You talk about the textures. Have you played God of War that just came out? The textures in that game is far and above most current console games. Really highly detailed and crisp. The trick in God of War is they use heavy blur and low resolution for distance, but in your general game play area it is crisp and very detailed.
The trailer doesn't look like out of this world in graphics. Looks fully capable on a PC at least. I think what could possibly help a little with graphics is that draw distance might not have a huge effect since it is in a city so most long draw distances are covered by buildings.
Besides did you see "The last of us 2" 4K 11 min trailer. Look at that level of graphics, pretty spectacular. So I don't think Cyberpunk 2077 is that far fetched. The character detail in both the last of us and cyberpunk 2077 is on par. So the game world. CP2077 is a city TLOU 2 is set more open vistas and close areas.
How about Death's stranding... Games coming out in this late part of current gen look really good.
They are all getting downgraded, especially TLOU Part 2, it was 100% scripted. Bookmark this reply and come back to read it when the downgraded TLOU Part 2 comes out, and it will. Naughty Dog know they can't deliver those visuals, they've known that for weeks or even months, but they showed it off during E3 anyway, didn't they? Why? TLOU Part 2 will be epic, it's Naughty Dog after all, but the trickery remains as usual.
1. God of War actually got an upgrade. It didn't look that good at the reveal and it looks far better now. God of War as an example of how much the PS4 can handle is utterly moot, that game never shows more detail than how far you can throw a stone (10-20 feet). Its incredibly tight (linear) camera angles only show you huge vistas during cutscenes. Otherwise, most of those are very blurry and foggy just like you said.
2.
The textures may be good but then you again you only have 2 incredibly detailed characters on screen at any given time during the gameplay. Draugrs and other enemies are duplicated textures/meshes. Exclude the cutscenes with NPCs, which would make it 3 or 4 characters max (throughout the whole game).
So is that some kind of never before seen achievement? LMAO, no. It's a far cry from the CP2077 level of the densely populated environment shown off in the trailer. GoW is an amazing game but let's not give it credit where it isn't due.
3. TLOU's camera angles are linear as hell.
The game mostly takes place in linear closed off levels, where every other turn is a leaky basement parking, a conveniently destroyed building, or some swampy city block with closed off intersections. Can you go wherever you please in that game? No? Exactly. Moot comparison to games like CP2077.
As for Death Stranding, have you seen any populated environment in that game? An in-depth look at cities or anything to indicate that DS is set in a highly demanding environment? What it has so far shown so far is 2 or 3 characters and a baby in open wastelands and mountain area with water, sand, dead fish. Nothing from anything Kojima has shown so far about Death Stranding tells me it's a hardware resource intensive game.
4. HZD was downgraded (a lot) to make it playable.
What you saw at E3 2016 isn't what you got. The game may be great, and I heard it is, but, the trickery remains. The beautiful lighting is completely gone. Leaving behind lighting that makes skin look like it was factory manufactured, as well as that beautiful, magically all-engulfing, dense fog. See for yourself:
Also, most people who have actually played the demo at E3 are mostly in agreement that this game, in its current form, and as was shown off in the trailer, is impossible to pull off on current gen. Which might mean that it will be downgraded on PC just like TW3 was. Or maybe CDPR will optimize the game for consoles and PC differently allowing the PCs to turn it all the way up to what the trailer showed. In all honesty, I just want
"GAME ENGINE FOOTAGE" to hold some truth to it this time around. Otherwise, there is no point in showing that off as some sort of technical achievement for REDengine 4. Yeah, yeah, great! Your engine can achieve that every year at E3, but why is that same visual fidelity you proudly used to drop millions of jaws now missing in the final product you sold me?