The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X's improved hardware promises graphics that come closer to real life than ever before, but Sony's PS5 reveal event showed the company also has non-realistic visual styles in mind. Several indie games in the PlayStation 5 showcase featured beautiful, stylized graphics, proving next-gen power isn't only beneficial for rendering realism.
Although Sony already planned to skip E3 2020 before it was canceled, the company's June digital presentation served as a replacement for a traditional E3 conference, delivering many new game announcements and information about the upcoming console. Highlights included big, PS5-exclusive game reveals like Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales and Horizon Forbidden West, as well as trailers for third-party games like Bethesda's Deathloop.
Of the 26 PS5 games revealed, some of the most striking were independent projects. KO-OP Mode's hand-drawn Goodbye Volcano High is a slickly styled adventure game through the eyes of a non-binary "dinosaur teen," and Solar Ash looks to be a trippy, space-faring follow-up to Heart Machine's Hyper Light Drifter. These and other indies demonstrated the power of next-gen hardware in less obvious ways than the usual, realistic, first-party exclusives.
Epic Games provided PlayStation fans with their first extended look at the console's capabilities in May with its Unreal Engine 5 demo on PS5. Although most of the demo environment focused on high-poly, realistic rock structures and ancient ruins, its central character model gave a glimpse of how cartoony visuals could look on the system. Games like the dark-yet-cute Little Devil Inside, the atmospheric Jett: The Far Shore, and the lively Kena: Bridge of Spirits delivered on that potential, showcasing gorgeous visuals with stylized textures and especially impressive lighting effects. Kena, in particular, stood out, with a trailer that looked like a playable Pixar movie.
Kena developer Ember Labs has a background in movie animation and previously produced the viral 2016 Zelda fan film, Majora's Mask - Terrible Fate, so it's no wonder Kena's animations are so smooth. But what's so impressive about Kena is the way its creators' art carries over into a playable game, and the PS5's power to render particle effects, lighting, textures, and animations in real time may play a role in this. Granted, like Little Devil Inside, Kena is also set to launch on PS4, but it's possible the current-gen version could receive some graphical downgrades. After all, late-PS4 and Xbox One games like Control struggle to run on current tech compared to stronger PCs.
Regardless, Microsoft's Minecraft ray tracing demo shows just how powerful even something as simple as better lighting effects can be in games that don't chase realism. If Kena is only the beginning of the PS5's Pixar-like offerings, that's something to be excited about, as fans will likely continue to get impressive, non-realism projects like it further into the new console generation.
The PlayStation 5 is set for a holiday 2020 launch.
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