Sony Ghost of Tsushima OT - Mud, Blood, and Steel, update: Rivals mode added to Legends

[Greatoneshere]

There's no question I'm playing this in color, and in English (unless they somehow fix the lip flaps, since I originally wanted to play this in Japanese).

[maddux4163]

34 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

There's no question I'm playing this in color, and in English (unless they somehow fix the lip flaps, since I originally wanted to play this in Japanese).

Same. As for the voice. I like to be able to understand what they say without subtitles. Video game character lip syncing has 99.9% always been junk. Doesn’t bother me 

[Keyser_Soze]

 

 

[Bloodporne]

12 hours ago, SimpleG said:

The Sword Of Doom is a bloody masterpiece, criterion version is pretty much a 10/10. 

Sword Of Doom was my favorite samurai flick for a long time after I saw it in my teens. That ending freeze frame always stuck with me.

 

Regarding this game's B&W mode, I don't really get it considering the use of color is the one thing that hugely stands out to me and visually sets this game apart. It seems like an interesting gimmick and homage to classic Samurai cinema on paper but I couldn't see myself playing an entire game like that honestly.

[Pikachu]

 

[Greatoneshere]

19 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Hmmm... my preload started a couple of days ago. Do you have enough space on your hard drive? You know with the PS4 you need twice the amount of space to download a game.

 

I ultimately figured it out - needed to go to "purchased" instead of "games" under library.  

[Firewithin]

only a few more hours.  will probably play an hour or so when it unlock and then just dive in tomorrow night

[eventide11]

Want to play but have had a hard time liking a Sucker Punch game. I mean I wanted to like Sly and Infamous but just couldn't 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Ghost Of Tsushima's Loading Times Are So Good That They Had To Be Nerfed (Kotaku)

Quote

“Our art teams did an amazing job pushing their assets to fit in our aggressive performance and memory budgets,” Bentley said. “They accomplished a huge amount especially considering the size of our team. As an example, one of our 200m x 200m terrain tiles only usually takes up around 2 MB (compressed) on disc, including all the terrain and foliage placements. It’s easier to load a lot of data when you keep it compact.”

 

I was convinced that the Ghost of Tsushima devs employed some sort of fancy, behind-the-scenes trick to reduce these loading times, but Bentley said it was mostly just the hard work of the team that ensured load times remained as short as possible. That said, they did hide some loading times behind prerecorded movies that rendered in-engine, a technique Sucker Punch has utilized since the early inFamous games. Streaming and decoding multiple assets simultaneously in this way requires “somewhat complex code.”

 

Ghost of Tsushima vs. Assassin's Creed Valhalla: The Past Meets The Future (USgamer)

Quote

Despite the places where Ghost of Tsushima goes its own way, it still feels like a loving homage to the older Assassin's Creed games. Whether that intentional, or a testament to Assassin's Creed impact on open world design, I don't know. Valhalla on the other hand pulls back on the hard RPG leanings of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but still keeps a foot planted on that side.

 

If you're one of those players who dislike loot and levels, I'd say that Ghost of Tsushima should be a definite purchase for you. It retains some of the issues of modern Assassin's Creed, but I enjoyed the return of traversal puzzles and a wide variety of tools, not skills per se. That's said, I've not tired of the current model of Assassin's Creed, so Valhalla is still looking great to me. My major problem was a lack of verticality in my demo, which could just be a problem with the chunk of England we were given.

 

[maddux4163]

1 hour ago, eventide11 said:

Want to play but have had a hard time liking a Sucker Punch game. I mean I wanted to like Sly and Infamous but just couldn't 

To be honest, I never got into Sly and infamous. Played them. Heck, not even sure why I never got into them. As while I played, I enjoyed myself. The PS3 infamous was far better than PS4 IMO. 

 

But this game seems like fun and I’m willing to give it a go 

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, eventide11 said:

Want to play but have had a hard time liking a Sucker Punch game. I mean I wanted to like Sly and Infamous but just couldn't 

 

People didn't like Guerrilla Games and their Killzone games but then Horizon Zero Dawn happened, so you never know.

[Keyser_Soze]

26 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

People didn't like Guerrilla Games and their Killzone games but then Horizon Zero Dawn happened, so you never know.

 

And this just looks like HZD but with a Japan skin.

[skillzdadirecta]

Started it up... tried to play Japanese with English Subs and the lip sync was indeed, very bad. Going to switch back to English with English subs. Think I'm gonna start off on the hardest difficulty as well. There are only three difficulties to start with. Game is Gorgeous on the PSpoor in standard 1080p. Can't imagine how good it looks on the pro.

[Keyser_Soze]

54 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Started it up... tried to play Japanese with English Subs and the lip sync was indeed, very bad. Going to switch back to English with English subs.

 

I can't remember what it was, but wasn't there a game recently that came out where the lip sync was actually controlled by AI? If so, they probably should have incorporated it into this game.

[Firewithin]

Wow stunning colors in the game

[johnny]

This game is gorgeous. Did the prologue. Getting used to the combat. Using triangle to break their defenses, does it not work if you are pushing the analog stick? Sometimes it didn’t do that and I’m wondering why (turned the game off for the night). 

[skillzdadirecta]

Combat feels real good. I died once or twice, but the sword play feels really good. Animations are a little stiff but that might be because I just finished Last of US 2 and everything was so fluid in that game. I played through the prologue and the first part of one of the early missions. Really liking what I'm playing so far.

[Keyser_Soze]

Max is playing this in Spanish. Seems pretty legit

[SoberChef]

Not sure if anyone else had made mention of this but there is no Game+ mode rather unfortunately, so keep that in mind.

[ARZ]

Loving it so far. Story has me locked in, combat is enjoyable and the game is very satisfying so far

Has a Gears of War "crunch" and "chunky" to it when disposing of enemies 

[Spork3245]

[Brian]

GameFly shipped it. Look forward to it next week

[legend]

7 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

I can't remember what it was, but wasn't there a game recently that came out where the lip sync was actually controlled by AI? If so, they probably should have incorporated it into this game.

 

Huh. Now that you mention it, I don't know why this isn't more of a thing. For people in mocap and games, It would be straightforward to gather a large dataset of sounds to lip motions and train a model that works extremely well for any voice input.

 

Even if you didn't want pay the computational burden of running the neural net live in the game (assuming it was large), you could just run it once offline for all voice lines and load the animation.

[eventide11]

10 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

People didn't like Guerrilla Games and their Killzone games but then Horizon Zero Dawn happened, so you never know.

That's a good point.. I didn't finish Horizon but I enjoyed it FAR more than the Killzones 

[Keyser_Soze]

26 minutes ago, legend said:

 

Huh. Now that you mention it, I don't know why this isn't more of a thing. For people in mocap and games, It would be straightforward to gather a large dataset of sounds to lip motions and train a model that works extremely well for any voice input.

 

Even if you didn't want pay the computational burden of running the neural net live in the game (assuming it was large), you could just run it once offline for all voice lines and load the animation.

 

Ah, it was FF7 REmake that used AI controlled lip sync (just to clarify my own post!)

 

https://wccftech.com/final-fantasy-vii-remake-ai-expressions-camera/

 

Spoiler

 

 

Of course no one here played in Japanese because they have tunnel vision and can't see the huge lady in the picture at the same time as a line of text.

[legend]

8 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Ah, it was FF7 REmake that used AI controlled lip sync (just to clarify my own post!)

 

https://wccftech.com/final-fantasy-vii-remake-ai-expressions-camera/

 

  Hide contents

 

 

Of course no one here played in Japanese because they have tunnel vision and can't see the huge lady in the picture at the same time as a line of text.

 

Thanks! I'll look into this.

 

I do tend to go English dub for Japanese games and anime myself. Partly because I actually like the English voice actors, and partly because yes, reading is annoying because my eye sight is in fact poor! I've become progressively more nearsighted with time. Can't imagine why that would have happened to me  

[Keyser_Soze]

5 minutes ago, legend said:

I've become progressively more nearsighted with time. Can't imagine why that would have happened to me  

 

 

[Firewithin]

some cut scene frame rates can be.....rough

[Greatoneshere]

I am loving this game so far - about 5-6 hours in. The combat opens up a lot as times goes on, and the ninja/ghost aspect isn't janky, as of yet. The targeting can sometimes be wonky when you are surrounded by multiple enemies, but for the most part the combat is fast, fluid, and feels like an approximation of real samurai combat (in terms of weightiness and timing) and it's very easy to get pummeled by loads of enemies if one isn't careful.

 

Fought two major bosses so far, the health bar was intimidating but once you master dodging, parrying, etc. it didn't take too long to take them down. Playing on the hardest difficulty, but it's still early days. The setting and atmosphere alone, along with the graphics and music, make the game feel special regardless of some of the more rote open-world design. I will say that everything being in game (follow foxes, birds, the wind, etc.) is great, it's just a shame that they put "undiscovered location" question marks on your map, which sort of undermines discovering the animals and following them, but whatever makes my life easier I guess. It's not like the game pings items in any area at least, so you still gotta search and explore for supplies and scrolls, etc.

 

Also, I love how samurai and Japanese the game is in its gameplay. Inari shrines, golden birds, fox dens, haikus (there are fucking haiku gameplay sections!), flute playing with different song options, historic scrolls to give us legit background on both the Japanese and Mongol cultures, genuinely wrestling with the samurai code of bushido by becoming more of what samurai considered scum, the ninja, as Jin Sakai has to emply guerrilla tactics to win this war. Don't forget, playing the flute changes the in-game weather as well! 

[skillzdadirecta]

2 hours ago, legend said:

 

Thanks! I'll look into this.

 

I do tend to go English dub for Japanese games and anime myself. Partly because I actually like the English voice actors, and partly because yes, reading is annoying because my eye sight is in fact poor! I've become progressively more nearsighted with time. Can't imagine why that would have happened to me  

 

I always found the english voices in anime to be jarring and frankly.. terrible. I remember when Dragonballz was finally brought to the states on toonami or whatever it was and me and my siblings HATED it because I had been buying fan subbed VHS copies for YEARS before people even knew what DBZ was. I've been biased against english dubs ever since. The English voice acting in this seems pretty good so far except for Khan's. His Japanese voice performance sounds MUCH better than the English one. I dunno... I switched it to English but may switch it back as I got used to the lip flap after awhile. Surprised that they let this aspect slip in an otherwise VERY polished game. Maybe they can patch it?

[ARZ]

I'm gonna say it.....Khan looks like fat Steven Seagal

 

[Greatoneshere]

Khotun Khan (cousin of Kublai Khan) is played by Patrick Gallagher, who you've all seen in at least something. He's pretty great in most roles, and I'm enjoying his understated, intellectual turn here (so far, I'll need to see more).

 

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0302466/?ref_=tt_cl_t4

 

His likeness is used for the character in game.

[skillzdadirecta]

10 minutes ago, ARZ said:

I'm gonna say it.....Khan looks like fat Steven Seagal

 

 

They should have gotten him to do it. To be honest I think Ghengis Khan was a dream role of his.

[Keyser_Soze]

46 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

I always found the english voices in anime to be jarring and frankly.. terrible. I remember when Dragonballz was finally brought to the states on toonami or whatever it was and me and my siblings HATED it because I had been buying fan subbed VHS copies for YEARS before people even knew what DBZ was. I've been biased against english dubs ever since. The English voice acting in this seems pretty good so far except for Khan's. His Japanese voice performance sounds MUCH better than the English one. I dunno... I switched it to English but may switch it back as I got used to the lip flap after awhile. Surprised that they let this aspect slip in an otherwise VERY polished game. Maybe they can patch it?

 

I agree, but English dubs have improved which is why some people seem to have no shame these days admitting they watch dubbed anime ( @Chris- ) but back in the day, yikes!

 

I think once Cowboy Beebop landed people started taking English dubs a bit more seriously. Then they started casting people like Billy Bob Thorton in Princess Mononoke and stuff like that.

[skillzdadirecta]

21 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

I agree, but English dubs have improved which is why some people seem to have no shame these days admitting they watch dubbed anime ( @Chris- ) but back in the day, yikes!

 

I think once Cowboy Beebop landed people started taking English dubs a bit more seriously. Then they started casting people like Billy Bob Thorton in Princess Mononoke and stuff like that.

Cowboy Beebop and Samurai Champloo are both personal exceptions to that rule for me. I don't think I've ever even HEARD the Japanese voices for either