Horizon Forbidden West vs Horizon Zero Dawn | Direct Comparison

welcome back everybody to another episode of direct comparison in today's episode we're going to take a look at the newly released horizon forbidden west and see how exactly it stacks up visually to its predecessor horizon zero dawn for those of you unfamiliar with these titles horizon zero dawn is a third person open world action adventure game where players explore a large post-apocalyptic landscape populated by tribes of nomadic people and a large variety of deadly machines the game was largely successful when it released on the playstation 4 all those years ago and with its sequel guerrilla games have sought to up the ante with a more intriguing narrative improved gameplay mechanics and plenty of cool new robot dinosaurs to brawl with but as i've already covered most of the gameplay elements in my review earlier this week i want to spend this video talking more directly about the visuals and how forbidden west has evolved from a technical level from its predecessor for reference both games have been captured on the playstation 5 as this allows for the best possible presentation while still remaining on the playstation console platforms keep in mind that when playing on the playstation 5 horizon zero dawn automatically plays at 60 frames per second at a checkerboarded 4k resolution whereas forbidden west has two options to select between an 1800p 60fps performance mode and a 4k 30fps mode both of which use a similar checkerboarding solution to dynamically maintain its target performance for the sake of comparing the visuals of these two games i'll be leaving forbidden west in its 30fps fidelity mode though i will demonstrate how the game looks and plays in its performance mode during the sound comparison section later on also please bear in mind that the version that i was able to play at forbidden west was an early review build and so things like texture loading issues and object model pop-in are issues that have been reported and the developers are aware of and while the patch has released to help fix some of these issues there's still a few lingering problems that i'll discuss in a bit alright so to kick this comparison off let's first take a look at our character models starting with the lead protagonist eloy now i've done many side-by-side comparisons of sequels over the years and rarely do i see an improvement this impressive the upgrades made to this character here are plain to see with substantially more detail than its 2017 predecessor this is obviously to be expected as this has been more or less a next generational leap but even still the upgrades here are staggering one of the most crucial improvements that have been made is the implementation of subsurface scattering allowing light to realistically react to ailoy's skin and even cause more translucent areas like her nostrils to glow red at the proper angles along with this you'll notice that the skin textures themselves have been enhanced adding more believable color at different points like her cheeks nose and chin and other details from before like each individual freckle mole and imperfection along the skin are now more pronounced ultimately resulting in a more convincing take on the human face than the orange peel looking skin textures used before but it's not just the skin that helps to sell this illusion the eyes are an extremely important contributor here and forbidden west eyes are a marked improvement over the glassy lifeless eyes used before if you look closely both the cornea and iris sport more than double the amount of detail and the reflective cube map used in the pupils are much clearer only further adding to its believability aloy's hair is another area that has seen some nice changes while it no doubt uses the original hairstyle as a base each curl and distinctive hair fiber has been cleaned up a great deal smoothing out the more obvious polygonal curves and then bulking them up with additional hairs that cross and stick out at various points you can also make out a subtle texture layer that's been added to the base of her hair that helps to make it look more smoothly integrated into the model itself as opposed to before where the hair kind of just sat on top of her head her eyelashes and eyebrows have similarly been enhanced with the latter sporting a much higher resolution texture that also offers more depth than what we saw before there's even some light peach fuzz along the edge of her skin offering a new level of realism and authenticity and these great improvements aren't just limited to the player's character all the other characters in the game share similar huge improvements to their visual fidelity varl here offers one of the most clear-cut examples of this with some absolutely jaw-dropping visual enhancements to everything mentioned previously simply put these are the most realistic looking video game character models that i've ever seen in a video game however oddly enough this massive leap forward isn't necessarily found with the game world's other inhabitants the machines now just to be clear the machines in horizon zero dawn have held up remarkably well thanks largely in part to their brilliant complex designs and intricate details each creature has multiple points that will dynamically break off when targeted by the player and they'll even adjust their attacks to account for any removed components but when viewed up close these nice details don't really shine as well with some really blurry textures and rough edges you can maybe argue that these machines would be worn down over time to help hide the details a little bit but there's just no denying that this texture work won't hold up well to close scrutiny and unfortunately the same seems to be true for forbidden west now despite this watcher here technically being a different variant with some obvious cosmetic differences like this unique crest up here you can still easily tell that the same blurry texture work used before has been reintegrated on these shared metal panels and i would have liked to see some high res textures here then we have creatures like the snapmall that have actually had some of their textures changed entirely swapping out the extended carbon fiber nose from before with some worn black metal at the tip instead on the bright side the improvements made to the lighting do help to accentuate some of the more fine texture and modeling work that's been done here which prevents components from sort of blurring together like they did before and the actual light emitted from the robot's eyes have a more luminescent glow to them that can be seen from much further away both of which are more noticeable improvements in the grand scheme of things and those are just the returning robots all of the new robots that gorilla games added are even more intricate in their detail and complexity with lots more moving parts and impressive animation designs that help them to really stand out in a crowd though as i don't want to spoil some of the surprise editions that have been made here i'll just leave it at that moving on from models let's take a look at the environments like with the human character models horizon forbidden west sees a massive improvement in just about every area to the design of its many diverse environments in zero dawn players were set loose in a large series of canyons in a post-apocalyptic interpretation of the us's mountain states including parts of colorado arizona and utah but as this takes place hundreds of years in the future following an apocalyptic event the world has been reclaimed by nature with only faint reminders of the past remaining a lot of the more natural landmarks still remain mostly intact and so players are treated to some gorgeous locations to explore with a mix of red canyons lakes rivers and temperate forests and then with the addition of the frozen wilds expansion players are given a chance to venture into some of the national parks like yellowstone and grand teton all covered in a thick layer of snow and ice it's a fairly diverse map to explore with some modified biomes like a jungle region down south but it's nothing compared to the biodiversity offered in the newer forbidden west forbidden west while only slightly larger in size to the map in zero dawn offers much more variety to the environments players can explore there's still canyons forests and snowy mountainsides but now there's also tropical beaches wide reaching desert plains and a lot thicker jungles to trek through along with this diversity these locations also feel more vertical in their design as well like we've done to incorporate gameplay mechanics more properly like a voice shield wing and the new free climb system but the most impressive change is to the general quality and complexity of each area horizon zero dawn is still a gorgeous game there's no denying that but there's quite a few areas that can feel barren when propped up next to forbidden west similar biomes offer more vegetation both dynamic or otherwise and the general draw distance of these assets is surprisingly far much further than horizon zero dawn where poppin can be a bit more noticeable however that being said i am still unfortunately encountering some significant pop-in issues with forbidden west that are so drastic that i feel they're more of a bug than intentional it only seems to happen to larger structures like ruins in this desert location and has been reduced a good amount with a recent patch but it is still present what's interesting though is that this exact same issue at least to some extent wasn't zero dawn as well so it's a bit unclear at this point why this is happening and why it seems to be worse now in the sequel than before as for the texture quality we again see a big win for the newer game with 4k textures superior tessellation and improved lighting all working in tandem to provide crisp close-ups of practically every environmental asset and then on top of all this there's even new underwater locations to explore that weren't featured in zero dawn at all which feature beautiful wildlife animations realistic lighting picturesque coral reefs and this nice flowing seaweed that the player can actually use to hide it's a significant net gain overall and the added biodiversity i feel was a great touch given that xerodon's environments could feel a bit repetitive at times next we have the lighting design forbidden west lighting builds strongly offer the same techniques used in zero dawn most notably the overabundance of volumetric light shafts and fog effects to help create a sense of visible distance but the color grading has been altered as well providing some much needed contrast that while seemingly exaggerated at times still looks much more believable across the board the way light interacts with the game's assets is also a nice improvement with light now properly passing through translucent materials like cloth and tree leaves there's a little bit of bounce lighting incorporated as well though it's minor and only seems to function on the larger environmental assets the overall lighting design is still built off the same model used before with a few baked presets being cycled constantly but the number of environmental lighting presets has also been doubled and thanks to more advanced volumetric writing that seems to more accurately pour in through the dynamic cloud systems what you end up with is a much more true to life simulation unfortunately forbidden west does not seem to make use of any sort of ray tracing to assist with its global illumination shadowing or reflections though it does at the very least improve on its screen space reflections and combines these with much higher quality cue maps for its many reflective surfaces we also see a pretty sizable upgrade to the shadow rendering as well with more diffused soft edges relative to the light source distance and a longer draw distance for shadowing of things like vegetation ambient inclusion has also been incorporated which helps to add a more tangible depth to more complex surfaces like rock walls which is an absolute must considering how much more time players will spend climbing around them moving on let's talk about effects both horizon 1 and 2 are loaded with a wide variety of various effects there's obviously all the different elemental attacks present in each game like fire frost electric plasma and corrosive ammo all with their own corresponding explosions depending on how they're used and while most of these effects have definitely been enhanced i was disappointed to find that some effects like explosions from this blast sling aren't quite as impressive as they were before with less particles and less complex smoke alpha layers but then there's the environmental based effects like the flames from campfires that not only look better in the sequel but can even be seen from much further away when viewing active settlements and then there's the enhanced ground deformation that was carried over from zero dawn's expansion the frozen wilds just like in that expansion a louis will trudge through deep snow and leave realistic trails and footprints that directly correlate to how she impacts the surface rolling for example will cause big imprints in the snow sometimes even revealing the packed grass underneath if you look closely other small woodland creatures will leave their own trails in the snow as well further adding to the realism forbidden west sees this effect return and it's also incorporated into all the snowy areas as opposed to just being in an expansion pack there's also new details like snow that will fall off of bushes as characters pass through them the sand along the beaches and in the desert will also deform now with a slightly modified granular effect consistent with the different material adding to this is the reworked wind simulation systems that will cause alloy to respond accordingly as sand or snow particles will get kicked up and flowed along the airwaves in more extreme cases a small tornado can form which will impact visibility and can also be used in tandem with alloys glider to gain altitude quickly but it's the water effects that demonstrate some of the best improvements visually one of the least impressive aspects of zero dawn's presentation was its water quality whether it was the overly simplistic river rapids that barely reacted to alloy at all or the massive flat water surfaces out in the canyon lakes with unconvincing cube maps forbidden west thankfully rectifies this with improved ripple effects and some fantastic wave simulation that will adjust based on the active weather effect it's not necessarily the best water simulation out there as there's this sort of weird dual layer thing going on that looks off when viewed up close but it's otherwise a great upgrade finally let's wrap up with a brief sound comparison which game do you feel offers the superior audio quality and design [Applause] [Applause] uh [Applause] [Music] um [Applause] and that wraps up this episode of direct comparison overall horizon forbidden west from a purely technical perspective is a near masterpiece for one the character models are absolutely incredible looking with some true to life designs and animations that far exceed the lifeless doll-like appearances used before the environments also sport an unprecedented level of detail and complexity all while offering a ton more variety to the player to help keep the experience as fresh and interesting as possible the lighting on the other hand isn't necessarily revolutionary but when compared to zero dawn it's still a major improvement and with all the other effects and attention to detail added on top of these elements it only further contributes to a gorgeous presentation but what do you guys think are you impressed with horizon forbidden west graphical design or do you still prefer the look and feel of zero dawn let me know in the comments section if you want to learn more about forbidden west be sure to check out my full review linked in the description and of course don't forget to like and subscribe for more content like this posted every week [Music] you

Channel: Nick930

Views: 1,888,421

Keywords: Horizon Forbidden West, Horizon Zero Dawn, Gameplay, Review, Remastered, Remake, Remaster, Sequel, Comparison, Downgrade, Upgrade, Ray Tracing, RTX, Side-by-side, Graphics, Ultra, PC, Direct, Lighting, Model, Environment, Aloy, Machines, Robot, Dinosaur, Breakdown, Analysis, Arrow, PlayStation, PS5, PS4, PS4Pro, February, Games, Gaming, Features, Footage, Early, Access, Twitch, Trailer, E3, Ultimate, Complete, Final, Retail

Id: mUpPFkYfXDY

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 19 2022