Horizon Forbidden West Image Shows How Much The Visuals Improved Since 2021’s State of Play

gamerant.com:

For many video game fans, graphics and visual fidelity remain a major topic of conversation, especially with promotional or marketing trailers. While pre-release trailers are meant to get the fan base excited about a game's eventual launch, much of the time, the visuals become a focal point of online discussion. In fact, the prospect of an eventual graphics downgrade has even been addressed by the development team, such as BioWare reassuring fans that Anthem's visual fidelity wouldn't be downgraded from the initial E3 reveal trailer.

One of the more high profile instances is Ubisoft's open world hacker game, Watch Dogs, which received an impressive E3 2012 reveal trailer. However, when the final game launched, the graphics didn't quite match what was initially shown in Watch Dogs E3 reveal. Senior producer Dominic Guay addressed the concerns, admitting that the trailer was created prior to the Xbox One and PS4 specs being revealed and overestimating what would be available. While visual downgrades get a bulk of the commentary, the recently launched Horizon: Forbidden West shows that sometimes, games do in fact improve the visuals during development.

Horizon Forbidden West Was Delayed to Avoid Crunch

In a thread on the PlayStation subReddit, a user known as CptnCASx took a screenshot from the State of Play demonstration for Horizon: Forbidden West from 2021 and managed to find that exact area in the final version. While most would agree that the State of Play demonstration was visually impressive, CptnCASx has managed to prove that the final retail version of the game has managed to push the visual details even further.

In the screenshot, which shows protagonist Aloy swimming through some ruins, players can see a big