The Matrix Awakens Now Live On Xbox, Here's A Look At The Full 'Experience'

Think I ruined it by reading Eurogamer's hype article on it first - so while I was impressed by some of the lighting and other techniques to give the city a "real-life" sheen overall I wasn't as overwhelmed as I hoped I'd be.

EG made it sound like you could barely tell parts from real life so probably got my hopes up too much - instead the mouths of the characters (just like in most games) are still not 100% and the city was like Flight Sim - highly impressive from distance but less so the closer you get.

From a distance the "sheen" made it look real, but the rendered interiors were very low res, the building textures lost the realistic sheen as you got close and the cars and people didn't look that different to say FH5.

Also given it was showing off their AI the number of times cars ran over pedestrians it was a bit off-putting.

But I realise I was mostly spoiled by the hype from EG - if I'd gone in with low expectations I'd be much happier.

Also for rendering one or two people, a cutscene or to add a realistic sheen onto games I'm pretty happy with this future, particularly in the hands of developers we know can get round the above limits.

Overall, it's impressive but don't go in expecting miracles otherwise you may be disappointed as it's cool with a realistic sheen but whether due to it being a small team or more realistically the technical limitations of an admittedly very impressive engine (perhaps limited currently by today's specs) it's still not the "can't tell it from a movie" demo EG makes it out to be

@Widey85 I think that's a bit overly critical. Flight sim can completely fall apart when close up, this doesn't. You can walk round a giant (and it is huge) city that by and large looks more real than almost anything we've seen before.

Is it perfect? No. But it's bloody impressive tech, especially for a small team.

The thing I noticed the most was that they had clearly spent longer animating Keanu. He looked MUCH more believable that Carrie Anne-Moss/Trinity who's movement and face looked more wooden and robotic.

I agree don't look through windows too closely but In the half hour I spent exploring the city I didn't see anything that completely broke immersion, unlike Flight Sim. (EDIT: which is also absolutely incredible, just not close up)

Also agree the EG article is a little OTT, but to me this is a generational step forward. And there were times I was questioning if this was a movie. Truly impressive stuff.

@Scenes @themightyant

Yeah I agree it's a good tech demo, I think EG's article hyped it to a level it couldn't ever reach so ruined it for me.

Also, I think Detroit: Become Human and FH5 have too - the former for having insanely detailed / realistic character faces and the latter for the cars and building details.

I understand it's a small team, and to have rendered a whole city is very impressive, and the characters at the start were very realistic - I just found once it transitioned into the chase and it couldn't throw the kitchen sink at the character modelling it fell back into the uncanny valley (and probably below the Detroit: Become Human level).

Was also something to do with the mouths - but then it's possible Keanu just doesn't move his much!

It'll be seriously cool to have Detroit-level faces within non-fixed view games, and if the "cut corners" in this tech demo are due to the small team and not engine constraints (or devs can stream parts of a city at a time instead of all of it, so up the polygon count) then yes it could be a true generational leap.

In particular, the realistic "sheen" where buildings looked real from a distance (and so did the roads), that would be seriously cool tech to have if it can scale to a closer view too.

Despite appearing negative, I am actually pretty hyped about this generation - think I just spotted flaws as EG set me up to go looking for them!

@Widey85 I didn't think you were being negative just a little overly critical which is usually MY M.O. 🤣

I agree with most of what you've said here. I think the difference for me is how everything sits together. Forza Horizon 5 for example, which is an absolutely stunning game, to me still looks like a video game. I can't quite put my finger on why, probably lighting and shadows, it's like the uncanny valley for a world. Whereas the city in Matrix to me just looked like a video of a real city until I looked up close. Reading about how this was generated quickly by a small team only made this more impressive to me.

https://images.gnwcdn.com/2021/articles/2021-12-09-22-35/04_gameplay.jpg

Good call on Detroit. Those faces were outstandingly good. Agreed the mouths aren't quote there yet here.

@themightyant Agreed, I'd love to see the "realism filter" or whatever they did on this game used for FH5 as at that point I think it would remove the one last "gamey" look to it.

I think Detroit faces + FH5 tech + the realism filter from this (but copes with much more up-close viewing) = my perfect game!

I suspect to show off they were rendering the entire city at once or going over the top on certain aspects - whereas in a game I suspect they'd only render around what the player can see, or reduce the number of cars / people or similar.

At that point, able to put that much detail into the area around the player, then it's more like the start of the demo - so the realism stays even up close and the faces look even better than Detroit.

And if that's the case, I'm really, really looking forward to seeing what game developers can do with this

@themightyant Also that image kinda highlights my issue with it - the character models on NPCs.

I'd rather a less busy city but higher-rendered people in it.

But then given that's mostly textures, a bigger team with more time could probably iron that out and still keep decent-sized crowds.

And given this was done by a small team, I'm hoping it might mean UE5 can help keep game development from getting out of control and so stop AAA games taking 10 years and $500m which we seem to be getting ever closer to...

@Widey85 All good shouts. I agree about the NPC models.

Also hope that UE5 will help both speed development and cut down budgets, this is a real issue and concern!

My most negative take is that usually we don't see the most impressive Tech demos matched for several years. Often until the end of the generation or even the start of the next. Think Agni’s Philosophy (Luminous) or The Samaritan (UE3) and others. But it's a glimpse into the future.

And that future is bright. As Mark Cerny said "now for the fun part" seeing what developers can do with this impressive tech. Can't wait to actually be playing in it.

@StonyKL “So I saw this demo as how games could look day 1 then if a team of hundreds spend years working on it then it would massively improve what we see on this demo.”

Yes and no. It’s still slightly wishful thinking and a bit further off than we’d like.

The trouble with tech demos usually is that they get to spend all their frame budgets on very specific scenes and waste it all on looking good. In a real game a lot of those frame budgets have to be used on other things like AI and other mechanics that are happening off camera or in the background, with less spent on visuals alone. Typically they are usually running on the highest end PCs too and it takes a decade or so to catch up to looking that good in actual games on target platforms.

THAT to me is what makes this tech demo so fascinating and different. It is running in real time on current CONSOLE hardware and there’s more to it than just what we see in a video, there’s a whole giant city we can explore off camera. There’s also some basic AI and other game mechanics even if it’s still spending FAR more frame budget on visuals than a normal game would or could.

So while I wouldn’t expect this level of fidelity tomorrow perhaps it‘s much closer than the usual 10 or so years behind. But it’s still a glimpse of the future.

That said a really important part of this demo is that it isn’t focused solely on getting the absolute highest fidelity, they are aware that this can be higher with a larger team/budget time. No, what’s truly impressive is they made this huge (16km squared, larger than downtown LA) almost photo realistic city with a small team. It’s a demonstration of how QUICKLY content of this fidelity can be created with UE5. That’s really the focus of the demo, it’s an invitation and advert to devs. “Now show us what you can do”. Super impressive tech and tools.

The digital foundry article goes into more detail on this and is worth a read, they’ve also said they are going to have a discussion with the devs which should be fascinating and add insight.