God of War: Ragnarok |OT| 94 MC|OC Ragnarok is Here

[the-pi-guy]

https://t.co/3a6VU96NAD pic.twitter.com/otJNyF0e0m

— Santa Monica Studio – God of War Ragnarök (@SonySantaMonica) November 9, 2022

[Dr. Pezus]

This is one epic song  

[nnodley]

Holy crud this game is amazing

[kitler53]

after 1 nights play,.. so far my fears feel like they were realized. 

[Legend]

I'll go in expecting nothings changed.  Pretty sure that will be accurate.  Pretty much has to be true since they have a 120 fps mode proving they aren't pushing the hardware at all.  I'll just hope for more bosses and goon variety.

I prob need to avoid this thread till I play, but uh oh based off your impressions and old post.

[Dr. Pezus]

Well we know they targeted ps4 and upscaled everything for ps5. See digital foundry video

[the-pi-guy]

Lol.

Well we know they targeted ps4 and upscaled everything for ps5. See digital foundry video

Nah don't see.

Spoilers.

after 1 nights play,.. so far my fears feel like they were realized.

How much did you play?

[kitler53]

I prob need to avoid this thread till I play, but uh oh based off your impressions and old post.

i mean, i was trying to mindful of others and not say anything spoilery.    ...hadn't considered that my old post might qualify as a spoiler.

How much did you play?

somewhere around 3-4 hours.   i've said many times before that i'm slow at playing games.   i spent at least 20 minutes just going though the accessibility options.   

Progression spoiler:

Spoiler for Hidden:

i'm a bit after the thor fight.   i forget what it was called by i just beat some deer/human hybrid mini-boss that pulled me off the cliff side

so like i don't want to be an dog about anything so:
1. clearly i'm early in the game.  too early to make any definitive statements.  this is just a hottake on what i've played so far.
2. GoW 2018 was probably the best game on ps4.  So like,.. GoW:R is still a good game.  I'm not saying i didn't have fun last night.   i had fun.

Well we know they targeted ps4 and upscaled everything for ps5. See digital foundry video

3. this is spot on...


so like,.. if you could search the forum enough you'll find a post i made ages ago complaining about xbox.  The gist is that MS cross-platform strategy is a big reason i liked playstation better.  when you target multiple platforms you build for "the lowest common denominator" and thus cannot make anything truly great.  i think that's fine for 3rd parties but i think it's 1st parties duty to push the limits and give us the "system sellers".  that's a big part of why i have loved consoles.  they way ND coded "to the metal" is how we got wondrously "ahead of it's time" games like U2. 

My impression is,.. this game should not qualify as a ps5 game.  it's a ps4 game that is BC on ps5.  in 2020 i would have been fine with that.  in 2022 i'm starting to think it wasn't even worth upgrading to a ps5.  playstation is pursuing the same cross-platform strategy (with more announcements for PC than for console) that I complained about with xbox.  it's hard to play GoW:R and not feel like my experience was degraded because of ps4/PC.  the priority is cross-platform at the expense pushing the limits of the console.


not that sony is the only bad actor here.  at this point for games both released and announced i think i can only think of 1 or 2 game that really qualifies as targeting "next gen": demon's souls remake and maybe R&C rift apart.   so i guess sony is at least the worst at being terrible...

[nnodley]

At least I can hear the game on ps5 instead of the loudest jet engine that was my PS4. lol

There isn't anything so far making it a massive upgrade over the first and thats fine for me.  I didn't expect as much really. Just give me epic boss fights and more enemy variation along with a killer story and i'm all good.  Enemy variation is so far better and i'm only 5 hours in.  I'm a little farther in than kitler though.

[Legend]

PS4 game

Will be really strange if Horizon Forbidden West feels more next gen than GOW Ragnarok, once the dust has settled.

Forbidden West is also a PS4 game but they did a lot of new things for the sequel. Plus again, it has a real time cutscene near the end that blew me away. Only time this gen I've had that "how the heck is this possible" feeling.

[kitler53]

Will be really strange if Horizon Forbidden West feels more next gen than GOW Ragnarok, once the dust has settled.

Forbidden West is also a PS4 game but they did a lot of new things for the sequel. Plus again, it has a real time cutscene near the end that blew me away. Only time this gen I've had that "how the heck is this possible" feeling.

for the moment i've skipped horizon.  i will play but i have other games higher on my list so i'll wait for a better price.

without saying anything specific there was a few places where i felt like GoW felt noticeably like a last gen title.  like,.. things where like a lot of the screen looked nice but then something else really didn't look nice as if the asset was intentionally low quality in order to fit into the limitations of last gen hardware.

[nnodley]

Honestly the first bit of the game is all snow and I never think snow looks all that impressive. Now going further. The first realm which I won't name looks amazing

Most of the time snow level are just bleh

Not sure if you've made it to the first realm or not

[kitler53]

Honestly the first bit of the game is all snow and I never think snow looks all that impressive. Now going further. The first realm which I won't name looks amazing

Most of the time snow level are just bleh

Not sure if you've made it to the first realm or not

still snowy in my game. 

[the-pi-guy]

The whole spoiler stuff bugs me.

You either have to miss out on the conversation or miss out on the discovery aspect of games, or you have to hope that people are deliberate enough to tell you what's in a spoiler without actually spoiling things.

Someone says up front that they're so many hours into the game, that might be good because then if you're that far too, you can feel confident that you're not going to get spoiled.

But a lot of people don't do that.

[Legend]

The whole spoiler stuff bugs me.

You either have to miss out on the conversation or miss out on the discovery aspect of games, or you have to hope that people are deliberate enough to tell you what's in a spoiler without actually spoiling things.

Someone says up front that they're so many hours into the game, that might be good because then if you're that far too, you can feel confident that you're not going to get spoiled.

But a lot of people don't do that.

It's kinda hard even once you've beat a game. For example I beat Ghost Song the other day and didn't even know it had multiple endings till I jumped online and got other endings spoiled.

Not sure how to improve it without a massive upgrade in AI or a dedicated effort by game communities.