Mother of God!
Well, I thought it looked incredible at first; a massive leap in many directions of game development, but after letting it sink in for a while I started to wonder if and how much was it scripted, adjusted, etc.
It's hard to believe all this runs fluently. I am not sure what did they exactly say - does this showcase really run live on ps5 at 60 fps with raytracing on?
Anyway, here's my feedback:
Pros:
- contextual animations look pretty cool, although I hope they won't be overdone
- seamless interactions/simulations like mounting the horse or petting it, cloak simulation, etc. look great
- the world looks nice and original (orange cliffs, spiky mountains, streams, deep forests, village design, the combination of green trees and grass and white ice and snow, etc). Also, I especially liked the over-hanging part of the mountain with the stream in the very beginning.
- NPCs look lively and reactive! They chained reaction of Ciri pushing a guy, him dropping an apple case and a kid picking it up looked great.
- swapping of TPP gameplay and lively cutscenes looks great (although I am not sure if it wasn't scripted and will not be present in the game)
Cons:
- Ciri's cloak looks graphically inconsistent with the rest of the world. It's too grey and too smooth. She looks like Darth Vader.
- level desing seems wrong. Both the world and the village look too rich and too displaced. There is too much grass, snow and rocks where there's should be any; the same goes for branches, buildings, fences, harbor constructions, etc.; everything really. It looks too perfectly random, blending with everything around too much rather than standing on it's own.
- Ciri's writing. I like she's more lively, but it's overdone to the point it looks like she's arrogant. In the books she was spontaneous, decisive, had temper; yes; but she was also very smart, tactical and knew her place very well. The dialogue with the guy should be toned down. Let some of the work be done with her intense look, staying silent, more mature and minimalist witcher (body) language, speaking from experience, etc.
