[Digital Foundry] Hellblade 2 Preview Reaction: The New State of the Art for Unreal Engine 5?

[John Elden Ring]

- Metahuman tech used for Senua's facial animations, 'up there with the absolute best'
- Animation is 'unbelievably good'
- Lots of high quality post processing used. Some aliasing around Senua's hair due to DoF but otherwise it's very good - Typical UE5 features like Nanite and Virtual Shadow Maps present. Geometric elements like pebbles show pin-sharp shadows, including crisp self-shadowing.
- Some shadow transition (from low to high quality) observed in footage
- Lumen also seen in the footage DF were given - Possible that there may be some SSR, DF thinks it's a mix of techniques for reflections - Compared to the first game, 'it's on a whole another level'
- Latest game play footage DF sampled was ahead of the 2021 trailer but doesn't fully match the original 2019 announcement trailer
- The game can look soft due to liberal use of post-process effect, they think film grain can be quite harsh and hopes the final game has option to disable it - Post process also makes it harder to determine internal resolution, however in one specific slow-motion attack skill, the game disables motion blur where DF were able to see fine edges
- 1296p to 1440p counted in Senua's slow-motion attacks where motion blur gets disabled
- Letter boxed image makes it more like 2304 x 964 to 2560 x 1070p
- Volumetric effects like fog renders at a lower resolution - Footage given to DF was encoded at 30hz instead of 59.99 like the console normally runs 30 FPS games at
- No drops in DF's footage but the encoding makes it harder to gauge fluidity (likely they mean things like frame-pacing) - Based on the SX footage, DF thinks this will be one of the more/most demanding PC projects on release as well
- They did not have Series S footage so can't comment on specifics but would like to find out more about its lower internal resolution etc.

 

[Entropi]

Why is this game so demanding? I don’t see it (yet).

 

[Maverick]

Visuals are nice but what about gameplay?

 

[Nhomnhom]

Who would've guessed DF would simp for this game?

To me something like TLoU Part 2 is drastically more impressive than this game in terms of visuals despite being a last gen game released 4 years ago. It just has a lot more going on for it, great animations, much bigger scope and the characters and performance are state of the art.

This women showing her weird gums all the time is more off putting than anything else.

 

[Danja1187]

The Order 1886 of this generation?

 

[Muddasar]

The Order 1886 of this generation?

Worse.

Where are the environments.

Honestly ridiculous to compare this game to the likes of HFW.

 

[Fenton]

 

[Maverick]

To me something like TLoU Part 2 is drastically more impressive than this game in terms of visuals despite being a last gen game released 4 years ago. It just has a lot more going on for it, great animations, much bigger scope and the characters and performance are state of the art.

That was also my point. Part II achieved great visuals meanwhile having amazing gameplay and well written story.

 

[ethomaz]

The footage looks absolutely amazing... not sure where people are seeing bad graphics.
Plus because it is pushing Unreal Engine 5, and like the documentation says, it can only reach 30fps.

It looks way better than TLOU2... that is not a fair comparison because TLOU2 is a PS4 game.
But of course the game is probably nothing compared with the masterpiece of TLOU2.

BTW it is the best looking UE5 game to date... there is no lie here.

 

[anonpuffs]

The footage looks absolutely amazing... not sure where people are seeing bad graphics.
Plus because it is pushing Unreal Engine 5, and like the documentation says, it can only reach 30fps.

It looks way better than TLOU2... that is not a fair comparison because TLOU2 is a PS4 game.
But of course the game is probably nothing compared with the masterpiece of TLOU2.

BTW it is the best looking UE5 game to date... there is no lie here.

It isn't bad graphics, but according to df the resolution goes below 1080p down into the 900s.. and knowing df it actually goes lower than that. Does it really look that good to be doing <1080p at 30fps? I don't think so.

*edit* also that's not even accounting for the letterboxing.

 

[ethomaz]

It isn't bad graphics, but according to df the resolution goes below 1080p down into the 900s.. and knowing df it actually goes lower than that. Does it really look that good to be doing <1080p at 30fps? I don't think so.

The resolution is not like that because it is not widescreen.
2304 x 964 has similar IQ as 1296p.
2560 x 1070 has similar IQ as 1440p.
The game is not running below 1080p resolution quality.

Actually the video says they are running at 1296p (2304 x 964) to 1440p (2560 x 1070 quality in combat due the letterbox... that is way higher typical 1080p quality.

*edit* also that's not even accounting for the letterboxing.

The letterbox makes the image better... think like you have 2 million pixels in a 16:9 screen... the same 2 million pixels in a letterbox with give better image quality / resolution similar at a higher resolution in 16:9.

 

[Danja1187]

Worse.

Where are the environments.

Honestly ridiculous to compare this game to the likes of HFW.

I was just comparing the focus on graphics and not enough gameplay like what plagued The Order along with both being pretty short.

But yeah, this game isn't comparable to HFW graphically, it's a still a generation behind

 

[Muddasar]

I was just comparing the focus on graphics and not enough gameplay like what plagued The Order along with both being pretty short.

But yeah, this game isn't comparable to HFW graphically, it's a still a generation behind

Sorry if it came across like that.

Yes I was just comparing it graphically too.

It’s worse cause at least the Order had environments which matched the characters.

HellBlade 2 looks like a cookie cut game purely focussed on the character and that’s it.

Also a walking sim and linear to help with streaming data.

Remember playing the first and thinking when will I be able to run and freely roam only to realise it really is a walking simulator. Uninstalled it after.

Laughable when you hear Xbox fans say Death Stranding is a walking simulator when Hellblade takes that crown.

 

[saltyashell]

The footage looks absolutely amazing... not sure where people are seeing bad graphics.
Plus because it is pushing Unreal Engine 5, and like the documentation says, it can only reach 30fps.

It looks way better than TLOU2... that is not a fair comparison because TLOU2 is a PS4 game.
But of course the game is probably nothing compared with the masterpiece of TLOU2.

BTW it is the best looking UE5 game to date... there is no lie here.

Yawn, it's a letterboxed corridor game with very few things being rendered on the screen at any given and limited to 1v1 combat. This hype is laughable.

 

[Muddasar]

Yawn, it's a letterboxed corridor game with very few things on the screen at any given time limited to 1v1 combat. This hype is laughable.

Exactly.

A glorified tech demo if I have ever seen one.

 

[Petekilla]

The footage looks absolutely amazing... not sure where people are seeing bad graphics.
Plus because it is pushing Unreal Engine 5, and like the documentation says, it can only reach 30fps.

It looks way better than TLOU2... that is not a fair comparison because TLOU2 is a PS4 game.
But of course the game is probably nothing compared with the masterpiece of TLOU2.

BTW it is the best looking UE5 game to date... there is no lie here.

Shinobi on Era teased that Gears 6 will look even better.

 

[Dr Bass]

The resolution is not like that because it is not widescreen.
2304 x 964 has similar IQ as 1296p.
2560 x 1070 has similar IQ as 1440p.
The game is not running below 1080p resolution quality.

Actually the video says they are running at 1296p (2304 x 964) to 1440p (2560 x 1070 quality in combat due the letterbox... that is way higher typical 1080p quality.


The letterbox makes the image better... think like you have 2 million pixels in a 16:9 screen... the same 2 million pixels in a letterbox with give better image quality / resolution similar at a higher resolution in 16:9.

The Order took so much crap for "needing" to letterbox (I think the developer claimed it didn't need to, but then why do it?) the game to achieve the graphics it did, and I would argue the The Order was way more impressive for it's time than this one looks to be. I remember thinking The Order didn't even look possible to me at the time. This one I totally believe. And let's see if outlets levy that same criticism at this game.

Bottom line, for the resolution and clarity it's pushing, the frame rate seems low. Yes the game looks good. But given the tradeoffs it seems to be making I'd expect it to look better, or run at a faster frame rate.

Also, it's using all off the shelf stuff that another company created. So even though it looks good it's like .... great job Epic. You made a killer engine with great rendering capabilities.

 

[Would_you_kindly]

What they testing it on though , high end pc?

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

wow. Those graphics are beyond real

 

[ethomaz]

The Order took so much crap for "needing" to letterbox (I think the developer claimed it didn't need to, but then why do it?) the game to achieve the graphics it did, and I would argue the The Order was way more impressive for it's time than this one looks to be. I remember thinking The Order didn't even look possible to me at the time. This one I totally believe. And let's see if outlets levy that same criticism at this game.

Bottom line, for the resolution and clarity it's pushing, the frame rate seems low. Yes the game looks good. But given the tradeoffs it seems to be making I'd expect it to look better, or run at a faster frame rate.

Also, it's using all off the shelf stuff that another company created. So even though it looks good it's like .... great job Epic. You made a killer engine with great rendering capabilities.

Letterbox is a way to have the same quality as a high resolution render using a lower resolution render. It does help a lot to use the GPU for better graphics.

And yes The Order did it to reach it quality in graphics… if they didn’t do it they had to drop something and maybe the graphics should not be what it was… it is always a trade off after all.

UE5 when you push the new techs showed by Epic can only do 30fps on consoles… that is true for Lumen that this game is using… Lumen can only run at 30fps using hardware RT… it can run at 60fps if they choose software RT.

There is no way to avoid it and it is documented pretty well in the engine documentation.

To be fair Epic always target 30fps to use Nanite + Lumen on consoles.

Whatever PC can do 60fps or not will depend of a lot of variables including each hardware part.