Hideo Kojima's upcoming horror game, OD: Knock, announced way back when, has finally gotten a new trailer. And, though it looks hauntingly similar to the cancelled P.T. and could be a masterclass in horror, I'm more scared of its use of certain technologies that may throw it off the tracks.
And, yes, you've already guessed it: I'm talking about Unreal Engine 5. Instead of his established Decima Engine, Kojima is going for the Unreal Engine this time around, likely because of its free license, the former being the property of Sony. This'll let Kojima once again be free of corporate ties and allow him to publish his game on whatever platform he sees fit. That's all fine and dandy, if it weren't carrying significant risks of a poor launch.
Another reason for using the Unreal Engine 5 is its exceptional human recreation capabilities, with, as we've seen in both the first teaser and this new trailer, OD having realistic facial reconstructions of its actors. Face scanning is nothing new and has been in games for over 15 years, but never on the level provided by Unreal Engine 5 and the Epic-owned Serbian studio, 3Lateral, which worked on Hellblade 2, and now on OD, among other things.
But high-tech means high demands, as even with our current home PC technology, we aren't fully capable of running these super ultra refined technologically-advanced games with respectable performance.
No matter what, implementing all of this will inevitably lead to the vast majority of players struggling to run the game on PC, unless they opt to use AI-backed upscalers and other artificial means to “improve” fps while tremendously sacrificing visual fidelity. This last is quite the conundrum, as it is the game's innate visual beauty that's causing the issues in the first place.
Unreal Engine 5 itself, with its graphical fidelity, is demanding as-is, with all these extra techs added on top significantly increasing how much power it needs to work properly. I do trust Kojima Productions to optimize the game to the utmost, given his track record with Death Stranding 1, 2, and The Phantom Pain, all of which were very performative on a wide array of hardware.
Even with my trust in Kojima, I do not trust Epic Games' engine whatsoever. Time and again, it has proven to be too demanding for most players, which, according to Steam's surveys, still rocks Nvidia's 3000-series graphics cards, or the lower-end of the 4000 series. None of these cards can run UE5 games well without making huge dents in their settings, which, as I've said, is paradoxical, since the engine is made for beauty and graphics.
Just this year, we've had games like Borderlands 4, made on UE5, which, while looking great, perform so badly that it's caused a massive PR drama between the company's executives and players. Avowed, too, was a visual mess, despite its shiny fantasy setting. Muddy textures, borderline forced upscaling, and stuttering issues that never ended were just some of its engine-level problems.
I've covered AAA disasters in a separate feature, so check it out.
Anyhow, I have high hopes for whatever Kojima is doing, be it OD or PhysInt or anything else. However, I am wary of UE5, and I sincerely hope the team Kojima's put together finds ways to mitigate its massive performance hits and allow the world to experience this story properly.
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The post OD: Knock looks terrifying, but one thing scares me more than ghosts and demons appeared first on Destructoid.
