When your game only runs 720p on console and somehow still has more pixels than players

New technology is great and all, but this game shows how much the art matters. The visuals here look so sterile, reminds me of Godfall.

With all honesty, I fail to notice the beauty of Immortals of Aveum. I’ve seen numerous games, that employ a less impressive set of technologies and yet, subjectively, deliver more impressive visuals at higher rendering resolution.

The particles looked kinda cool but they have no lighting effects attached to them. I swear we haven’t had any games that’s when you shoot the bullets light the environment anymore. Remember the alien guns in the old halo on original Xbox and then the remake got rid of all that cool lighting effects.

Didn't DF previously release a video on this pointing out how terrible the image quality was and how polluted from visual effects it is?

Cool. I hope the 18 people who played this game enjoyed it.

They have money to sponsor this video but they laid off half their staff?

Killzone Shadowfall looked more impressive all the way back at the PS4 reveal. This gen you need a booklet to explain to you why the games “look better”

Didn't y'all already do this game, unsponsored, where you said, "It's kinda meh, in terms of showcasing UE5" (paraphrasing)?

The sponsors thought, "Lets get DF to talk about the graphics. Maybe people would wanna buy it." DF can't make the game fun

15:40 the irony that a whole tree spawns far left on screen the exact second Alex claims there’s no visible pop-in ;)

Hasn't 50% of Ascendant's team been layed off?

Watch this video at 240p to experience the visuals the way the developers intended.

Outside some of the post-processing effects, if you had told me the game was UE4, I would´ve believed you. UE5 games so far like this or Lords of The Fallen have failed to impress me. Nanite can do wonders at time, but Lumen is just another name for RT Global Illumination, which we´ve had for years in say Metro: Exodus EE. The worst part is how demanding these UE5 games are. I suddenly feel like my RTX 3080 is not even good enough for 1440p. Then you see what Alan Wake 2 is doing with in-house engine and it´s not even close, that game is the pinnacle of graphical fidelity with path tracing.

this is the most UnreaI Engine Iooking game ever made Imao, you couId teII me it was a tech demo and l wouId 100% beIieve you

The Unreal Engine 5 difference! 50% fewer frames for 50% more blurriness with aggressive upscaling...

I actually worked on this game (and yes, was laid off with half the company back in Sept.) It’s super cool to see DF doing a video on this to highlight all the tech, even if it’s a sponsored video. At some point, Immortals will hit the bargain bin for $10-20. Definitely worth trying it at that price point.

The problem with this game is that it has no distinct creative anything really... Just a bunch of assets that look really good. Compare this to Alan wake 2 or Jedi survivor, it's night and day... It's not about the visuals, it's about how the visuals contribute to the game's story and/or mechanics.

Very strange for Ascendant to commission a sponsored vid so long after release but hey! Always appreciate some Alex analysis.

There's still a soft look to everything that's not a moving character, the assets do not look or resemble a super sharp look. There's work to be done.

I mean sure, but even with nanite and lumen it still doesn't look as good as a lot of last generation games with discreet lods with precalculated lighting and GI probes. Nanite is cool, but the actual models themselves are already pretty low detail, even if you can zoom in all the way and see that they have "round" edges. On a macro scale, stuff like rocks, foliage, and other small bits of detritus are pretty scarce, much like you'd see last generation. Does it really matter if it's real geometry this time instead of say, pom or gpu tessellation if the end result conveys a similar sparse amount of detail? It's not like we're seeing film quality assets here, they are still very clearly optimized game assets. The example of the cart, sure the belt buckles are cool in that they're 3d, but the rest of it? Eh. Could have a similar looking model with LODs no problem. Even auto generated LODs. It's not like the wood has geometric micro-cracks in it or something with nanite. Lumen is cool but I mean... the game's lighting doesn't really move unless you shoot a projectile or something, which is going to be a point light anyway. I understand the memory constraints prohibit such detailed baked lighting but again, there are similar last generation games that have a similar looking end result just using lightmaps + some SSAO technique like GTAO. The only thing that I feel you would really notice would be the GI on moving objects like characters, but even GI probes or stuff like enlighten have come a long way and look pretty similar if done well by and artist. VSMs are great though. Really the benefit here is mainly for the developers. No light baking, artists don't have to create discreet LODs, stuff "just works," but the end result for the consumer is still just, meh. I'm excited to see this tech used in a more effective way. I'd like to see assets with nanite that are GENUINELY impossible to create performantly with artist authored LODs. I'd like to see real-time GI in a game where real-time GI would actually out-shine existing solutions, like a game with a real-time time of day system. Not just a static environment with almost no moving objects. A game like Halo Infinite is a great example of a game in dire need of something like this, as seen in Metro-Exodus.

I played this game and it honestly just doesn't look very good considering the performance. It isn't exactly a great selling point for Unreal Engine 5 when games look basically the same as last gen but the performance is far worse. And if you do push UE5 to look better than last gen, you get even worse performance like what we saw with the Matrix demo.

Getting those particle effects integrated into Lumen and VSM will help that art style a lot. The smorgasbord of bright particles casting no light on the environment looks _particularly_ ungrounded with the otherwise-excellent consistency of presentation.

Kinda weird to release this ad now and not before the game was out and the development company gutted.

It's interesting, though, how with all that tech and detail it still looks so absolutely like a video game. Like, not realistic at all, just technically impressive.

It's insane how good it looks at times and then you just turn the camera and it looks super bland and inconsistent

Remember how good Red Dead Redemption 2 looked at 4K? Guess we're not getting games like that again on console any time soon.

27 people currently playing on steam

I’m excited for the day when this tech gets implemented into an extraordinary game that is actually fun.

I played Aveum for several hours. Of course at the highest graphics settings. I was never impressed by the graphics and therefore asked myself why that was the case. But then I found some reasons for it. The surroundings usually look loveless and unbelievable. The entire game looks very clinical and artificial. The story, the characters and art design as well as the atmosphere seem cheap and soulless to me. The gameplay is relatively fun, but not really motivating. I don't know if it's just me, but for me Aveum is just a kitschy facade with no substance.

I think most of this could have been done on previous tech and run better, especially being a relatively linear game with fixed time of day. But it sounds like it enabled smaller teams with lower budgets to make straightforward story games like this and Robocop, and I'm 100% in favor of that! The grainy reflections and splotchy, flickering lighting can get pretty distracting though, I hope future versions of the engine can polish that up.

Gotta get that bag

Particle Effects the video game

I played nearly all newer UE5 titles on my 13700K/4090/4K OLED and I have the feeling DF is praising UE5 a little bit too much recently, nicely said. These games can look nice, but often times also just decent/okay. Most importantly though, the visual/performance ratio is IMO pretty awful with UE5. Something like Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarök on PS5 pretty much humiliates UE5 titles running on monster PCs. I'm way more of a friend of In-house engines and not really impressed by UE5 so far.

there wasn't a single frame made me go "wow" .. there's just something about this game that makes it look very unappealing

I played it on RTX3090 at 4K DLSS performance and IT DID NOT LOOK LIKE THAT. Extremely blurry, almost as blurry as the console version. Had to set post processing to low to reclaim at least some sharpness.

Pop in is the biggest thing I hope game developers can figure out for the future, that it becomes a thing of the past. Amazing to see Naninte soften the visual pop in so much that its subtle, if barely noticeable. Can't wait till more titles can hold the image integrity when going backward and forward.

It's amazing how they can spend so much on graphics and the game still looks like ass with 0 art direction.

Particle effects casting no light around when an attack is executed kills the experience

Playing this is like watching unicorn puking rainbows non stop

A video on talos 2 would have been cool since that also includes all of these technologies (and is actually a good game)

I wish we would differentiate between games looking ''better'' and more ''realistic''. Something that looks more realistic doesn't automatically look better. I still think artstyle is the most important part of making a game look good. Something like BoTW looks amazing at 4k 60fps emulated despite it not being realistic at all. And to me it definitely looks better than this game which runs at such a low resolution that all the high quality assets don't even matter anymore.

Particles that dont even interact with the geometry or cast lights?

Sponsored Alex is not Alex

When all the selling points are just using next gen tech, you know for sure they spend no effort in the gameplay 😂

If only these advanced technologies made the game fun and worth playing.

Aveum has sponsorship money??? Didn't the game tank epically?

I see this video as more of a coverage of Unreal Engine 5 and not the game itself. Nothing is really said about the game itself being good or not, but the UE5 technologies were explained pretty well

You know, I think that videos like this are the only kind of sponsored content that I don't mind at all. You're not talking about whether or not the game is fun or worth buying; You're just looking at the technology behind it. It could be Superman 64 levels of bad but still have interesting new technology.

The big problem as I see it with these recent titles, mostly UE5 but also Alan Wake, is that they do not perform. Okay they do run at 60fps but the render resolution needs to be so low it compromises the image. 720 for Aveum or 835 for Alan Wake is just not acceptable, and with FSR, major issues arise at such low render rez. Depending on your viewpoint one can characterize it as one step forward and two steps back, or two steps forward and 1.x steps back. I think 1080 has to be considered a rock bottom minimum. Don't do all that glorious high poly geometry if it chokes the performance too much.

I would rather play a fun game than a pretty game any day of the week.

Fascinating Alex, but you've left one very important angle unexamined! how exactly is it they have the budget to sponsor this video while laying off their staff?

The biggest weakness for upscaling techniques are particles. It's a shame that the insane particles in this game are filled with so many artifacts.

Sorry DF, but even rdr2 looks miles better than this and I'm not even joking, and I won't disrespect requiem or alan wake 2 by putting this game in the same sentence

I don't care how much DF talks about it, I'm still not playing... I forgot the name of it while I was writing the comment

Comment section does not dissapoint. Very weird timing on this one though...

All of this fancy tech, all of that wasted GPU and CPU resources, and they still could not make a game that looks even on par with what we had 5+ years ago. And now they are paying DF to gaslight us into caring about the "Next-Gen" when the "Next-Gen" looks worse than "Last-Gen" and requires 1600$ GPU + 2 layers of upscaling + a bloody interpolation to get acceptable framerates. UE5, this game and all similar games are an absolute disgrace in the gaming medium.

Insane how this technically impressive game still looks so bad

It's a sponsored video so bear that in mind while watching

Cool looking game. I'm excited to finally be able to max it out by the time the next decade comes around

19 minute commercial of something that is supposedly cutting-edge but really just looks like more of the same

Looked like a regular old game. I played it for about an hour total. I bang out 5 minutes every other week.

I’m interested in what The Coalition can do with UE5 as they played a role in getting the Matrix demo done AFAIK. Gears 6 or something new, doesn’t matter which.

Jussant has the best use of Lumen so far thanks to its highly stylized art. Playdead's Inside was on Unity, but that game is also highly stylized and i would love to see a version that used Lumen GI. Lumen looks the best with stylized graphics. It helps with realistic but stylized environmental lighting, hero lighting, etc. When its used with more realistic graphics, it can be technically impressive, but less artistically impressive. Now that medieval broom closet the player will run past in 2 seconds looks more realistically lit, big whoop.

This game again? 🤭

What about The Talos principle 2? it's also used UE5 and run nicely on video card PS4 Pro level and little bit below

Render at again 240p "Chefs kiss"

Is this essentially advertising?

I just wish Immortals had art and creative direction to match its tech. The concepts present aren't terrible, but the art direction is some of the most generic off brand fantasy I've ever seen. It really undermines it all.

The utilization of engine capabilities is actually outstanding, big W on that part.

I actually really enjoyed this game and played through the technical issues. I have a beast rig and I still had almost constant stuttering despite trying everything the internet suggested to fix it. When the game ran well it looked amazing. But still, I thought it was pretty fun and I actually watched the cut scenes and cared about the story.

It says sponsored in name - not like in cyberpunk that definitely wasn't. What was the original quote - seeing the screenshot of dlss3 FG+RR printed on black and white printer is more real then native :).

i really love your consistent frame pacing in gameplays causing them look very smooth, other channels usually doesn't care about it

"Immortals of Aveum is, first and foremost, awful..." "CUT! Do it again." "Immortals of Aveum is, first and foremost, a magical shitshow...." "No, no, no, NO! DO IT AGAIN!!"

Hopefully the skill and experience here isn't wasted. The transition period for UE5 needs to be quick for the most benefit over the next decade since this will power nearly all video games in that time.

432p Gaming. Now we're Next Gen Gaming.

The game makes a compelling argument for "design over tech" from the side of tech.

Can’t wait to see how good the next Gears of War will look like.

Looking forward to playing this on the computer after my next computer, probably around 2035!

Thanks for making a tech review of one of the biggest flops of 2023. Totally worth the attention

yeah yeah turn on all the shiny new option from UE5 and change the resolution to 640p to hit 60fps, some people will say its worth it.

Style notwithstanding (which is purely subjective) this is very interesting from a technical standpoint of view. Thank you again, DF! :)

Did anyone ever play Gunstar Heroes on the Megadrive? That game is fun as hell!

Lmao 😂 DF had to squeak out this turd of a video due to it being sponsored content. Gotta love it

Hilarious that EA think paying DF to discuss UE5 features might help drive any sales at all for their crappy, eye-searing game nobody cares about. Lets get some hustle up on that Teardown console analysis. BS sponsored videos shouldn't take priority.

You can have the best graphics ever, if the art direction is bad it will look bad

DF: I am paid for a sponsor video that no one watches. I see this as an absolute win

I hope there is a Tech Review of The Talos Principle 2. Very good looking game.

I make particle effects like that in unity for fun to watch in vr i think it would be better if the app i used ran on UE5 it would make things easier!

I blame DF for the gamer's obsession with Ray Tracing. Look at RDR2 or TLOU2, those games look miles better than all the UE5 titles because they have talented artists working on them.

Theres been a lot of patches since release. How much has performance improved by?

I played the PC demo for this game today and quite enjoyed it. The action/attacks/colors/music were all great. Fun to also have a new sci-fi world to explore. Story was alright but enjoyed the gameplay more. Worth checking out.

Real next gen alright. Looks like a soupy inconsistent mess that barely functions on consoles. Games from nearly 10 years ago can put out a more appealing graphical package than this. Way to collect that paycheck DF.

And yet RoboCop looks more appealing

It seems like the consensus in the comments is that there were technical issues and the artstyle wasn't great. That's probably all true, but is that really a reason to dislike the video? Just because DF isn't trashing the game in a sponsored video doesn't mean they are selling out. It would be very different if this was a review of the game or if they were calling the game a masterpiece or something. It's a look at some of the tech used, which is done in a reasonably fact-based manner. Only reason I'd call this less than their best, is that it's all stuff they've talked about before, so it's not really anything new to me. Still a fine video though.

16:02 although not geometry pop-in but shadows poping in are still noticeable..

Game looks like a UE5 tech demo. And I've seen UE5 tech demos that look way more inspired than this.

This game is already 50% off on storefronts xD

Those technical breakdowns tell the viewer so much more and are much more fun to watch, than the usual performance and resolution analytics videos. Keep 'em coming.

This looks surprisingly good under analysis but somehow it doesnt really come through in the same substsntial way in motion.