Finally got the chance to play this yesterday and it's ridiculous!
I've never seen a game look so good. It's mental. I've seen better effects on my PC, volumetric smoke, explosions, lens flare etc. But for overall polish it's as good as anything I've seen on pc to date, and my 390X is no slouch. I've been trying to imagine what a 970/390X level PC could do, given that amount of optimisation?!?
And those character facial animations....ridonkulous!?! If you immerse yourself and get engrossed in the story, (which I find particularly easy to do on Uncharted games) you really do start to think you're looking at a movie. Not because other games haven't already given us amazing facial detail, but because the animation is so realistic. It's superb, but the best bit about this game so far, is the real time rendering.
Although I'm led to believe that if you skip a cut scene (it's probably unfair to call them "cut scenes"), you get longish loading times, I haven't noticed a single transition to date. It's been completely seamless so far. Yes, I know that it's loading behind the scenes, but absorbing the story through the cut scenes doesn't feel like it is breaking the immersion.
I'm trying to think about games I've played that have looked this clean, and the only ones that come to mind are Just Cause 3 and Shadow of Mordor. JC 3 didn't feel quite as detailed, though probably only due to the open scale of the environments, and Mordor's textures (even with the ultra texture pack) were predominantly flora, which can never look completely clean by it's very nature.
No, this is unarguably a step forward in gaming terms, and it's on a console. I can't imagine what the current crop of higher end discreet cards might achieve if dvelopers didn't have the financial pressure from publishers, and could truly optimise their work.
It's also convinced me to ignore the criticism and pick up The Order 1886 when I'm finished!
Edited by mrnelster (Sun 15-May-16 09:59:51)