with a game where you have these little Lego people

[28:04] running around. It definitely contributes to the almost sometimes CGI like aesthetic. The shadows are really well done as well. Everything's super >> Mhm. >> But it's it did make me think though cuz

[28:19] in some ways it's just another Traveler's Tales Lego game. Uh, and I'm sheet ended up giving them more attention that they may not have otherwise got, right? Like everybody started talking about this game. I

[28:32] didn't hear anyone mention it until that came out and then it just feels like it was dominating conversations. So maybe I don't know. Job well done there. >> it's it's one of the worst it's one of the worst marketing mistakes I think in

[28:45] recent times. >> Yeah. But like Rich, the result is everybody talked about the game and then it comes out and everybody's like, "Oh, wait. It's way less demanding than the the specs suggest, which actually ends

[28:58] in a positive way. >> What? No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not to work. >> It it it shouldn't work that way, but occurred here. >> I've just intentional or not. I've just

[29:13] brought up the um the PC system requirements. Requirements, that's the word. So, this is the system that you require. And uh yeah, I mean they are require. And uh yeah, I mean they are saying um that on the on the minimum

[29:27] you're going to need a 4 GB um graphics card. Anything from a GTX 960 to a Radeon RX6400 to an AR 580, which in itself is quite a spread of of performance. Uh, I'm not quite sure you'd want to be running a GTX 960 on

[29:42] this game, but yes, they are literally saying you're going to need to use fame saying you're going to need to use fame generation um to get 30 FPS. And um and as you Tim from Hardware Unbox revealed, actually you don't. So yeah,

[29:56] maybe they have um raised awareness, but they raised awareness in a wholly negative way and um uh you know, basically I think would have put a lot of people off from uh certainly from pre-ordering it, which is not a good

[30:09] idea. Um so I'm just baffled by all of these specs because um uh you know, as has been demonstrated by um hardware unboxed, you just don't need frame generation. It just none of this makes any sense. And

[30:24] if you think about it, um, they've got a Switch 2 version coming now. You know, about the Lego games, they're familyfriendly games. You want them to be enjoyed on as wide a range of systems as possible, right? So, the concept that

[30:37] you're sort of positing this game as like a a high-end PC experience that requires high-end PC components, and you still need frame generation is entirely at odds with the way this game was likely architected and budgeted to begin

[30:52] >> Um, Yeah, I I'm just sort of, you know, I think this is what, you know, a major marketing misstep um that has caused a lot of damage and and why, you know, because how did they come how did they come up with these specs? You know, was

[31:09] there something wrong with their PCs? Is there like some sort of uh uh stage later in the game that is like, you know, two to three times more demanding than the actual uh bits that Hardware Unbox looked at? The whole the whole

[31:23] thing is just completely baffling. Uh Oliver, it is confusing, but at the same want to give their game too many plots here because the game with low settings is hardware and boxes testing here,

[31:36] which perhaps I can feature on screen briefly. It really does not look very good at like 1080p low settings with FSR balance. Like you don't have any you all I'd have to say I think they strip a lot of the volumetrics out of the

[31:50] presentation. It doesn't really look like we're used to seeing from Unreal stripped back in some of its lower end settings, but with still with the key like Lumen, VSSM, whatever, nanite, everything enabled here, that doesn't

[32:02] really seem to be the case as much. So, it does not look super impressive. But I quizzical because I'm seeing here an average FPS of like 62 FPS on a 6500 XT,

[32:14] which is one of the, you know, lower-end GPUs they're specifying. Um, and that's it's certainly a lot higher than 30 fps with frame generation, internal frame rate of 15 fps. So, I'm not sure how they arrived at those figures. Maybe

[32:29] those are like very worst case figures potentially, but um I don't think that really fits with the general expectation of what like a minimum and recommended setting should look like for a PC game. >> Yeah, it's it's all completely baffling.

[32:43] I'm just trying to draw a parallel to maybe some other kind of uh negative marketing issue that might sort of make people talk about your game, John. You know, what would you do? You know, uh bring out a trailer for a new game

[32:56] running at 30 fps with Frame Jen and say, "Hey, look, check this out. Look at our new game. Pre-order now." >> Oh, I I I don't think this was intentional necessarily. I'm just saying that it played out in a way that first

[33:09] are even going to notice this, right? or think about it and they're the ones that will be pleasantly surprised when it turns out that it doesn't run like that because they're keeping up with the situation. The more family oriented

[33:22] people, the the the main audience probably will have never seen that requirement sheet, will not have participated in any of that discussion, and they're just going to get the game. So, I don't know. And I feel like

[33:34] hardcore people would not have talked about this game if not for that weird requirement sheet. So again, I'm not saying they did this intentionally, but I'm saying it worked out in a way that the game got more attention than it

[33:47] might have otherwise gotten from a certain subset of the audience. >> I I need to know the methodology by which they actually came up with this spec sheet. I just need, you know, I need to understand how this happened.

[33:59] >> Maybe it was AI's fault. >> Yeah. >> Well, um, baffling. I'm not sure we're going to do too much more on Lego Batman. We still haven't got the game from um Warner Brothers. Bizarre. Um but

[34:12] there we are. Let's move on. Okay, so next news topic of the week and Tom Thank you for looking into this one for us. Yoshi and the mysterious book on Nintendo Switch 2, Unreal Engine 5. But you wouldn't believe it, right?

[34:27] >> Yeah, absolutely. Just a cameo for this one. Hello. Yeah, another Unreal Engine 5 game for this episode. uh but with a very different art style, aesthetic, and you'd expect it from the developer given their track record with the Yoshi Yoshi

[34:44] series. Um so we'll go back a little bit quickly. We've got the mysterious book here, but previously they uh feel good or good feel, sorry, developer Goodfield have done Yoshi's Crafted World uh on the Switch in 2019, which was Unreal

[35:00] Engine 4, which was all arts and crafts and uh very kind of a great aesthetic. And before that, they had Yoshi's Woolly Woolly World in 2015, which was a Wii U

[35:12] game. Um, not sure about the engine on that one, but it was mostly knitted that one, but it was mostly knitted aesthetic, like wool based stuff. So, with uh the Mysterious Book today on Switch 2, which is an exclusive Switch 2

[35:24] game, they've kind of abandoned all that arts and crafts stuff and then they've gone back to the style of uh Super Mario World to Yoshi's Island on Super NES uh

[35:36] with a very watercolor style and it almost looks like sprite work. It's very appealing. It's a completely new direction um for this current run and they do a very good job and they've transitioned to Unreal Engine 5, of

[35:50] transitioned to Unreal Engine 5, of course, with uh yeah, a few things that they've done to kind of tweak it to add to that cell shaded look. One of the things in the intellectual property notices of the game is UEI5's

[36:04] notices of the game is UEI5's stylized post-process feature, which uh gives it that cell-shaded look. you've got sketch lines and that sort of watercolor aesthetic anytime you enter the mysterious book and anytime you're

[36:17] conventional rendering techniques, you know, with all the Yoshis cuddled around the book uh waiting for their turn to jump in. So, it's a very nice idea and they play with it in some really fun ways like every instruction then every

[36:33] task you've got to do within a level is sketched in within the level itself. And yeah, everything looks about as distant from uh what you'd think your 95 game

[36:45] would look like, which is in my book a great kind of move. >> Absolutely. And um you've looked at it at both docked and mobile configurations, right? >> Yes. Uh there's well so it's a weird one

[37:00] in terms of the resolution setup because they are doing quite a few tricks under the hood to kind of achieve that look right. They've got stop motion animations and that sort of cell-shaded style but underneath it is actually some

[37:16] proper you know it's it's quite a taxing uh approach to do this and they have actually nerfed the resolution accordingly. So do it's 540p while inside the book itself and then when you step outside the book and you're kind of

[37:31] peering in it's uh 1080p. In portable play it's 360p while inside the book and play it's 360p while inside the book and then um uh 720p while outside. So all that creates a very a pixelated mushy look I guess. And

[37:48] honestly, I didn't mind in terms of the the way it looks inside the mysterious book itself. It kind of adds that sort of there's a mushy appearance to watercolor uh paintings anyway. So, it lends to it, but you might notice some

[38:02] pixelation on the backgrounds, especially like thin details. So, yeah. Um, on top of that, I didn't notice much in the way of anti-aliasing,

[38:14] you know, treatment of edges or visual noise. There's stuff like, you know, flickering on the book edges and the mustache of the book as well, which is um, you know, it uh goes against the theory that TSR is engaged in some way,

[38:31] but it's uh, yeah, it certainly is uh, not not the crispest game you might see on Switch, too. >> Mhm. Okay. Um, John, you took a look at this one as well a while back, right? Yeah, I had a chance to play for an hour

[38:45] Yeah, I had a chance to play for an hour or so of this and it is interesting. The image quality is not amazing. I don't think I don't think we can say it's just running at 540p straight with no treatment though cuz it definitely looks

[38:57] sharper than just like native 540p >> with no AA. I mean, that's effectively just above like Xbox and PS2 resolution at this point, right? Which would not hold up well, but it is definitely a soft game. Um, I do think um the visual

[39:14] style in some ways I might argue I actually think it looks worse than the >> Like I think that was on Wii U if I recall, Tom. >> Yeah, that one still holds up really well. This one definitely has that heavy

[39:27] post-process look to it. I don't think it's bad, but it's it's not stunning. Um, but I do like how they've done the decimated animation effect to >> Yeah. >> Right. like they kind of did this in uh

[39:40] Super Mario Wonder as well, right? Where you don't draw smooth translations between every frame of animation and that makes it look more 2D like which is that makes it look more 2D like which is very very cool. Um the whole game though

[39:55] is quite a departure I think from the traditional sort of Yoshi platformers which they are generally quite easy but this one here is more of a puzzle game. into the book and it's like you have to like figure out like oh like collect

[40:09] these things or like make these flowers bloom somewhere and it's basically what to trigger and you're like trying to do this in each uh level. So it is kind of a fun take on it I guess and

[40:23] it's definitely not a game where it's going to punish you cuz it doesn't seem you know what I mean? >> Yeah. Right. Okay. >> You can't die. >> No. So, you know, it's it's interesting.

[40:37] Um, I'm not as inspired by this as some of the other stuff. And Goodfield definitely has a mixed track record. Like, they are actually the the founders are X Konami guys with a lot of history, including Goeimon, which is why they

[40:49] also produced that or they they developed that uh Bakeru game which came out on Switch and PC, which was essentially a Goeon spiritual successor, >> Oh, Christ. >> So, which is really interesting. Um,

[41:05] which it ran horrible on the original Switch, but it runs super smooth on >> Yeah, >> this is at least not that kind of thing, but I don't know. It's interesting. I will say the one the the one um last one

[41:20] thing I want to hear though, Tom, if you don't mind, can I get your best Yoshi? don't mind, can I get your best Yoshi? >> I'll give it a go. Oh my gosh. >> Wow. That was great.

[41:34] >> I think I think Nintendo, you found a new Yoshi if you need one. >> Maybe I've missed a trick not going into voice acting dinosaurs. doing that voice? >> No.

[41:48] many listeners, but that that was really good, Tom. I must admit. Well done, my >> Years of practice, you know, in the bathroom.

[42:00] I mean, Unreal Engine 5 here. I mean, uh, I don't think we're looking at Lumen >> No, no, >> it's doubtful. It's Unreal Engine 5, but deployed in a manner very much unlike other Unreal Engine 5 titles I'd have to

[42:13] presentation, I mean, I don't know if they're using any kind of upscaler or they're relying so heavily on outline shaders is going to diminish the um aliasing presentation of the visuals no matter what they do. if you like like

[42:27] there there's kind of a mix I think here of stuff that's actually baked into the artwork the kind of lines and things like that perhaps that have been baked into that texture art and then some elements that are being done in real

[42:40] time to kind of graphically stylize the output like the outline shaders like I'm that are present in this footage. Um, and you know, I think it looks reasonable, but I I agree the reliance on things like outline [\h__\h] and

[42:52] these real-time effects does give it a somewhat like post-processed quality that does not does not feel quite as natural maybe as some of the other Yoshi efforts where I felt like, you know, Yoshi's will willy world, Yoshi's

[43:05] crafted world did feel more like kind of a genuine finished article and this kind of feels a little bit more digital and a little bit further removed perhaps from emulate in real life. the kind of imagery that it's trying to emulate in

[43:18] real life. I'm also not as much of a fan of the switch from platforming to platformers. They weren't the hardest, but they were breezy games. They were fun games. They were very delightful titles. And no reason why this couldn't

[43:32] also be delightful, but I'm just not that interested in like this kind of puzzle, light puzzle exploration type game. I'd prefer a game with a little bit more kind of structured platforming, even if it's not challenging

[43:45] platforming. like that kind of experience. I think I'd prefer that. So, experience. I think I'd prefer that. So, not my cup of tea, but um I mean it looks competent and it does run at a stable 60 fps, right, Tom? Pretty much

[43:58] stable 60 fps, right, Tom? Pretty much >> uh almost. It's uh in in terms of the the >> bits inside the mysterious book, which is the bulk of it anyway, which is 60 with drops to 55 or so. on obviously the

[44:12] VRR will clear that up. But uh on Dock Play, I think I I noticed a bit of that, really. So, I don't think I was that bothered about. >> Pretty rare, too. Yeah. And uh the more obvious one is when you zoom out and

[44:27] leaping through the pages, picking your next level. That's your kind of interface to uh everything you found, all the nicks and knacks you picked up. and that drops to like 30 to 40 FPS which is odd but that might explain you

[44:42] increase in that bit. >> Okay, fair enough. Uh without giving away any spoilers Tom uh what is mysterious about the book? >> I I have no no idea. It's literally the story is like Kamek one of the like

[44:59] villains of the Mario universe finds it and it's dropped. the Yoshis all huddle around and find it and uh everything all the pages are left blank and it's your job to fill them in and you know spot things with a giant magnifying glass and

[45:14] once you find a creature that creature unlocks a new bit of a level and you go explore that bit of the level and it's just about filling out the book and maybe that's the mystery what what's beyond the next page. Okay.

[45:28] >> I think the biggest mystery for me is uh why these games became so easy. Like traditionally very easy, and that's largely true, but that started with right? >> The original Yoshi's Island on Super NES

[45:44] is a difficult game. It's one of the harder like 2D Mario games, I would say. And then they just kind of like totally nerfed it and the series kind of focused on very very easy platforming and action.

[45:58] that, but whatever. That's what they decided to do. >> Might be just because they've got Mario, which is almost like in terms of difficulty, right? Like Mario is fair can get quite challenging. Maybe Kirby's

[46:10] the next rung down intermediate and they've seen like a an area in the market for something a bit more entry level. And that's Yoshi's turn, I guess. >> Yeah, >> I had no idea that the uh the characters

[46:25] were sort of demographically adjusted for difficulty. Be quite an interesting thing. I haven't really got too much to say about this cuz I haven't played it. Um I do think though that the aesthetic here is interesting, but um the previous

[46:39] entries, right, they really had like a fantastic visual identity. You know, unlike any other game. Not really seeing I mean shades of it maybe but not quite the same on this one. No. >> Um but we're not done with Unreal Engine

[46:53] 5. But thanks so much for uh taking a look at this one for you, Tom. Guess we can send you back to work now. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Good luck with >> Cheers. Okay. So, um we're going to be sticking,

[47:07] yes, we are with Unreal Engine 5 titles. Um but a couple more games that you wanted to talk about uh John and uh again very different type of presentation that we than we'd normally expect. Right.

[47:19] >> Correct. So I specifically wanted to highlight these as two examples of using Unreal to do something that looks visually distinct and doesn't feel Unreal, if you will. The first of which is a game I actually covered last year

[47:34] consoles and I've played it on the PlayStation 5 professional and it's Riven from Cyan Worlds. Uh, and I wanted to highlight this for two reasons. First of all, uh, I want to support this

[47:47] studio still because I think they are the longest running independent studio either in the world or at least in the US. They have been independent since I guess the 80s, if you will. >> Wow. Uh, it's been a long time and

[48:01] definitely fallen on some hard times as I understand, but Riven was a remake of I understand, but Riven was a remake of their mid to late 90s sequel to Mist. And compared to the remakes of Mist, I think this one is far far more engaging

[48:16] and impressive. I think Riven was always the better game. Uh, and its visual style back in the day was superlative. And these guys have leveraged modern technology to so beautifully recreate that aesthetic in full 3D, which means

[48:33] that you can now wander around that world freely. I loved it on the PC last year. I loved it in VR last year. They even shipped a MetaQuest version, which was pretty cut down, admittedly, but it still kind of looked okay. Um, but this

[48:49] is an example of a game that doesn't actually leverage any of the new features of Unreal. Uh, although the PC version did end up with some cool ray tracing features after the fact, which fixes some of the faults with the

[49:03] reflections, right? But, um, this is a game that is baked out with lighting. Uh, it doesn't use like nanite or anything like that. And yet you have this extreme granularity in beautifully crafted environments. And I think it

[49:17] just shows that your game doesn't have to have that quote unquote unreal look. This still feels very unique. The color scheme, the way it all comes together, I think they did a phenomenal job. And on PlayStation 5, uh, at least on the Pro,

[49:32] which is what I've sampled thus far, it's pretty good, but it's not flawless. I did note that the frame rate can slip just a little under 60 in very specific

[49:44] areas. And you can fix this with a VRR screen, mind you, because it is high screen, mind you, because it is high enough, but it wasn't 100% flawless 60 in my experience. But still, it's mostly there based on

[49:57] what I've played thus far, and it does feel good on a controller. I'm sure the PC version supported that. I just I played it with a mouse and keyboard, but playing with a controller now, you know, the interface is well adapted and it is

[50:09] possible to enjoy it. And it's just neat seeing this sort of receive a console seeing this sort of receive a console release like this. Um, and yeah, if if you enjoy these sort of mysterious puzzle driven games, seriously, you must

[50:23] give it a work. Uh, you must give it a look. Also, it supports PSVR 2, which the PSVR 2 has not received a lot of love in recent times, although there is

[50:36] a pretty interesting Little Nightmares game that got a release on multiple VR platforms. But since this also supported PC VR, Quest VR, now we get PSVR 2 VR,

[50:48] and the experience is much more in line with what you get on the PC versus say uh the MetaQuest version. So, it's not stripped down that much, but it's interesting because you have to be kind of comfortable to play it because you

[51:03] will walk around and be confused for hours, which is not a bad thing in these worlds. I swear it's actually >> the story of my life. Really? >> Sure. Yes. Um,

[51:15] but I think this is just a it's a really cool experience and it's a good use of this technology to do what these guys have always been sort of building towards I think and they've made some original games as well s such as uh

[51:30] Abduction and Firmament which are also on PlayStation but I think Riven this is the perfect like encapsulation of everything Cyan has built over the years

[51:42] uh and one of their best products ever. So, do check it out if that sounds appealing. Right. So, I don't know. Did did any of you guys have uh experience with Riven? >> No, not since the uh original and you

[51:57] know that's so long ago that I just don't really remember anything about it. >> Yeah. I totally agree with what John is saying about this game. I do think it looks quite pretty and I think at least that uh level of visual sophistication

[52:10] is translated pretty well across its various host platforms. Although I think looking but everything else is >> it looks good. But I'd also say that this title I mean looking at it now I

[52:23] can't help but think that this would be a pretty good UE5 potentially. It looks kind of like UE5 demo content in terms of the kinds of environments it's rendering because there's very little foliage. It's all stark rock faces and

[52:36] potentially in those bright environments. It's archaeological and it has a lot of like very dense natural geometry. So I think I think this would like work pretty well with a system like lumen and nanide and uh VSSM working

[52:51] there. I think it would even work pretty well on older UE5 like UE 5.1 versions think it would look pretty good actually. you know, this is like looming in the line of Nanite kind of demo content here. So, I think I mean, as

[53:05] look quite good. Maybe this kind of slower paced game set in this kind of environment would actually be a pretty reasonable choice for like a nice UE5 tech showcase. Um, if a developer did want to iterate on like the

[53:20] pointandclick genre with another one of these games at some point, I think it could be done. I would say Oliver in this case, while I agree about the aesthetic purposes there, I actually think their very

[53:32] limited ray tracing on PC made more sense and that essentially it gets rid of screen space reflections and replaces them with ray trace reflections which enhances the the rendered look. >> Uh Lumen would be cool, but because this

[53:45] game is so static, right, it does not have time of day changes and everything is very specifically designed to look exactly one way. This is a case where I think the sort of like temporal noise of

[53:58] fit. >> It would be interesting to see it, but I think they made the right choice for this game and it does show that it can >> Cool. Okay. >> But I played another game that I wanted

[54:12] captivated me in a weird way and it kind of does goes in an opposite direction. of does goes in an opposite direction. It's called Motor Slice and this is a sort of what can I say? It's an atmospheric platforming action game. Uh,

[54:26] I definitely got those same kind of vibes I got from playing Eco back in the day, but it's not exactly like that type of game. You're essentially infiltrating of game. You're essentially infiltrating this gigantic like a cement city, almost

[54:38] brutalist like, but with like some weird bright colors. It's all abandoned, covered in sand, and you're playing as a character that's meant to just destroy all of the machines. and your weapon is a sword that's also a chainsaw because

[54:51] why not? Uh they actually do this really cute thing where the camera is is actually a physical object in the world where it's a small drone that follows you around and actually has some personality. And so you're basically

[55:06] clear when you turn on the flashlight because the flashlight beam emanates because the flashlight beam emanates from the drone. So, your character casts a shadow because you're the one, your camera is the one projecting the light.

[55:20] Uh, but the game itself goes for a more simplistic design. It uses unfiltered textures, right? So, it's pixelated, but not warped like PlayStation, but it's still of that era. And it's got more like PS2 like geometry, I would say,

[55:35] with like large flat surfaces. Nice looking characters. The main character, I think, looks good. Um, and the animation is nice and everything, but where they actually leveraged Unreal is that this is a case where they did use

[55:48] Lumen. And I think with this sort of simple geometry and old look, I actually would say it it turned out really nice because it does have this like supernatural look that almost makes it almost makes it look like you're you're

[56:02] almost makes it look like you're you're peering into a model of like a PS1 aesthetic game a little bit. You know what I mean? where it's like the the you normally don't see. So, it's like fusing retro with this like very natural

[56:17] soft lighting. And I find that like very appealing. Uh, and I'm playing this on PlayStation 5 on the Pro, of course, cuz that's what I have hooked up. And it's just a perfect 60 frames per second. And they made a decision where the image

[56:33] quality is super super clean, but it's very soft. And I think it's on purpose, right? Where the edges are all just just a bit soft with no aliasing. And I think you don't necessarily want like a super sharp native 4K looking game in this

[56:48] case because of the low polygon aesthetic. And it works. So, not only is it uh beautiful, but it's just a really cool game so far from what I've played the first three chapters. And I'm compelled to keep going. So, I wanted to

[57:04] highlight as that as well as a completely different looking example of UE5 being used in a way that works really well and lumen actually works well in a way that shouldn't bother people and it actually benefits the

[57:17] game's visual design in a fun way. >> Nice. Excellent stuff. Any reactions there, Oliver? Oh, I I do like this combination of constrained assets and, you know, intentional kind of asset limitations like obviously the

[57:32] unfiltered textures that John mentioned and the plalal restrictions they seem to designing these characters and environments in the first place. And noticing in some of the footage here, they have almost like intentionally

[57:46] limited animation sets and moves where they're like they're moving in a really broad way, kind of like a cloud or something. um in ways that you would not expect from a modern action game. But combining all of that kind of early 3D

[58:00] paste kind of look with really high-end lighting, I think it produces a great result here. It's a kind of look that I think we're seeing in a lot of other in some of the RTX remasters we've seen from Nvidia and obviously a lot of

[58:14] people using RTX Remix. But I think it's a cool look and it definitely works for this title. And I do agree that Lumen adds a lot of high fidelity lighting detail in a way that looks really really striking when you pair it with a lot of

[58:27] like low frequency texture work and relatively basic environments. It makes more. Whereas in some other games that are more visually sophisticated, it almost gets lost in the kind of visual noise of it all and you don't really see

[58:40] that nice ambient shadowing, nice indirect diffuse lighting portrayal um as much because you're focusing on all the texture details and things like that in the image. >> Interesting.

[58:53] >> Okay. Well, good stuff. Thanks for that, John. Uh our journey into the worlds of John. Uh our journey into the worlds of Android 115 continues in our next topic. Okay. So, um, recently we've been talking a lot about, um, anniversaries,

[59:05] stuff that we covered in the past. We talked about Uncharted 4 and Doom 2016, 10-year anniversaries last, uh, last week. Uh, Will, our colleague Will Chart has put together a website that basically enables us to see what Digital

[59:19] Foundry videos were posted like one year ago, 5 years ago, and 10 years ago. And I'm and John, I'm looking at the one year ago and 5 years ago, and both of year ago and 5 years ago, and both of them actually have uh extensive con uh

[59:33] content about uh new features for Unreal Engine 5. So last year, pretty much this week, we were looking at the Witcher 4 tech demo on Unreal Engine 5. But 5 the point of this discussion, we actually had our first hands-on

[59:47] experience with Unreal Engine 5 in the form of the Valley of the Ancient demo, which uh you talked about with Alex. Come a long way, right? Yeah, this was uh this was an interesting time because this was I guess a year and some change

[1:00:02] after that initial reveal as you noted and this was like a more complete like look at what they were attempting with it. I think wouldn't we receive a small point >> within this as well that one

[1:00:18] >> very very brief but yes this was uh obviously an important point to discuss because we hadn't really seen much from Unreal yet for this current generation I don't think anything had shipped with these

[1:00:31] think anything had shipped with these features as of 2021 maybe if they had it >> the first thing I think was um the Matrix Awakens demo, but that was late in 2021. >> Yeah, exactly. So, this was still very

[1:00:46] early on and it was very promising and I think now with with some distance, we've kind of come to understand more of the limitations of this engine and some of

[1:00:58] its faults. But I still like the promise of what they showed here. Um, as we discussed back in that video, I still remember though when we first got wind remember though when we first got wind of this actually happening uh back in

[1:01:13] 2020. Do you remember when we got that tease? We were we were having a meeting with somebody else and I won't say who, but their their laptop >> had images. >> Yeah. Should we go into that because it

[1:01:27] is an interesting story. We had a pre-brief um about about something. let's just say and there were lots and uh it was um just when COVID was kicking off and um yeah there were lots of slides uh within this particular

[1:01:42] presentation and um uh several of them were skipped quite quickly but because we were screen recording because we kind of had to um you know we could we could pause and see you know hold on a minute this this looks like incredible but

[1:01:55] you're not talking about it what's going on and then a bit later on we saw some uh uh Unreal Engine 5 stuff. And here it is. And then the following year, which is the which is the video that we're talking about here, is where we actually

[1:02:08] talking about here, is where we actually had um uh the first reveal, I guess, of the Valley of the Ancient demo. And I'm just looking back at the content now. And uh to be fair, it it it looks absolutely incredible. Really does in

[1:02:20] terms of like the detail level, >> uh the lighting. Um, they seem to have done some good they they did this demo on Xbox Series X before they actually released it on on PC and there's some nice really really nice post-processing

[1:02:33] of process pro postprocessing effects even um and there's various highlights to the engine at this point. But it was Oliver, it was still at the time where um Unreal Engine 5 was being showcased via lots of rocks because foliage wasn't

[1:02:50] >> Yeah. Yeah. That was like a very infamous era of UE5 in particular like 5.1 and 5.0. Every game that shipped on those engine versions had a kind of

[1:03:02] similar similar set of strengths and weaknesses I would say with regards to rendering its visuals. And indeed, when you look at something like this and you look over to a title like Robocop or even Hellblade, I think you're seeing a

[1:03:14] pretty bunch of straight line in terms of the kinds of visual phenomena that are being represented credibly by this. um and all of the strengths and seeing a lot of those elements here. But yeah, I mean just in general, these

[1:03:30] fantastic and I think we did see that realized in final shipping games. But I also think we, you know, did not necessarily see a lot of other elements that would come up later on as being potential performance problems and being

[1:03:44] potential issues with Unreal Engine 5, like the fact that, you know, a lot of Unreal Engine 5 games are largely static and even disable things like foliage animation, um, which can be very taxing in this engine. It has very significant

[1:03:57] performance penalties relative to player expectations this generation and like image quality is often not the greatest in Unreal Engine 5 titles, especially when targeting 60 fps. And obviously the issues that John mentioned with lumen

[1:04:11] speckling patterns that you see in titles that rely heavily on lumen to um handle indirect fuse lighting. Um those are all big problems and those are problems that we came to see later. But I still think the engine's unique visual

[1:04:26] strengths are extraordinary and like nothing else is going to depict a nice rocky crag like Unreal Engine 5. Really, it's quite extraordinary looking in this state. But uh you know, UIE5 is is very much in active development and continues

[1:04:42] to be iterated on massively. And I think that titles that ship in like 2 or 3 years that might be running on 5.8 or whatever will uh be very impressive indeed. And obviously as we go into the next generation of consoles, you

[1:04:54] power to realize Unreal Engine 5 titles to the level of fidelity the players will be happy with. But it's been kind of a little bit of an uncomfortable fit for this generation of consoles. Ultimately, it's not been the best

[1:05:07] Ultimately, it's not been the best compromise always between image quality plus visual stability, performance, and a number of other priorities. I think John has made abundantly clear and we've tried to make clear in content. It's not

[1:05:21] always the best uh best set of choices when it comes to to current generation software. >> Let me push on this a little bit, this and I do think Unreal has its issues and there's aspects of it I don't

[1:05:34] issues and there's aspects of it I don't like for sure, but when you reflect back oh, you feel like it's slightly out of step with the console hardware of this generation. But one could argue that has always been true, right, with Unreal,

[1:05:48] right? Unreal Engine 3 specifically, when that was revealed, they had some pretty big plans for it that were not really able to come to fruition on that generation of consoles. And in fact, nearly every Unreal Engine 3 game

[1:06:02] targeted 30fps at best. And especially on PlayStation 3, the triple, uh, you were lucky if you got there. I mean, most games were not 30 FPS on that machine. And even on 360, like getting a

[1:06:15] stable 30 was a difficult thing. >> You gave up a lot to run in Unreal. And a lot of the visual effects, a lot of the choices developers had to made make produced some pretty nasty results that don't hold up that well. Even the prior

[1:06:29] Unreal Engine, uh, it wasn't very scalable for like PlayStation 2 and Gamecube, I would say, even though it appeared occasionally. And even on Xbox, performance was largely poor, right? like you play the Splinter Cell games

[1:06:42] which were like a poster child for it at the time. Their frame rate's not stable. It's it's often sub 30. Uh it was not great in that regard. And then we get to Unreal Engine 4. Things got a little better, but we still were largely

[1:06:56] plagued by somewhat low frame rates across consoles. Like actually smooth 60 fps was mostly off the table. So in comparison, while Unreal Engine 5 I think has sacrificed a bit too much in terms of image quality and there is

[1:07:10] temporal stability issues, uh when you actually look across the entire catalog of games that use these features or even not using these features, I think we we finally have a point where we have the the largest selection of high

[1:07:23] performance 60fps console games using Unreal Engine to date Unreal Engine to date >> where most games on this engine are 60. It's not always perfect, but it's way way closer than ever before. And I think

[1:07:37] that kind of holds true for this whole generation. Like image quality is the thing that has been sacrificed, but performance in general is really good this generation if you're talking consoles. 60fps really has become the

[1:07:52] standard. And I think that's something we should step back and appreciate because it is worth pointing out. It's something that we couldn't really dream of last generation or the generation before, especially with Unreal where the

[1:08:04] CPU requirements made that basically impossible, especially on the Jaguar cores, right? >> Um, that's just like this time around we really do have a lot of great running games and I think uh that's awesome.

[1:08:18] >> Yeah, I'm just reminded of The Matrix Awakens which came out um after this demo obviously and again it was targeting 30 faves per second. So, it did seem to be the case that um all of those original demos were targeting 30

[1:08:31] frames per second at acceptable um resolutions when TSR was doing a pretty resolutions when TSR was doing a pretty good job there. But um the gamers spoke, right? They said they wanted 60 frames per second and so something had to give

[1:08:45] and it was image quality and it was stability at 60 frames per second. Um interesting stuff, Oliver. >> Yeah, I think this is really a game of expectations like Rich mentioned. I think gamers just have very high

[1:08:57] performance should look like, for what image quality should look like. And that's been something that's come as a surprise to me. It certainly I certainly did not foresee the fact that 60 fps would become the console standard uh

[1:09:10] It seemed like we were going to continue with, you know, maybe a little bit of 60 fps at the beginning as, you know, sometimes occurs, but it was going to fall back down to 30 fps fairly rapidly and that just did not occur. But yeah, I

[1:09:24] general, Unreal Engine 5 titles are more performant, more stable, um, and running a lot better than Unreal Engine has on any prior generation of console hardware really. But it just ultimately it's a question of like what what do players

[1:09:39] want? And I think players have a lot of players at least have the opinion that Unreal Engine 5 is not doing a good enough job. And in some cases perhaps that's warranted. In some places perhaps it's not. But um you know I think Unreal

[1:09:52] improving quite a lot in terms of delivering 60 fps modes. We've even seen some titles like Hellblade 2 upgraded to support 60 fps and more recent Unreal Engine uh five versions. And also like even more recent Unreal Engine 5 open

[1:10:07] world titles which is not historically something that Unreal Engine 5 has excelled at have done pretty well. Like I didn't think Mafia, the old country, but it was still delivering, you know, an open world, albeit a somewhat static

[1:10:21] one without a lot of interactions or NPCs, but it, you know, mostly at 60 FPS on the consoles. Thought that was a pretty good effort. Likewise with Title Avou, again, pretty good performance level. Outer Worlds 2 somewhat shake

[1:10:35] are titles that are showing that you can absolutely deliver, you know, the utmost basically in game complexity at least to a certain degree on Unreal Engine 5, maybe with some compromises here and there. Um, but still running at 60 fps,

[1:10:50] commended and certainly was not possible with earlier Unreal Engine versions that were not really compatible with such basic things as as rendering foyage in basic things as as rendering foyage in an efficient manner, right?

[1:11:03] Mhm. I do think Oliver like the games like that Oblivion remaster for instance tend to stick out those memories >> for like having issues and there are absolutely still games that ship with with issues. But I would say today when

[1:11:17] we say, "Oh, this game shipped with performance issues," we're talking like, you know, in the 40s maybe in terms of frame rate, whereas back, you know, a shouldn't expect improvements, but you know, on the PS triple, dude, like when

[1:11:31] you when you're talking bad performance, you're talking like 10 F 10 to 15 FPS drops, like non-stop tearing that could like slice an artery. Like it was really really bad back then. like so much worse than I think people remember. And we

[1:11:47] have and then last gen was like mostly the land of like here's this uncapped frame rate that runs at like 40 to 50 FPS. There was so many games that launched like that and it kind of sucked cuz we didn't have VRR yet even as an

[1:11:59] option. Uh so I really feel like things are in a way better position now than I think people maybe give credit towards. So, I think going back to uh the Unreal Engine 5 content we did one year ago, the Witcher 4 tech demo, it's quite

[1:12:14] interesting to see that um uh well, we've got trees now. We could do trees in in Nanite. Um also 60 frames per second demo on a base PlayStation 5, there's been a kind of adjustment, a realization that this engine has to run

[1:12:29] at 60 and it has to run at 60 well. So, yeah, there's definitely progression there. But it is funny going back to that earlier presentation just to see you you saw some pretty amazing visuals but you could see all of the uh all of

[1:12:43] the limitations there right and um developers have had to work around that for the like 5 years now which is which is quite remarkable we got 5.8 coming soon which seems to have um uh there's there's talk of isn't it like a more

[1:12:56] performant cut down version of Lumen right Oliver? Yeah, they're calling it the um well, I believe in the documentation it's referred to as something like the radiance cache lumen, >> which seems to be um I believe it's a

[1:13:09] primarily probe based version of Lumen intended for higher performance on lower power devices like I think they cryptically call it uh handheld gaming consoles aka the Switch 2 because it does not describe any other device in

[1:13:22] the market at the moment that would be running on your launch to 5.8 to my knowledge at least. Mhm. Okay. Good stuff. Uh well, let's move on to our final topic. Final topic for this particular episode

[1:13:34] back. We're going to go back five and indeed 10 years. 10 years ago this week, John, you produced the very first episode of uh Digital Foundry Retro, DF Retro, Quake, Sega Saturn Analysis, The Impossible Port. And five years ago, to

[1:13:50] kind of like I guess celebrate five years of DF Retro, you did a massive blowout on Quake. again, not just the Saturn version. >> Um, let's talk about um, DFTO, how it came about.

[1:14:05] >> Yeah, man. Going back to those two episodes is fun to see cuz I hope it shows the evolution that we got there. And it also kind of highlights why it started to take so much more time to make episodes and why the release

[1:14:17] cadence is kind of like up and down if you will because it does it's a serious time investment to make but it didn't start that way. Uh and at at the time

[1:14:29] like there wasn't really like any thought that we could do this kind of stuff on the on the channel cuz you told me like ah every time I've tried it just >> Yeah. >> Right. But I really like this stuff. Uh,

[1:14:41] and it actually started from that Shenmue video. You remember that? >> Where we we suspected that there was going to be Shenmue 3 announced uh in 2015. And I actually or wait, it had been

[1:14:57] announced, but we expected we were going to see it in 2016. So, I actually started working on a retrospective in preparation for that announcement. But up just sitting on my hard drive for a while and I never finished it uh until a

[1:15:13] bit later. But then at some point uh I finally got my hands on a copy of Quake for the Saturn which it always fascinated me and I I picked it up and I I was like, "Oh man, this is so freaking cool." So, I just captured it and

[1:15:28] slammed together this video like in uh a few hours on the Saturday and then run this?" And you're like, "Yeah, sure." And we just decided I just sure." And we just decided I just slapped retro on the the normal DF logo

[1:15:42] slapped retro on the the normal DF logo and away we went. Uh, and then you made a you you you picked a thumbnail, I guess, from Google image search, which is one of it's like a modded version of one of these demons, but with like

[1:15:54] little like uh eyebrows drawn on in black that you can just barely see, which I always thought was silly, but there it is. And that first episode came >> So, even though looking back it's like so simple. And I actually had prototyped

[1:16:09] this before with that like I did that video on Hexon for the Saturn on my own channel which was also of a similar vein and then I just kind of ran from there and started doing them. And I think after that um I went back to the Shinmu

[1:16:24] >> Yeah. >> So I I kind of kept plugging along and made a bunch of episodes and they got increasingly larger but not too huge. And then I guess in 2021 when we reopened the or like updated the

[1:16:39] Patreon, right, we switched to doing DF direct weekly for the first time, I guess during this period and I decided to sort of relaunch it a little bit and I Audi was able to work more closely with me at the time. Uh although he did

[1:16:53] not work on this one, but I decided to do like the full Quake experience because by this time I was also like getting super into like retro PCs. So, I had tons of graphics cards and when I got the rendition Verete,

[1:17:06] >> I was like, "Oh man, now I can finally play and cover Vquake and that kind of pushed me to want to do this." So, for this for that video, like I mean, I made sequence using the Quake engine just for fun. Uh, I really tried to do a lot of

[1:17:21] cool stuff with that and really showcase the game running on hardware of the era that I think not that much great direct capture even existed of at the time. and that and really showcase it. And then from there, you know, I just made a

[1:17:37] whole bunch of other episodes that summer. And interestingly, that's when I leveraged a lot of Unreal Engine at the time uh cuz I was like playing around with Unreal and I was making like sets for the videos and uh doing some of the

[1:17:51] the emotion graphics rather than using like uh After Effects, which the like, "What if I just do these in Unreal?" Cuz Unreal has its own like video editing timeline. So, you can just like build sets and put stuff in there

[1:18:05] frame it all out, right? And then you just like render it out as a movie and then bam, it just slots right into a video in Premiere. And it was kind of a fun, interesting way to do it. And I still sometimes fiddle with that. I kind

[1:18:20] of want to get back into that because it was fun making decorating virtual sets, >> Mhm. Like for the Motorstorm video, I did pull out the uh I guess the all the rocky meshes that Epic had in their early videos we were just talking about.

[1:18:36] So I put together like you know rocky areas that seemed fitting for Motorstorm. So that was fun. But yeah, and then I'm just happy that last year we finally got to launch the podcast version. So that's

[1:18:50] I'm still have more real episodes that I want to do and I have some plans for those, but they obviously do take a long time to make. Uh so it's tough to dive in. But the podcast is something that for me it's a fun way to be able to talk

[1:19:05] about uh this stuff more regularly without having to commit that huge time >> And it's just become like a regular thing like the DF uh direct weekly, right? where it's just getting together with with some dudes and talking about

[1:19:20] >> our subjects that we enjoy that maybe don't always warrant a full video or even if they do like it would have been just like you know weeks and weeks and weeks of of work to do it. This is a way to to get it out in a way that's more

[1:19:35] fun and and quick for me. So >> I've just been enjoying um the Saturn Quake running at 12 frames per second. So, it seems to vary between 12 to like >> I mean, you know, that's what what are you going to do, right? It's a Saturn.

[1:19:51] It was not supposed to run Quake. Yeah. >> But they did it anyway. Those crazy guys. I think you're you're in the credits for that game if I recall. uh at the point where I was doing the official Sega Saturn magazine and you

[1:20:05] know th those guys, Labbotomy Software, were just doing like beautiful things with uh with the Saturn. Um, you know, obviously they did Exumed/Powerslave, Duke Nukem 3D, another great port. Um, not really a port as such. They

[1:20:19] basically just rebuilt the entire game within their own engine. They did it did it again with Quake. And I couldn't quite believe that they'd done this um at the time was the game that was melting, you know, certainly uh brought

[1:20:35] melting, you know, certainly uh brought the era of the 486 gaming PC to an end. you had to go on to Pentium. And yet, here's the Saturn actually doing a pretty good attempt at producing a Quake game and actually adding lighting

[1:20:47] effects on the original never had, which was pretty awesome. Famously, of course, possible. >> And then uh Labbotomy Software just sort emailing John Carmarmac about it and I got like a like a one-s sentence reply

[1:21:04] Something along those lines. I have to look that up. But yeah, it was really DF retro, yeah, I mean, I remember back in the day it was like, well, you know, we've tried retro stuff and it doesn't work. And actually the the the the thing

[1:21:17] is that we tried retro stuff, but we didn't have the right formula. And the formula is somebody deeply knowledgeable, passionate about the subject matter, willing to put in the time and the effort to create great

[1:21:30] hadn't done in the past because we, you know, and it's similar when, you know, I remember when we, um, >> uh, when IGN were involved and it was >> they were kind of interested about retro gaming, but, you know, it was kind of

[1:21:44] like, well, you know, it's a bunch of old games. Why should we be interested? because on the one hand, we had the marketing people's uh, IGN saying, hey, always there. People have got a lot of interest in them. And uh then when it

[1:21:59] interest in them. And uh then when it actually came to pitching um uh more particularly interested. That was a bit of a weird sort of >> it was a weird it was a weird >> weird sort of situation there. Um

[1:22:11] Retro? >> Well, you know, I've been a fan for quite a while. I do enjoy John's retro content, but uh my own personal tastes probably run a little bit fresher than John's because I'm a a little little

[1:22:25] younger and my certainly the the consoles that I grew up with primarily were like, you know, frankly seventh gen consoles for me at least. The the formative memories that are in my head were really like 360 PS3 stuff. I mean,

[1:22:38] I did play, you know, substantially during like, you know, GameCube, Xbox, um, that era, but it was, uh, it was, you know, it was pretty early in my life, so did not really engage with games really meaningfully until like,

[1:22:51] you know, the Nintendo DS launch, PSP launch, then 360 launch, all that good stuff. Um, I think my favorite DF retros that John has done, my favorite DF retro for sure John has done is the one I did with Corey on Final Fantasy 13 and its

[1:23:04] sequels. That was just a really nicely produced video. uh commemorating a game produced video. uh commemorating a game that I think in time um is seen more fondly but at the time was very very controversial with its very limited

[1:23:17] structure, narrow structure, linear structure. Um I think it was the I think it was a really really amazing RPG that has earned a lot of plot in time even if at the time people were disappointed to some degree in the way that Square Enix

[1:23:31] chose to progress that series. Um, and also the PS3 1080p retrospective one was great. And obviously the recent Microsoft Xbox 360 retrospective on the >> I'm just looking at um you YouTube, funny enough. And it's quite interesting

[1:23:46] actually offering some really interesting stuff. John, um stuff that's being recommended is um is um uh you did a Quake 2 video nine years

[1:24:01] ago. Oh yes, I remember that. Yeah. >> Currently sitting on 524,000 views. People liked it obviously. Um 8 years ago you did a powers slave/exumed. ago you did a powers slave/exumed. >> Uh all good stuff. Um I'm also looking

[1:24:15] controversial. We're talking about like 10 year anniversaries here. Uh 7 years ago you did a Killzone 2 10year retrospective. >> So yeah, you actually moved into the trip the area of the triple. We've not

[1:24:28] really done so much on that in DF Retro. Uh kind of feels a bit weird, doesn't point. >> That that 1080p dream video, man, that was that was good fun to make. >> Yeah.

[1:24:41] Yeah. Good stuff. I mean, you know, TF retro, it's actually become a really important part of what we do. And um I'm just, you know, it's one of these situations where we really want to give the staff the opportunity to do stuff

[1:24:53] that they really enjoy doing. The idea being that if they love doing it, that love will come through in the content and hopefully resonate with some part of the audience. Then, you know, you get a reaction, right? You understand that,

[1:25:05] here. Maybe there's something we can build upon here. And, you know, to to still be doing it 10 years later, I think is just astonishingly cool, right? thinking back to some of the earlier stuff that I did back in the day. And um

[1:25:21] back in the day, magazines had a which I worked on had a very short shelf life, right? You know, a few years, you know, um it's actually very very rare for a know, double digits. I think Edge magazine's pretty much the only one left

[1:25:37] really. Possibly Retro Gaming, I'm not sure. But here we are, 10 years of DF Retro, continuing to do it, continuing to love it, continuing to get that audience. It's great stuff. Um right, brilliant. Well, I think that's the uh

[1:25:49] of the show. Please do like, subscribe, share if you enjoyed it. Ring the bell for notifications, that kind of stuff. Uh DF supporter program, um patreon.com/digitalfoundry, join us, get early access to the direct,

[1:26:01] that kind of thing. Uh it helps make stuff like DF Retro possible and the DF we're not we're not doing a retro podcast for the views. Let's put it that >> No, no, I know. >> We're doing it because, you know, it's

[1:26:13] resonates with the audience, but you know, it's the kind of thing that does need support. So, please do consider that. But that's all from us on this for the next Q&A show. But in the meantime, thanks for watching and

[1:26:25] meantime, thanks for watching and supporting Digital Foundry.