Someone shared this with me regarding the game’s visuals and now I’m very happy: https://www.twitter.com/mariobrothblog/status/1141397352412004352?s=21
If only they did the same with Mario 64 DS. Instead of recreating the original game’s style they replaced everything with the standard Mario universe art we’d come to associate from Mario Party in the previous generation (though everything else added to Mario 64 DS also takes something away from the original too…)
Interesting. I agree with the change - represent the original game as much as possible while taking liberties. I don’t like the “standardization” of the Mario universe in general.
Every installment of a series should be free to play with the art and character designs liberally. Zelda does this really well and is all the more fascinating for doing so. Other series throughout the industry could benefit more from it too.
New Super Mario Bros series actually suffers quite a bit from not doing this.
Mario universe really hasn’t been standardised much. yeah NSMB but otherwise it’s pretty freaking loose.
Like, is Waluigi canon? Some games he’s a thing, but he doesn’t exist in most. Even Wario barely exists in the main main games, and his own games have their own entire extra universes with no connections either.
The biggest issue with Zelda was that nonsense after the fact timeline. Luckily BOTW ruined it so it cannot be canon anyway haha.
Let’s agree to disagree. It takes place after Twilight Princess
Digital Foundry’s analysis is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poDPUjAO7k8
I’m happy John echoed our earlier comments on the double buffer V-Sync and Unreal 4 - this looks even more likely given it’s 798p in docked mode, so most likely sub-native resolution in handheld mode.
I hope they optimise to hit 60fps in the overworld which seems more likely than a 30fps cap at the moment. I’m still a bit disappointed that the kind of bespoke engine work done for past games - particularly A Link Between Worlds’ hasn’t been replicated here.
The time spent crafting a bespoke engine for 2D Zelda on Switch wouldn’t be lost in the long run if they plan on re-using it like they did Triforce Heroes last time, but I appreciate Unreal 4 allows for bespoke shaderwork anyway and there’s really impressive postprocessing used in this Link’s Awakening remake that enhances the dream-world appearance.
It does feel like the ‘stock’ Mario character designs have been creeping its way into more spinoffs that you wouldn’t otherwise expect to see it, mind, like the Mario & Luigi games. But it might just be an exception rather than the rule - the wonderful Paper Mario Color Splash still very much played to its own style with many of its character designs. And given Mario Party was one of the earliest series to use it it makes sense stuff like Mario Tennis Aces and all those other sports games would have adopted it.
To be fair, it hasn’t been confirmed to be running on Unreal Engine 4. And modifying the engine to do one’s bidding can be just as effective as, or even more effective than creating something in-house. Just look at Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It has max resolution and framerate both in docked and portable modes - 1080p/60fps and 720p/60fps respectively - and looks far more impressive in both modes (especially with regard to lighting) than Super Smash Bros. for Wii U which used a bespoke engine created by Sora and Namco Bandai. To be fair, however, the Wii U instalment also looked impressive at 1080p/60fps… just less so than the more recent installment.
I really think it will come down to Grezzo’s talent and overall priorities when it comes to final performance rather than Unreal Engine’s capabilities.
Edit: disregard. I posted under the incorrect assumption that Smash Ultimate was on Unreal Engine. It’s not.
That’s true, though it does feel to me that there’s some sort of bottleneck which prevents the majority of Unreal 4 and Unity engine 3D games on Switch from reaching 60fps when they would have on other engines. Games like Yoshi’s Crafted World appear to be the exception rather than the rule and that game runs at low resolutions with low res effects (like depth of field) to get there.
It’s interesting you bring up Smash Bros Ultimate though - that’s on a bespoke Bandai Namco engine as well: https://mobile.twitter.com/AllGamesDelta_/status/994401239814328326
Ah… then please ignore my entire post. I just saw this:
I think there’s just too much baggage with Unreal and Unity and they require extensive work to hit 60fps on any reasonably complicated game.
I’m just thankful they’re sticking with their existing engine for Mario Kart.
I think we have that, but I thought it just did saves rather than being able to clone any Amiibo!
I got to play this yesterday at a convention. I didn’t bother going to the dungeon as I knew I had limited play time, so instead I messed around in Mabe village, which felt like returning home. I visited all the houses, did as much of the trading quest as possible, stole from the shop, angered a Cucco, before ending my playthrough at the shop again…
Some quick thoughts are in order then!
I’m happy to report that the team has done an excellent job at recreating the atmosphere of the Koholint. The detailed nature of the diorama model-like assets, and the very granular lighting, does a great job at recreating how detailed every tile could be on the Game Boy screen. Of course, it’s still easy to see it as a diorama rather than the world the GB graphics were made to bring to your imagination, but it still ‘feels’ like Koholint since it’s a successful translation of the Game Boy’s graphics. By contrast, Adventures of Mana, the remake of Final Fantasy Adventure/Seiken Densetsu was not, because its 3D graphics were too simplistic to capture the detailed GB sprite work.
Some other observations:
There’s hope yet - this stretch of the overworld seems to be running much smoother than anywhere else we’ve seen outside in Koholint: https://youtu.be/GKgJ_noHy2A
There was also some recent Tal Tal Heights footage which suggests they’ve unlocked the framerate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVZAvmKz5gU (there’s some ugly shadow LOD glitch at 20 seconds though…)
Yup, @Dark1x confirms big improvements to the framerate and it now largely sticks to 60fps in the overworld: https://youtu.be/1exO5yNLXPg?t=234
Hopefully chopping lots of grass outside the shop doesn’t bring the framerate to a slideshow now!
Looks like the framerate is still choppy. It’s 60fps with drops.
Oh well, I prefer that to 30, and it looks so nice.
If it gets patches to improve it maybe later I’ll get a copy with the patched version on the cart, kind of like the original LA GB carts with the glitches patched out.
GameXplain’s video made it sound like it dips when it loads new areas as you’re going around the overworld. Would have been better to just keep it GB style sectioned off per screen.
For reference:
Eh… I understand the desire to have a rock solid framerate, but this really isn’t that bad. I’m still not interested in grabbing it at full price since I still love the DX version and find it very playable, but the framerate is not a deterrent for me.
For reference, this is not nearly as bad as, say, BotW on Switch. And I find that game to be perfectly playable.
What’s odd is it seems the final build is worse than the 3-4 month old Gamescom version, which reportedly only had drops when loading a new area.
We’ll see, maybe it’s a bug that can be fixed.
You’re entirely right. They spoke about this on the Gamescom Digital Foundry Direct episode, and John said that outside of hiccups when moving between areas, the game otherwise kept a stable 60fps.
Odd to see this come back out of nowhere, but I’ll still be picking the game up at release. Hopefully Nintendo can patch it, but it won’t kill my enjoyment of the game either.
John did bring up an issue in the first dungeon which he thought was related to streaming in new assets, where the game would drop to 30fps and then go back up to 60. It seems to be the same case in the overworld, presumably it’s worse since the overworld doesn’t scroll screen-by-screen.
The drops when there are a lot of grass are disappointing, in what must have been the E3 demo I brought the framerate to its knees cutting a lot of grass, and I suspect the same will be the case in grass-heavy areas in the final build.
Like @Peltz said it’s not a deal breaker in practice, though the lack of polish due to Grezzo using Unreal 4 middleware does feel like the antithesis of the original game’s accomplishments.
On an unrelated aside I’m disappointed by what they’ve done with the house music! I wonder if two of the three composers were supervising the arrangements because what they’ve done (it has a tropical sound to it now) doesn’t sound like how I’ve always interpreted the house music to have conveyed.