KCD pushing the envelope

I recently watched a youtube video about read dead redemption 2, open world immersion and realism and found quite a few aspects that were familiar.
I then found an IGN first look review from may.

  • World goes on with or without you.
  • NPCs going about their daily schedule, prepare food, eat, chop wood, sleep, do chores.
    (This is a working camp, so everything has to… well, work. Clothes have to be cleaned, wood is needed for the fire, water must to be collected from the river, and so on.)
  • Dead animals decay over time - the carcass of a deer left in the scorching midday sun will soon turn
  • The same applies if you’re looking to sell the animal to a nearby butcher – the better the condition of the meat, the greater your reward.
  • Birds scatter as you gallop past, deer prance across the rolling hillsides and the hum of fireflies provides the backdrop to some of the quieter moments in the demo.
  • A farmer didn’t take too kindly to Arthur riding close to his land, telling him to move on in no uncertain terms.
  • Arthur rides up to his tent, hops off his horse and rummages through his belongings …But while the fishermen is oblivious to Arthur, his dog isn’t, and the constant barking is enough for him to wade out of the river to investigate.
    (he could flee to the nearest town to tell the sheriff who robbed him)
  • Random encounters on road with different options.
  • Outfit getting dirty over time

Hmm pretty sure Rockstar being doing this sorta stuff for awhile.

Reason its the years most anticipated game (IGNs words).

I havent seen any footage.(I am majorly bandwidth starved, I update KCD via a local cafes’ free wifi/or if I cant be bothered to do the laptop file shuffle and have steam do its typical lack of respect of users bandwidth, trying to authenticate the moved files, sometimes a mates house has my PC visit more often than I do…)

Game world complexity majorly affects how much power is left over for AI and physics etc…

Just look at mass effect 2 and dragon age releases using the same engine by a studio who is maximising their output.
60 fps ultra from a laptop was doable for ME2, whereas Dragon Age and ‘organic environments’ ran often times 25% or greater LESS framerate.

Space as a backdrop and neat rectangles is easier than vegetation.

Cryengine excels at nature.
I believe that is why the engine was chosen for KCD.

When Crysis launched I knew it was just a matter of time until someone made an RPG, ideally medieval, that used it.
It was an entire island, filled with vegetation and the map was designed to be 2GB in size… which suited the 32bit OS/machines at the time.

Crysis was never going to happen on the consoles, so for Crysis 2 they massively shrank the environ and made it up with buildings. (Consoles could then run a Crysis game)

Not saying RDR2 will be poor graphically.
I do believe Rockstar will max out any given scene and the suspension of disbelief that everything is as detailed as our screens show at any given moment, will be well done.

They have also been doing the worlds largest streaming texture games and have the most budget/resources and talent available.

Any of the aforementioned reasons is going to have them look better than KCD.
But in their infinite trickery, I dont imagine any fences or logpiles will be as complex as KCD aims for.

They want framerate. KCD wants photorealism.

KCDs lighting model, on ultra, is the stuff that benchmarks are made of, and generally impractical to put into a game.

In a desert I dont imagine any realtime effects like that will be needed.
Rockstar will prebake/render where they can and use every trick their talent can produce.

The two are hardly comparable.

Not being a fanboy. RDR2 should be impressive.
Just cause it is open world doesnt make it the same game.

Vegetation kills systems dead. Organic is very hard to simulate.

Design wise, RDR2, no doubt a project collecting ideas for awhile- will be a showcase. No ones going to argue that.