Unreal Engine 5: What Can Game Developers Learn From Hellblade 2?

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Ninja Theory's Hellblade 2 is one of the most impressive Unreal Engine 5 games on PC - a clear sign that the technology is evolving in the right direction. Alex takes a looks a look at the strengths and weaknesses of this remarkable presentation, with a view to setting expectations for the PC ports to come.
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00:00:31 Introduction
00:01:22 Copy This: Shader Pre-Compilation
00:03:32 Copy This: Performance & Graphics Preview
00:06:11 Copy This: Graphics Options
00:07:31 Avoid This: Artificial Settings Limitations
00:08:58 Avoid This: No Hardware Lumen
00:10:26 Avoid This: Little Post-Processing Control
00:11:17 Avoid This: Fixed Aspect Ratio/FOV
00:12:51 Avoid This: Traversal Stutter
00:14:31 Avoid This: Poor Mid-Range Experience (8GB GPUs)
00:19:19 Conclusion

[@adarshwhynot]

What I like about Hellblade is that they allow us to take control of the camera even in cinematics in the photo mode. I wish many developers did that.

[@Emulator_Crossing]

mgs2 made it over 20 years ago

[@temuujinsukhbaatar7345]

Is this a joke?

[@HamalgamUB]

Most developers don't do that because you'll see off camera garbage like twisted limbs and t posing floating people

[@jaloniwilson]

A plagues Tale allows for the same. I was able to get so many good shots

[@concinnus]

@@HamalgamUB Don't forget characters sliding around at warp speed to relocate from shot to shot, or just teleporting. And some of this is why we don't even always get ultrawide.

[@ScyrousFX]

Alex ''the way I see it'' Battaglia

[@cube2fox]

Rich "quote-unquote" Leadbetter

[@Spaceman69420]

John "bespoke" Linneman

[@pro-storm4951]

Digital "caveat" Foundry

[@ChesterMan-qd3xj]

Rich reading punctuation out loud like “exclamation mark.”

[@lmnt66]

⁠​⁠@@Spaceman69420recently also John "behoove" Linneman

[@retrowrath9374]

After using UE5 for a while, Nanite is a game changer, I wasn't convinced as their was some big drawbacks when it launched but now with 5.4 all I can day is wow, even works in VR with insanely detailed meshes, it's a dream come true.

[@slothsarecool]

Yeah it’s crazy in VR! So much potential already and once performance improves it’ll be pretty insane

[@cube2fox]

Which VR game uses Nanite? Given that VR requires very high resolution (due to one view per eye) and very high frame rates, I believe Nanite is currently not a realistic option.

[@retrowrath9374]

@@cube2fox Not talking about a game, talking about my own experience of a test with nanite models and scene in VR that wasn't even possible not so long ago.

[@reddonut1518]

@@cube2fox its really just top 1% gaming rigs that can do it, but its 100% possible

[@ryanj610]

@@reddonut1518 Nanite doesn't need insane GPU, it's Lumen that is too taxing. Nanite is straight magic.

[@Saccade_HS]

The funny thing about the continued inclusion of chromatic aberration is that most live action productions do their best to avoid it. It's become so mitigated that even young adults now might not know what CA is. It's a filmmaking artifact that isn't really relevant to anything but niche content where this visual quality is trying to convey something about how the recording was made.

[@ProjectFight]

The only reason to add it is blend and blurr the digital look of the image. Same thing as too add grain, lens imperfections other than CA, like distortions, dirt, blooms, etc. Many of those things are avoided in film unless a very specific artistic reason or cheap gear. But in games or 3d renders those things allow to ground the 3d look

[@MicrobiusBlue]

Ninja Theory have it in this game because people suffering with schizophrenia suffer with similar visual distortions

[@steve_dudu]

My gf is an Unreal Engine/CG artist whereas I come from a more traditional art background and we laugh about this all the time, how I spend money reducing the various optical "flaws" in my photography equipment, spending way too much on gimbals and IBIS meanwhile she's spending time adding in vignetting, chromatic aberration, lens flares, and most powerfully the shitty camera shake. In the end, sending a message with art is fundamentally based on shared cultural associations and I personally believe the photography gear industry is profiting off of us nerds' drive to have a more mathematically perfect result. I started shooting 35mm film recently to try to break myself of this mentality 😅

[@alexatkin]

@@steve_dudu While I totally understand the art direction angle, there needs to be consideration for accessibility features. For some people, these effects can ruin the experience, give them headaches, etc. Like how I'm so thankful when games have the option to disable the "tinnitus effect" as someone with tinnitus, that sound is painful to hear and lingers for minutes or even hours afterwards. There is such a thing as too much realism making a game unplayable. Chromatic aberration I can tolerate in a game like this, but in many games it makes seeing what I'm doing in a game more tricky and as my reaction times aren't stellar, it can make me turn off a game if I feel it impacted my ability do react.

[@Saccade_HS]

@@ProjectFight Fair enough, much prefer a quality grain added to games. Hope to see that more in the future to soften an otherwise clinical presentation.

[@TEk0n]

Mid range cards *still* being released with 8 gigs of vram unacceptable

[@selohcin]

To be fair, the RTX 4060 and the RX 7600 are low-end cards, not mid-range cards. People don't think of them this way because of how they're priced, but they are indeed low-end by technical standards.

[@themightyant.]

@@selohcinprice is all important though. Look at the steam hardware chart at 18:00 or the full one on steam and well over 70% of users have 8gb OR LESS

[@jimjimmy3131]

@@selohcin are you serious ? so what is actually a low , mid and high end according to this logic you presented , because technical standards ( noone knows even to WHAT you are reffering to ) mean nothing on its own . A 4090 could be rendered garbage according to some '' technical stabdards'' .

[@Soul-Burn]

Funnily 3060 has 12 GiB while 3060 Ti has just 8.

[@Ciffer-1998]

@@jimjimmy3131 their die size/transistors, there is bunch of old hardware which was labbeled high end like gtx 1080 while it was just upper mid end

[@guybrushthreepwood8174]

The very first topic is how you solve shader compilation stutter. You've done your job Alex, and Ninja Theory.

[@ricepony33]

I want to see Terminator Resistance 2 in UE5.

[@robertlawrence9000]

The first game is so great! I would love another one!

[@Ciffer-1998]

try Robocop Rogue City it looks great untill you see characters faces

[@robertlawrence9000]

@@Ciffer-1998 That's a good game! Worth playing if you are a Robocop fan.

[@Taijifufu]

Love love love the millisecond timer for performance.

[@aggies11]

Yep, every game should have this, especially as a toggle-able overlay. I doubt we'll ever get it as big budget games always release in a time crunch and are too busy fixing more serious problems to focus on a small addition like this. Smaller indie devs might not have the engineering resources or experience to implement something like this. But my god imagine actually knowing what was going on in your game when you experience performance issues, so you could dial in the performance settings to guarantee a smooth enjoyable experience.

[@esaedvik]

@@aggies11 Why would a dev implement a frame time graph? Just use a third party tool. Let them make games.

[@aggies11]

@@esaedvik Great question, but remember it's not your simple afterburner frametime, it's actually the measure of how much cpu time and gpu time is being spent on each frame, which can give a better breakdown of what is happening with the performance. But the answer is for a variety of reasons. Right now only the engineers, and the more performance oriented ones will pay attention to these stats. But these aren't the people making the actual games. Rather than wait for your graphics engineers to attempt last mine optimization, if your artists and regular devs have access to this information they themselves can very easily and quickly see the impact of the design decisions they are making. After the first art pass on a level, if you see the CPU is being hammered then you don't have to be the most technical of artists to know you might want to try a few tricks to tighten up the optimization. No one wants to make a slideshow. And I'd assume most developers actively want players to enjoy their games, to experience the fruit of all that hard work and long hours that goes into such a technical art. So giving players the tools to be able to ensure they have a great experience seems like a wise use of resources. And in terms of engineering resources, it's not that huge of an undertaking and it's something that can be done early on in development that pays dividends all throughout. Even more so if you are using off the shelf engines.

[@Alexandra-Rex]

By far the best settings menu I've seen. Love that they show the render time as well.

[@esesel7831]

What is with all these dumb comments about hellblades gameplay here. This is a review of the technology of the game.

[@johnpliskin2102]

Because they are insecure fanboys.

[@hellorandomperson221]

Cause the game sucks and games like this are a perfect example of why this industry is dying, and Digital Foundry’s complicity in it. We cannot wait 5 to 6 years for a crappy walk forward ‘GameplayKits’ movie game with atrocious frame timing and performance, sorry.

[@johnpliskin2102]

@@hellorandomperson221 cry somewhere else kid.

[@originalityisdead.9513]

​@@hellorandomperson221 I agree. Gaming is undeniably getting worse.

[@Overonator]

I have a 3700x and I did not notice the shade pre-compilation. I thought there was no pre-compiliation but then when I played I was like "i see no shade compilation stutter so how the hell did the accomplish. that on an Unreal engine game? But they were tricky and they did during the initial screen and it was done fast enough so I didn't notice. Nice job, I am impressed.

[@Ciffer-1998]

perhaps you were just configuring settings for quite a bit

[@Overonator]

@@Ciffer-1998 You know what, now that you mention it I was configuring settings but I never saw the progress bar for Shafer compilation and I think I did get back to the main menu

[@Ciffer-1998]

@@Overonator same, i didnt notice it either so i had no clue that this game even had shader compiling untill i watched this video

[@extofer]

“Hardware ray tracing is the future in gaming.” DF has been trying to push this narrative for years now. And while there are standouts here and there, ray tracing is still one of the most expensive, arguably unneeded and overhyped technologies in gaming. Plenty of games have SSR that run brilliantly and look amazing. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and style should always come first rather than how we can make a game look more realistic.

[@hellorandomperson221]

Ye they are blatantly sponsored by Nvidia and keep pushing this ‘HW raytracing uber alles’ nonsense. In reality most games with these raytracing features barely look better than fully rasterized, and in the few instances they do it comes with a 50 to 80% performance cost and because the developer was lazy and didn’t try to make the rasterized codepath look almost as good. Not everyone has $2K to shell out for a 4090, sorry. In case Digital Foundry hasn’t noticed, the world economy has gone completely down the shitter and consumer spending is at an all time low as far as frivolities are concerned.

[@MrDs7777]

Found the AMD user

[@extofer]

@@MrDs7777 ironically I have an nvidia graphics card. I’m just not easily sold on expensive features like rt.

[@MrJekken]

SSR is good up until you move the camera too much and reflections that should still be present disappear or have occlusion artifacts

[@jesterpkl]

SSR can run brilliantly depending on how it's implemented, but still.. screen space.. it cant beat RT.. you are shit talking these tech but one day you will definitely be reaping the benefits that comes from the research into these type of tech

[@WASD-MVME]

On an open world game it's a completely different ball of wax than Hellblade

[@ShawtyWantAThug]

Agree we need less open world games

[@cube2fox]

I think there is currently no major UE5 open world game.

[@crestofhonor2349]

I can't think of any UE5 open world games off the top of my head

[@idakev]

​​@@ShawtyWantAThug We genuinely need less disappointing sequels like Hellblade 2

[@erikouwehand]

Was Nanite not created to solve that?

[@alexatkin]

The Talos Principle 2 devs said that hardware/software Lumen is not a simple toggle - the game has to specifically be developed for each mode. This is unfortunate if true. Also puzzled at the claim of "it doesn't hitch on console, so its fixable". Consoles can load assets into unified memory with zero CPU usage. DirectStorage on the PC still has huge overheads: "The IO requests are still submitted by the CPU. (Edit: It’s worth mentioning that these requests are much easier to handle than traditional IO requests because a lot of the work is done by NVMe hardware queues, which is why DirectStorage is so much faster on NVMe drives.) The compressed assets are loaded into system memory, just like before. The assets are decompressed by the CPU, just like before, and then copied over to VRAM, just like before."

[@cube2fox]

It is fixable one way or the other though, because there are engines which don't have any traversal stutter. Unreal Engine is just not one of them (except on console perhaps).

[@didioskywalker]

There is no conflict of interest in this sponsor! This is the way to do it! Congrats!

[@buckiesmalls]

How do you know they (MSI or any Corp.) didn't sponsor this/a video for a future favorable review of their product/s?

[@justacollegestudent5147]

@@buckiesmallsbecause digital foundry doesn’t do tech reviews? A gpu maker would be an example of a potential conflict of interest.

[@buckiesmalls]

@@justacollegestudent5147 I am just saying there are ways around your perceived, conflicts of interest, with any site with sponsors.

[@GaminylGames]

​@@justacollegestudent5147I know what you're saying but "digital foundry doesn't do tech reviews" is a weird line hahaha

[@buckiesmalls]

@@justacollegestudent5147 I am just saying there are ways around your perceived, conflicts of interest, with any site that has sponsors.

[@AndyGilleand]

Oh man I LOVE that CPU GPU ms display in the options. If you want to optimize your PC as best as possible, try to get both of these as close as they can get to each other, preferably just under what you would need to maintain your fps target. So for 60fps, try to target something like 15ms on both. If you still drop frames, try to target 14ms on both, etc. If one is considerably lower than the other, then you're not really making full use of that component.

[@JustinRaby]

To add onto the aspect ratio portion of the video. I must say, this game looks spectacular on my ultrawide QD-OLED monitor

[@AndyGilleand]

I think I have an idea to improve the precompiled shaders situation on PC: Every game should come with an executable file specifically designed to precompile shaders. That way, Steam could download that file first and run the precompile while the rest of the game is downloading.

[@marklarz4399]

Do not spend excessive time on photorealistic graphics and focus on gameplay

[@JonathanTacoman]

It's not an action game. It's more like Iimbo and little nightmares

[@sussy_61]

​@@JonathanTacomanthe cost to make is higher than the audience they got 😂😂😂, aint no way the game will get 3rd game

[@slothsarecool]

We have hundreds of thousands of other games for you, this is just not one for you, go play CoD, AC, GTA, whatever

[@seaofrage]

Exactly. Don't piss money away on a 'game' if you just wanna make a movie in the first place.

[@DrGamelove]

What? No. I can’t enjoy a game unless I can see the main character’s pores in ultra high definition… what is this “gameplay” you speak of?

[@Dezzyyx]

Optimised settings in description, FYI. Seems spot on as that's more or less what I ran with on 7800 XT / Ryzen 7700. Around 80 fps stable with 1440p Native / High. I started with like 40-50 fps and was so disappointed, even if I'm used to 30 on PS5 and can live with it. Turns out only a few settings need to be lowered for great fps gain. Some of those shadows/reflections/global illumi are very hungry, even going from high to medium on those frees up like 10 fps, but going to low is not a big change. This is my first PC since 2013 and haven't been gaming PC since even longer, so I really appreciated my first game being this so I could do a test drive, and the menus and performance thingy really helped to tweak stuff on my own. I wasn't sure if that was the standard in games now or just a HB2 thing, either way very useful.

[@katbmwh1101]

I just finished Hellblade 2 and this is great game, played on Xbox Series X and looks and plays great.

[@praisetheoak]

"What can game developers learn from Hellblade 2?": Forget about UE5 fixing all your problems. Avoid excessive focus on fidelity and technology to prevent creating an overpriced, glorified walking simulator that's only four hours long, fails to iterate from your previous titles, offers no replayability, and takes nearly a decade to develop. Instead, prioritize creating fun, engaging gameplay and content that players will want to enjoy, revisit, and experience. Respect your customers, heed your fanbase, never assume success is guaranteed, and most importantly, respect yourself as a creator and consistently honor your creative vision.

[@TheRealMrGreen]

Rarely look at the DF comments section. I'm kind of appalled by the stupidity. I expected insightful and tech savvy people. I found dim witted fanboys.

[@Dezzyyx]

They say never meet your heroes. KZbin version.

[@MrDs7777]

Welcome to KZbin

[@Hulksterx]

But, but... dont you want to cash in your free likes by ignorantly stating how a game you've never played is showhow bad.

[@Swisshost]

You will find tech people when they review games and not movies

[@ZootNaps]

The DF lads could charge companies thousands of dollars for this insight, yet here it is to (hopefully) make games better for all of us. Keep up the great work guys

[@OniMirage]

Their assumptions of why didn't they do this or that lack insight into the constraints the developers have to work with. Every single developer wants 100% top tier performance but chastising them for not doing something they "expect" only shows they aren't worth more than a free youtube video.

[@YoKhoe]

In not so distant future, we'll be deciding if a PC game is worth our time based on their UI presentation

[@p0k314COM]

I do it since years. This is obvious.

[@mattwill63]

this game sucks so does ue5 graphics suck

[@jesse76th96]

Bad ui can ruin a game easily

[@danielgrezda3339]

Rpgs can be ruined by bad, confusing or slow menues, so I do take ui unto consideration before buying an rpg.

[@YoKhoe]

I'm all for 1 singularity in how menus are presented for UE5 games. Like if Epic were to be the one that design the ability through API for live updates on graphical toggles so that game devs themselves don't have to create something custom on their front

[@realizewave1513]

Traversal stutter doesn't happen on series x😊 most likely because of velocity architecture

[@Natrez1m]

I hope one day we will remember all these reconstruction technics and poor optimization as dark ages of games industry and will no longer have to deal with this

[@Blaeeeek]

Another thing I have yet to see you guys mention since your first video on it, is Unreal 5.4 and the massive performance gains it brings. I feel this could be factored in when talking about future releases and predicting their performance, particularly on consoles.

[@liaminwales]

8GB VRAM is just to small today.

[@themightyant.]

Not at the prices 12gb and 16+gb cards go for. If the industry wants to leave 8gb behind they have to make the hardware more affordable to the masses. Only enthusiasts like us will spend more on a GPU. Steam Harware survey shows us over 70% of gamers have 8gb or less

[@liaminwales]

@@themightyant. The 3060 had 12GB, the RX 6700 had 12GB, they are not 'top end' GPUs'. Past that it's good to know what games wont work on my hardware, what settings are needed to run on my hardware.

[@CobraF1]

I had to pause this video at the 3:00 min mark to write this comment... WOW! Finally a studio that did a PROPER optimization with a GOOD shader compilation process un an Unreal Engine title. Bravo to Ninja Theory! I can't stand shader compilation stutter... I just hope other devs take this as an example to do a professional job with their games like Ninja Theory did here. I can't wait to try Hellblade 2.

[@prodj.mixapeofficial6431]

be glad that ninja theory presented the visual benchmark of the upcoming level based games. Imagine alien isolation like games. Now this is next gen.

[@heavyartillery-qm5hu]

This is a tech demo

[@edwardevans1498]

@@heavyartillery-qm5hu this is a movie

[@noahflare6825]

Alien Isolation with graphics like this would burst my chest

[@valentinvas6454]

They also showed us that it doesn't make any sense to make near real life looking games if they take this long to develop even though mechanics are almost non-existent, it's ultra linear and barely 6 hours long. Also weird how over half of the graphics settings barely change anything both visually and performance wise. The Plague Tale Requiem may only look about 80% this good but that game was made in just 3 years and yet it's like 3 times longer with much more mechanics and even though it's a bit bigger team Asobo used their own engine.

[@prodj.mixapeofficial6431]

@@valentinvas6454 if someone made rts games and you don't like it because it's not ur cup of tea, does it mean it's bad? Nope, they delivered what they want to deliver. Nobody gets hurt.

[@epiccontrolzx2291]

Timestamps: 0:01 Intro 1:30 Pre-launch accessibility and options settings 1:44 Pre-compile all your shaders 3:30 Graphical options and menu style 4:18 Performance metrics (with cost in milliseconds shown, detailing whether you're CPU or GPU limited) 6:16 Proper V-sync options and Dynamic Res Scaling 7:07 All Image Upscaling techniques Room for improvements: 7:43 Menu restricts upscaling options unnecessarily 9:05 No hardware ray-traced lumen options 10:32 Lack of post-processing and FOV accessibility options 12:58 Unreal Engine Traversal Stutter 14:31 Memory issues for GPUs with less than 12GB of VRAM (and lack of warning to users with 8GB GPUs)

[@sometimeclown5281]

What I'm hearing is UE5 isn't ready quite yet, but studios are using it anyway........

[@weirdscix]

Incorrect. UE5 is not a new engine, current version being 5.4.2, it's a couple of years old now, the problem is devs playing catch up

[@sometimeclown5281]

@@weirdscix"Inncorrect" is an opinion at this point.. UE5 isn't new, but it's ALSO not finished.. Do Devs not have access to the current build of UE5? Are they lazy? Are they uneducated as to what the engine is capable of??

[@sometimeclown5281]

@@weirdscix All I'm saying is MOST of these devs have been making games for close to a decade or more....... and these games that are releasing now are running TERRIBLY regardless of hardware in a LOT of cases...... where is the weakness? why are games ending up worse then they did 10 years ago..?

[@sometimeclown5281]

One possible answer is D.E.I. and Wokeism, and just sheer ignorance.... It has infected EVERYTHING, and WILL be the downfall of humanity if it continues unchecked.

[@weirdscix]

@@sometimeclown5281 I think there are a lot of factors, new console generations, new engines and technologies, more pressure from publishers.

[@BOKtober]

Can’t wait to see what the coalition do with E-Day, that trailer probably won’t be too far off how the game actually will end up looking

[@siwa9878]

Thank you for this very interesting insight. I still can not get over the visual beauty of this game. The last time that I was that impressed by a game's visual presentation was DICE's Star Wars Battlefront 2015. One question: What exactly happens, when a game is compiling shaders while launching or loading? The only time, I stumbled upon this term was The Last of Us Part 1's version on PC from 2023, when it was not that well optimized and the "compiling shaders" was visible while browsing the main menu.

[@RogstaGamez]

After i finished it at around 100fps i replayed the first hour with capped 24fps like movies, it was a crazy (not bad) experience, it has seriously something special. 😄

[@cromefire_]

At least with games you can choose. For all of us with a better trained eye for motion fluidity that would have been awful if that had been set to a fixed value as well. As much as I hate it for movies and shows I already have to enable frame smoothing on the TV on low at least. Otherwise panning shots start to separate into frames and are too disconnected to be interpolated to something in motion by my brain.

[@alexanderulv3886]

I absolutely loved the art direction and graphic facility of this game. It’s just breathtaking in every sense of the word. Also the story is very good if your into Viking folklore and horror

[@user-yv5vv9go6o]

It's interesting that the u5 was premiered right with this console generation but turns out that those same consoles are barely capable of running it. i tought that the u5 would be for this generation like the previous versions were on past generations.

[@Deliveredmean42]

Well, it can. But like any Unreal Engine games since UE3 it needs to mature and have proper optimizations. UE 5.4 was the closest to fix the shader issues and improve performance further, and it took them 4 years to get there...

[@jesse76th96]

This gen is almost over so ps6 hopefully should be capable

[@tlevs7621]

It was the same with UE4, most games were on UE3 before 4 actually caught up during the Xbox one/ps4 gen. took a few years to become the norm since the engines have issues at launch

[@wanshurst2416]

when i saw the techdemo on the ps5 running at 1440p/30 fps with ABSOLUTLEY nothing going on in the demo i had a feeling where this will be going ^^

[@Olie986]

​@@jesse76th96"Almost over" is a bit of a stretch.

[@nimbulan2020]

Those 8 GB frametime spikes remind me of issues I've seen in UE4, where the engine just seems to panic if there's less than 1 GB of free VRAM and starts aggressively moving data around to free memory. It will never come close to actually using all available VRAM so it makes these 8 GB GPUs more like 6.5 GB GPUs (setting aside some memory for other applications too.)

[@amermajeed8782]

very good video! I played it on Legion slim 5 laptop "RTX 4060", "Ryzen 7", 32gb and encountered the sudden frames drop, then had to go into main menu or restart the game. It might be the shader compiling, implemented not in an optimal way.

[@cube2fox]

As Alex said in the video: It's an 8 GB VRAM card, so set texture quality to low.

[@DEMediaDrive]

I played it on a RTX 4050 with Intel on Acer Nitro 5 and it did require a few restarts. Imagine only 6B of VRAM but it still looked amazing vs Series S. Played on the LG OLED.

[@xlr555usa]

Thanks for the video, I'm working with UE 5 and you bring up many things that should be kept in mind. Rock on

[@TayRich93]

Finally a next gen looking game there hasnt been many devs teyna aim for that

[@danielposey0620]

I remember you saying on an episode of DF Direct Weekly that Hell blade 2 uses a lot of “smoke & mirrors” to achieve its look. Could you elaborate?

[@Gunsmoke2220]

They meant the game was doing a lot of reconstruction and was not native

[@deathtrooper2048]

Most likely the fake resolution, black bars, and soft look to achieve the look of the game.

[@cromefire_]

The postprocessing certainly helps to detract from the certain things that don't look completely photorealistic yet.

[@Marcusrafaelfet]

Well, every game does use a lot of 'smoke and mirrors', that's called optimization. If anything, Ninja Theory did an excellent job at using everything they had in favor to the visuals of their game as any frame you capture will look outsanding. Not to mention you can pause at any cinematic and enter photo mode and everything is realtime, really impressive.

[@cbabrunal]

Tbh it all just looks jsut as good low or high

[@BenyaminLorit]

I'm completely fine with the post-processing effects outside of motion blur having no option to be disabled in this game because a lot of people on PC over the years have been conditioned to just mindessly turn all that off before starting a game. In a game like this where those effects are used with intent and are vital to its art direction, keeping that artistic intent is so much more valuable than having the choice. The same goes for the letterboxing as it just feels so unnatural and the perspective looks kind of "off" without it which makes sense since the game was designed to simulate an anamorphic cinema lens presentation and having no bars just makes it look like it was shot with the wrong lens.

[@kveller555]

I heavily disagree. If the devs have a very specific vision in mind, that's all well and good, but like DF mentioned, that could be easily solved by having a clear warning when changing the relevant settings. I strongly believe paying customers should have the final say in how a game looks, especially if including the options to do so is trivial on the developer's end, and if that causes stupid people to ruin their own experience, then so be it.

[@zndxt1970]

I had zero stutters all throughout my playthrough running the game higher than 60 fps fixes all that for real

[@vanvelt]

The way Insee it 🙃 the traversal stutter problem, when entering a new area is a the core a problem of the Level streaming. I would assume world partition is used here. Developers do not have to much opportunity to improve this other than writing their own system. If epic didn’t figure out how to solve this, a normal studio won’t either (imho). As a other commenter pointed out if ms direct storage would be thing, this maybe would be solved. This is why we do not see this problem on ps5 or Xbox.

[@joebob2699]

We've learned that this level of fidelity is unfeasible for handcrafted content unless you want a super restrictive, short and linear game

[@gumballegal]

BONELAB's Menus graphics settings preview is one step ahead, you can look around while changing settings in real time

[@KingSigy]

Does aspect ratio really cause motion sickness? I'm wondering, now, if people watching 2:35.1 films get sick in the theater or not.

[@cheese_crab]

aren't there a lot of people who can watch movies but get motion sick from games already? Something different about the camera motion. Like I have a friend who's fine with movies but starts to get sick with 3rd person games and 1st person is a complete no

[@cube2fox]

No but narrow FOV can cause motion sickness.

[@Scorpwind]

It really depends on the individual. I dislike the black bars not because I get motion sickness from them, but because I dislike the effect. I do however, get some discomfort from the extremely aggressive DOF.

[@vrapbrap]

Makes me feel a bit weird. Like it does something to my brain and I just hate looking at it and tend to steer clear.

[@Scorpwind]

@@Yihifi You can find workarounds online. UE games are quite configurable via the config. If the devs don't block config edits, that is.

[@paulbrooks4395]

Camera shaking, and the corresponding use of "cinematic camera sway" *needs to be an accessibility option*. God of War had that problem combined with static FoV which made people nauseous (myself included) and ruined the game because the settings couldn't be changed. Conversely, in Cyberpunk, all sway can be removed and it feels perfect.

[@debeejones7287]

Can people talk about the video instead of incessantly whinning? You don't the game we get it.

[@JUANMAS7ER]

You are whinning too

[@debeejones7287]

@@JUANMAS7ER No, I'm highlighting that a comment section of a video that isn't necessarily focused on the gameplay of the game has become pseudo review section for that game.

[@JUANMAS7ER]

@@debeejones7287 And how's that an issue? is still relevant, and it beats people commenting about what others should do. Let people comment what they want, i can only laugh how you consider for this game to have gameplay.

[@TheFirstRealChewy]

​@@JUANMAS7ER It's understood that some people don't like the gameplay of Hellblade 2. This video isn't about the gameplay. It's about the technical features of UE5 games and how they can be applied to other UE5 games. Hellblade 2 is a game that shows some of these features in use. When Stalker 2 and other UE5 games are released later this year, there will likely be more analysis on the UE5 features.

[@TheBean87]

@@JUANMAS7ER no there wasn’t an ounce of whining in their comment.

[@senorsnipey1595]

All I can say is with all the hype of this game and the industry seemingly being ok with this type of game these days, I really hope Sony revisit The Order as a franchise. The second could be so amazing. I mean the first is dreadfully underrated! One of my favorite 3rd person shooters. Up there with Gears of War 1,2 and 3

[@nasis.]

They can learn to do what Nintendo has been doing since 2006: Spend less of your budget on graphics and effects and more on making a actual game, its good for your business...

[@15awesomehighfive]

Absolutely. Gameplay, game-feel, interactivity... it all should come first over graphics.

[@TheIDK91]

No.

[@nicholasellis7494]

Are you 5years old?,anyone talks about Nintendo is an absolute Man child,who has not grown up yet,and I say this without an apology,I loved Nintendo as a youth,now I'm grown ,...wth🤨 grow up man,because I'm sure this is not coming from a Nintendo fanboy ,but a Playstation one that have an issue with anything that's not on their plastic box,why I didn't hear this about that dog pooo deathstranding?

[@sneikiusas]

Amen...I actually I prefer graphics like Mario Oddysey, Zelda, Ratchet and Clank etc. I like to be suprised by art and not an imination of realisim which barely runs at 30fps and actually all you do is just run around...

[@sven957]

@@nicholasellis7494 hard to believe this comment is real lmfao

[@Marcusrafaelfet]

I was able to finish the game in my GTX 1060 and no SSD decently at 1080p and 30-40FPS thanks to a DLSS mod and even had some settings on medium. Not the optimal experience for sure, but I was amazed that I was even able to play it with no issues, no crashes or anything. It's certainly very well optmized and this is probably being picky on things no casual player would really notice.

[@3KPK3]

Sync cinematics and gameplay in an indistinguishable manner.

[@Dezzyyx]

this game does that

[@rakhoo5236]

Precompile shaders you people, it really makes the game much better.

[@kartikkaushik9811]

Please please make optimised settings for this!

[@GameTechLead]

If we want to move forward please stop defending NVidia putting 8 GB of VRAM into their GPUs.

[@MaxPowerThe]

Absolutely right

[@ManuelOrbeaOtaola]

Probably Hellblade 2 game is the most polish game release in years.

[@lacasadelvideojuego3880]

if you could called a game..

[@AccelSternritter]

It's a movie

[@neilcognito]

That's another thing. I've yet to hear anyone say they experienced a bug in this game.

[@Rayzeo]

​@@lacasadelvideojuego3880 cry louder 😂😂😂

[@LappyAwoo]

Turns out when there's almost no game in your game it's way easier to polish it

[@PlayJasch]

DRS + DLSS should be standard.

[@ddthegreat]

09:20 Glad to hear that John is still your friend :D

[@paulerxx]

They should use this game as the base framework for all future UE5 games.

[@joker927]

Chromatic aberration needs to go away entirely. I can't stand that developers keep adding it to games and even worse, not letting you disable it.

[@khs511]

I am not a CA fan either but to be honest it's actually not as bad here. They managed to keep the IQ pretty high and surprisingly somehow they still maintain the sharpness of the image. Nothing like the first hellblade CA which was so intrusive.

[@MichaelBelue]

Couldn't agree more. It seems developers think gamers want to experience a game as of it were a movie. As opposed to wanting to experience a game as if they WERE the protagonist. For me I want the game to feel more immersive and interactive and not have the passive viewing experience afforded by lens simulation effects.

[@MicrobiusBlue]

They have included it deliberately as many schizophrenics suffer very similar visual distortions so is quite an important part of portraying her experience

[@zZiL341yRj736]

I hate that God damn shit, it blurs the outside areas, and add those idiotic old 3D effects with red and blue outlines..

[@qSPARTANp]

Yup, cannot stand it!

[@coreydavis6868]

do you think the lack of traversal stutter may be a result of xbox's "direct storage" that they they talked about and almost no game seemed to use

[@jotinhafilho5920]

They can learn on how NOT create a compelling game. How NOT design game mechanics, gameplay, puzzles, storytelling. And that graphics are NOT as important as the above.

[@Darkdiver28]

salty much?

[@danielgrezda3339]

Not every game need to be a gameplay focused experience. We can have some variety once in a while.

[@saaaaaaaaadasda]

@@Darkdiver28 Malty such?

[@jotinhafilho5920]

@@danielgrezda3339 I didnt said anything about the game focus, just about its bad execution.

[@danielgrezda3339]

@@jotinhafilho5920 Tell me how it was badly executed. The puzzles, maybe, but if your going to say "it's gameplay is boring" the gameplay is simple on purpose so you can pay attention to the storytelling. Also, how are you getting two likes under a comment with only seven likes and two people who have replied? Are you botting the likes?

[@Miki19910723]

Dynamic resolution is sort of supported but you also have issues with vendor expectations, AMD FSR technicly supports only fixed large step upscaling defiting dynamic resolution a bit

[@pradeenkrishnag2368]

Hellblade looks good because it doesn't have many objects to render in the environment. Most of the scenes are almost empty. You currently can't achieve this with other games where there are lots of AI NPCs and objects to simulate. The closest are The Last of Us Part 2 or perhaps Red Dead Redemption 2. Of course, in the coming years, graphics in bigger games will slowly improve, if not entirely match the level of realism in Hellblade 2 due to aforesaid reasons, but it will get there in the future.

[@khs511]

That is not true at all. The second half of the game has very dense locations. Way more Dense then let's say Death Stranding. Sure it is not open world with that density but you would've known this if you actually played it.

[@Marcusrafaelfet]

Sounds like you haven't played the game or didn't pay attention. Not only it does have many objects to render but everything have very dense geometry, like when you get upclose to a rock you can see very thin details on the geometry itself, or even very small pebbles on the ground are rendered with actual geometry instead of flat textures with a normal map as games usually does for small ground details. And that applies to most objects.

[@FazeredTube]

It doesn’t feel like Ninja Theory is getting enough recognition for their efforts, especially for such a small team. (Not a swipe at this video.)

[@denisruskin348]

They can learn that gameplay is always more important than graphics.

[@TheRealMrGreen]

Gameplay ===========||== Graphics That's not how game design works.

[@hihihi1q23]

People say things like this, but it's not true. Imagine if the next God of War game came out and looked exactly like God of War 2018 and used the same assets. People would have a meltdown.

[@denisruskin348]

@@hihihi1q23 you obviously keep with the times. They ask for 70$, of course we want better graphics. Problem is when all you do in HB2 is walk for 15 minutes, then a basic “press this button” combat comes in. Repeat. Repeat. Small IQ50 puzzle. Repeat. That is terrible game design and no RT or photo realism fidelity can save it.

[@manthan_kaushal]

$50 for a 6-hour game with no replay value is a scam.

[@eggsforpedro]

You have an opinion. Learn to formulate it as an opinion.

[@andrigunawan5691]

14:00 are traversal stutters on PC versions of certain games stemming from discrepancy between PCs and PS5/Xbox Series X/S is that consoles have unified memory and PCs don't, or is it?

[@poethefallen1333]

While some contemplate how realistic a wet rock looks, I'm going through Elden Ring NG+ for the 4th time getting ready for the most anticipated Dlc of all time.

[@obiwanmedeiros4501]

Forward looking features on PC should only be made if you have the time and budget for it (which is rarely the case), your priority should always be making games for the players of today, not of tomorrow.

[@G360LIVE]

If you're just starting development on your game today, then you are making it for players of tomorrow, because it'll take you years to finish it.

[@TheBean87]

And the players who like these types of games were very happy.

[@obiwanmedeiros4501]

@@G360LIVE Final Fantasy VII Remake was release in 2020 using Unreal 4.18. You leverage current tech as much as possible offering scalability. If you keep adapting your tech to whatever some dude on KZbin says you need to every few years, you're never finishing your game. Artists make games look good, tech is just a tool, technology and fancy names should never come before artistry.

[@idakev]

​@@TheBean87 Are you sure about that? People seemed to strongly prefer Indika. Hellblade 2 dumbed down the puzzles way too much. Feels like they did that to appeal to a slightly broader audience that doesn't even exist. People who play these games generally like puzzles. Should have focused on making Hellblade 1 fans happy.

[@extofer]

I agree. There’s too much emphasis on “realism” and lighting. But is the game fun? Is worthwhile?

[@1984rockabilly]

Hellblade 2 is the most photorealistic game I've ever played. It looks like how I imagined games of the future a couple of years ago.

[@BlashyrkhRavendark-cl5xz]

Im pretty sure, quarter of 120 is not 20 (:

[@MicrobiusBlue]

Chromatic Aberation is deliberately included by Ninja Theory and is quite important to authenticity because many schizophrenic's suffer/experience similar visual distortions

[@lastmanstanding80]

Oh look, I found the "it's a feature" guy. Why do you ppl defend slop?

[@MicrobiusBlue]

​@@lastmanstanding80you clearly don't understand the condition

[@proteus5100]

​@@MicrobiusBlue or he's just a wounded Sony fanboy

[@MicrobiusBlue]

​​​@@proteus5100 Actually re-reading his little outburst I think you hit the nail on the head

[@jm8080ful]

Press the thumbstick forward to make the game play itself

[@DitHail2]

11:58 The Witcher 3 with the next gen patch, which now provides real-time cutscenes, already has that option to force the aspect ratio of them. Not only that, comes with a labeled warning about the artifacts and "unwanted behaviors" behind the cutscenes due to be originally created (and rendered like fmvs) for 16:9 displays in the past.

[@RJH755]

That we've reached a point of diminishing returns for video game graphics

[@pondwhale]

we reached the point of diminishing returns in the 360/PS3 era. games still look significantly better than they did 15 years ago

[@ThatOneGuy509]

Im so glad i only play on ps5 and series x.

[@WHATISUTUBE]

I just finished playing the first game. Its more of a movie than a game. This is not a good thing. That said, the criticism that the 2nd game needs "more gameplay" is odd given that the first game was the same. What did people expect

[@lulkLogan]

I think the first game had some interesting puzzles and also more dynamic combat. Especially on hard difficulty. I was hoping that was just budget issue, and they would build on those foundations

[@larrytaylor2692]

There is some sort of memory leak caused by the menu settings though. My frame rate was hit hard but I restarted the game and then it was fine so you can’t change settings and just test you so have to restart the game each time.

[@tigerex777]

Microsoft: "So guys, are you ready to release our game Hellblade 2?" Ninja Theory: "Game?? what do you mean game? I thought we were making a movie?" Microsoft: ".... I hope you have plans for retirement"

[@kevinmoran4133]

Huh? It was an amazing game

[@rinkumultani6515]

@@kevinmoran4133 in your dreams

[@WayStedYou]

@@kevinmoran4133 ​ That has less players than redfall did by 1/10th before the studio got closed, and has 1/10th of the players currently of Red alert 2 right now on steam.

[@TheBean87]

@@kevinmoran4133it really was, immersed you from start to finish.

[@kevinmoran4133]

@@WayStedYou you have to be joking, anyone who played it on pc did it through pc gamepass. By using steam charts it proves how incompetant u are at an actual conversation

[@proteus5100]

Loved this game even more than the first...a lot of Sony Fanboy hate in the comments i see

[@gfhfhgfhfgh1562]

Hope they learn that videogames should be games and not walking simulators with no gameplay

[@DaKrawnik]

This

[@Deliveredmean42]

Tho why cant they? If every game is tailor for everyone than I guess there is always a niche game that people enjoy like movie or walking games. Heck there are literal walkings simulators that fits the term walking simulator monikor.

[@leodaweeb6969]

I hope devs follow the vision they have for their game and not listen to people like you just because you want games that align more with mainstream expectations.

[@ryanj610]

Whew, great work on this.

[@nicholasellis7494]

This game is far better than deathstranding

[@spectersmusic]

I absolutely hate games that just have the symbols to adjust brightness especially since with OLED it almost always can be turned down to the lowest setting and I can still see the symbol but in game that rarely translates correctly. Hellblade was better but then it was only good for the scene I was in. Since in the cave it needs to be turned up a couple notches and on the outdoors needed to be turned down. Give me a couple scenes in game so I can see what will be the darkest dark and the lightest whites.

[@zeus1117]

That's why I gave up on PC gaming. I have a mid-high PC and a Series X. On the PC, sure, many games run at 165Hz with Gsync, nice experience, but the latest AAA games honestly I prefer on the Series X cause I literally want to focus only on the experience, story, ....and not once want to have the need to go into the options menu !! I don't have time for such things! I just want a smooth experience overall.

[@Swisshost]

If you don't have time for 5min in the settings, pretty bad work life balance.

[@RictorScale]

Yea these complaints will lead us down the path for no settings at all no thanks, we don't want pc to be console which you seem to

[@gosudrm]

We learn that gameplay is more important than graphics

[@electronicmoshpit]

i find it amazing that the first hellblade is a ps3 game and still looks better than most ps5 games

[@chrisclarke4295]

Yes they are some of the best graphics so far and probably the best this year But it's all helped by the design choice of having practically no interactivity or physics simulation in the world It's incomparable to the games which do have elements of world simulation in them and have to take a graphical hit as a result This is almost like a tech demo for unreal, an update on 2020's ue5 reveal

[@Gabex42]

i swear they reused some landscape assets from that demo

[@extofer]

100% agreed. The limitations in this game made it possible for the game to look as good as it does. It’s a pipe dream right now to think any other fully fleshed out game (especially open world) could achieve the graphical achievements of this glorified tech demo.

[@Gabex42]

@@extofer Not even that, any game with any npc's with ai, variable environments or props that interact with physics can't achieve this level of detail yet. Hellblade is mostly scripted and staged like a cgi movie

[@SagaciousEagle]

I'm playing The Finals, which is based on Unreal Engine 5. I don't understand why after getting the Season 3 update the game crashes very frequently prompting errors that the PC is out of video memory. I'm running on RTX 2060 6GB, Ryzen 5500. I had no issues like this in previous seasons with the same graphical settings.

[@TheGrizz485]

It's a shame we have to wait probably 18 months for a better-looking game. I did two playthroughs of this game on my 6700XT and was super impressed with the image feudality to performance ratio Im getting ( 50-70 FPS at full 16:9 4K with FSR 3 balanced settings on mid/high settings). The graphics on my S90C OLED are amazing and have actually spoiled other (probably better) games for me. I'm finding it hard to enjoy Ghost of Tsushima and Forbidden West as much because of it.

[@dav2-094]

Marvel 1943 releases next year and l'd say it looks better. The question is if it's another corridor game or if this one will actually have meaningful gameplay

[@Ali-dp6xv]

Yeah. no need to wait till the end of the year to know that this is GOTY graphically.

[@TheGrizz485]

Its a shame MS didnt show in game footage of Gears of War.

[@RobbieKhan]

Remember, Still Wakes the Deep comes out on Monday, that game is on level with Hellblade 2 and in some ways even better but they are set in different locations so aren't directly comparable, although from an engine POV, both use UE5 (5.3.2 for SWtD) and I feel shadows are done to a higher fidelity in the latter too. Both games are superbly well optimised which is great to see.

[@leodaweeb6969]

Just played today and dissapointed to say that there's no hardware Lumen here as well. Relies heavily on screen-space reflections.

[@RobbieKhan]

@@leodaweeb6969 No current UE5 game out seems to use pure HW Lumen, it's all hybrid currently. This game will however support Ray Reconstruction via an update from what the developer has told me along with some other feature as of yet unconfirmed. not sure when that update will be but hopefully soon as I want to do a 3rd play lol. Edit* Whoops sorry I thought this was my comment on the Still Wakes the Deeop video not Hellblade 2. Ray reconstruction is going to be in the latter not Hellblade 2!

[@leodaweeb6969]

@@RobbieKhan Hmm I see, good to hear about Ray Reconstruction. Great looking game nonetheless!

[@RobbieKhan]

@@leodaweeb6969 Whoops sorry I thought this was my comment on the Still Wakes the Deep video not Hellblade 2. Ray reconstruction is going to be in the latter not Hellblade 2!

[@leodaweeb6969]

@@RobbieKhan Yeah I understood you haha.

[@TechnicalGamingChannel]

Lumen is genuinely one of the most oversold and undercooked features in UE5. It's a fantastic tool to have access to, but achieving something that actually looks good with it, without tanking performance requires a really high degree of expertise. It's not as simple as enabling or disabling it in the UE Editor. If you just turn it on in either software or hardware mode, you get all sorts of artifacts. So when devs only offer a specific version of Lumen, it's likely because that's the only version they could make functional.

[@cube2fox]

Was there any UE5 game which had Lumen artifacts? I thought this wasn't a problem.

[@khs511]

​​​@@cube2foxI don't know if there are lumen artifacts but there are visible artifacts in Immortals of Aveum. Actually a lot of artifacting.

[@TechnicalGamingChannel]

@@cube2fox A recent example would be bodycam.

[@cube2fox]

@@TechnicalGamingChannel That seems to be a copy of Unheard, which uses heavy post processing to simulate the low quality look of a body camera. I don't think it has anything to do with Lumen (ray traced diffuse global illumination with radiance caching).

[@TechnicalGamingChannel]

@@cube2fox having played and studied bodycam, plus having worked in the unreal editor on various projects, no, it’s not an intentional filter effect to have the lighting disappear because of broken culling or have it be temporally unstable

[@advancedlamb]

everything is an accessibility option now. is that what we call preferences, we liken them to disabilities? how is motion blur an accessibility option? colorblind mode, yes, that's an accessibility option, but how is motion blur? how does turning it off help accessibility? does turning down foliage also help accessibility?

[@alexanderulv3886]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 will also be in Unreal Engine 5, for a longer experience with more gameplay. Can’t wait!

[@the7observer]

Engines need good devs and good leadership not rushing the game, otherwise you end up like the optimization issues of wuthering waves

[@jongamez5163]

What did we learn: If you want a visual treat go for UE5, but if you care about great performance and smooth gameplay forget about UE5 !