I don't like being that zoomed into the character, this is my primary concern over having shoulders that will take up a quarter to a third of the screen. Changing the FOV helps, but is that the same thing as zooming out?
I recommend implementing an unlocked camera so i can turn to see my own unit. I know this isn't important here, but it will be later. It caught Grummz at one point during an earlier pre-terrain stream.
I recommend having another tab in the settings screen with a simple document to list all the controls.
Curiously, when all settings are at Epic, it works well, but when I turn post processing to low, the panning becomes jerky.
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Overall I'm generally unimpressed. It took me a while to figure out why. I think what stands out as bad is that there's grass growing straight out of rock. A solution that occurs to me is to have life only growing out of fissures or cracks, or patches of dirt. (I see areas that are more sandy, and it works there). The "patches" feature is already going to exist, as there is a snow/lava concept coming later. I recommend beginning it here and now, and then it can essentially be "re-skinned" in that other terrain type. This is especially awful when trees grow out of the red blob things.
The broader-leaved plants and flowers look fantastic, but the grass and grain seems wrong. Where the other plants have a sort of 2D look that really suits them, it doesn't work for the grass. I think this has something to do with the jaggies around them in particular (and I'm at max). They do look odd when they move, like they're bluring into a new position. This would work at some distance, as that's basically the visual effect we get in a distant field, but grass is so sparse and so near here that the movement is overlain on the rocky/boring background and not on more grass, so it really stands out.
I'll give the mandatory thumbs down on the odd red-pink blobs. I hope someone else likened these to No Man's Sky. Consider specifically mimicking coral. There is a certain kind of alien feeling where things are half-recognizable but out of place. Scattering moments of "this belongs underwater, doesn't it?" would keep hinting at terraforming.
The trees look terrible. The bark is awful and the leaves appear too flat. This works for ground plants, but not for taller things. This will become obvious when boosted jumps and gliding come in. Will trees have impact on gameplay? I can clip through them right now. It's a whole other problem if they do, and it would also demand destructible terrain, which is inappropriate for this game, and shouldn't be considered. In Firefall, the trees were mostly pushed right next to rocks.
Some trees aren't planted into the ground, and have a base with a flat section that pokes out of a curve.
I once found an invisible wall near a hill.
Again, I'm not happy. A closer reproduction of Firefall would have worked. In fact, I just went to view some gameplay to compare. Some thoughts..
Firefall had barren spaces with life being at the edges. This is something like how people make paths as they walk, stripping areas to bare dirt or rock. Consider making that the theme, where there is a contrast between lower places, higher places, and curves.
For example, the starting area (like this Copa-inspired area) could have barren low areas, broad-leaved plants only around the curves of hills, grass only around and on the hills, and trees only next to them.
A second area could do something different.. thick hip-high foliage, but only in the low places, and utterly barren at the top of hills.
I wandered around a lot more, and I am seeing things like this. I guess I spawned in a particularly ugly area..
I got into an area with reeds. Those look really nice.
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All the previous features of all earlier previews ought to be cooked-in. Have all the other consoles and posed figures also in this demo.
So to sum it up.. it's not great, and it's barely good. Is it something I can forgive because I'm running around playing the actual game? Not really, it's distracting. Can I forgive it because it's stylized? No, because it doesn't have a clear style.
I realize I'm a harsh judge, but this is charitably a 3/10. What do I compare this to?
Minecraft has a brutally simple theme, which is forgiven because it's consistent. It gave an awe I still can't place.
Anthem is absolutely beautiful, but it uses a lot more system resources than Ember would, just to look good. Plus it doesn't have many players in one place.
No Man's Sky feels like a good middle ground to compare to, and it has a simple and beautiful theme that so far outstrips anything I see in this terrain demo. I think one thing that really makes it work is that blades of grass and some broad-leaved plants always face the viewer. I went looking for some good terrain examples, but most gameplay ignores the landscape entirely. I did find this:
I also did end up bumping into this:
looks amazing.
I think this is a style issue, and would be improved if the realism was cut back. We recognize things like grain, grass, leaves, flowers, bark, etc., but make a stylized, simplified, version of these things and find consistency. Hell. Here's an idea.. you already have a notion that you want more stylized characters.. well.. go and examine the anime that inspire those styles. What does their terrain look like? I couldn't find anything really, as there's a strong focus for mecha in urban warfare. I did find a lot of great fields, but that doesn't seem to fit either.
Anyhow, maybe some of this is useful..
