Never Has a Game Looked So Good Yet So Jank as PS5's Neo Berlin 2087

The protagonist reminded me a lot of Adam Jensen

Audio is lagging, the lack of facial animations.

I dont agree with this one bit it looks awsome. I think they are going to deliver a better release then CD project dared to release on the PS4 asking full price.

To be fair, weird facial animations are very prevalent these days - particulary where character creators are in place (which im very much in favour for).

I'm weirdly interested...

Will at least keep an eye on it from afar
.

I remember when mass effect andromeda was released and that had some very strange facial animations too which got fixed pretty quickly. Give the damn game a chance before sticking the boot in.

@Flaming_Kaiser I've agreed with quite a lot of what you say recently..the game looks pretty damn cool to me..

That‘s the new AA standard these days. People here often complain about 70 USD price tags, iterations of the same IPs over and over again, super safe gameplay mechanics, and long development times. And here comes a game which uses UE5 to its fullest to hide its limited budget, and people start complaining about its janky look.

Remember, there is no free lunch!

She purdy! 😍 but yeah… game looks pretty jank.

I dont mind a bit of jank and its clear theres alot of effort behind this. Il be keeping an eye on this one

@Flaming_Kaiser I agree looks brilliant, my kind of game. The lack of interest in the poll is probably because its not open world.

Texture and graphic fidelity it looks pretty, but is it fun? That's the big thing

I wish it looked a little more like Berlin as opposed to every generic NYC/Night City inspired cyberpunk dystopia.

An unintentionally bad Deadly Premonition could be fun. Honestly the dialogue isn’t much worse than Death Stranding.

This game looks intriguing, but wow do they need to fix those stiff, janky character animations. And those weird Botox, duck lips need to go.

I'm interested and i don't mind some jank.

I mean, i can tolerate the jank since this game developed by an indie devs founded in 2019 with 11-50 employees. Clearly they have great passion and taste since they mention Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell as the inspiration.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/elysium-game-studio/

But clearly they don't have big budget nor a lot of experiences. And looks like this is their first game too. So give them some time to polished the game.

But you already hit the nail on the head when you wrote all that.

It's an indie developer. It's enough said.

I expect that some bits are going to be amazing and some bits are going to be not that great.

Facial animations are hard and when you have a limited budget and maybe not the expertise within that field then that's the part what's going to suffer.

Or the voice acting, triple A developers literally have writing teams to make sure there games are on point and even they fail half the time.

Let alone an indie studio writing it and then paying what they can afford for some voice actors.

That's literally the answer to the whole article. And you wrote it in the first 2 sentences.

I tell you what it shows me, there is some serious talent within but are lacking talent in other areas.

@NotTelevision „Honestly the dialogue isn’t much worse than Death Stranding.“

Is that meant as a praise for this game?

It's definitely improved since the last time I saw it.

I'd rather play this than 99% of shooters on the market.

Has a definite "The Day Before" vibe for me.

Is this a first or third person game? I'm confused about how that works.

Looks good to me.
The facial animations looks better than a LOT of other games, coming out these days.
Take a look at Starfield, Dragons Dogma 2 etc for bad animations.

@KayUK I get a similar vibe from it. Some high quality assets that seem very similar to other games stitched together with wonky animations.
Time will tell.

@Northern_munkey @flaming_kaiser I’m with you guys on this one. Would need to see a bit more, but this is also looking cool to me.

@Jaz007 Both 1st and 3rd person:

https://www.elysiumgamestudio.com/presskit

The cyberpunk neo-noir aesthetic has become standard these days. Anybody else remember “Syndicate”?

The facial animations are okay, better than some other games out there. The dialogue does sound cheesy, and is obviously out-of-sync with the picture. Could just be the video.

But it looks promising. Just needs a little polishing up.

Remember the state Cyberpunk 2077 was in, when it first launched on PS4?

CAUTION! Quality alert

That‘s the studio‘s founder: https://www.xing.com/profile/Ivan_Mirkovikj2

This is a game he was working on as a director: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11410466/

And here are the critics for this game:
Metacritic: https://www.metacritic.com/game/past-cure/critic-reviews/?platform=playstation-4
PushSquare: https://www.pushsquare.com/reviews/ps4/past_cure

It looks great to me 🤷 clearly has budget restraints as it's animation that's a little rough. That's always the key indicator of a smaller developer.

I'm all for it though 😁

sounds like some people expect AAA quality and polish from AA studios with 1/4 of the budget now? it would make more sense to temper expectations and understand who the developer is as well as the scope. as a lower budget game, they are doing good work here. it does look next gen and the deus ex vibes have me intrigued. the headline of the article is certainly overblown. the character model of the lead actress looks a bit stylized (i'm not a fan), but that is more of an art direction thing.

@PuppetMaster As a AA enjoyer since the PS2 days, I 100% agree!

Did a see a Vanquish slide and a Max Payne slow-mo roll in the same video? I am kind of enamored with its "always walking very slowly forward" trailer vibe.

Something a bit uncanny to it all. Hyper realism can get funky quickly if the whole package isn't there. I sometimes think a bit of stylization or deliberate weirdness can cover the cracks

I think this game looks great! I don’t mind jank. It could be similar to RoboCop Rogue City in that regard. That game was janky, but it was an absolute blast to play.

@theSpectre, I noticed her 'enhanced' lower lip too. That and the shadow above her upper lip looks a tad like a girl mustache. Overall I basically like the location and characters from what was featured in this trailer. Her lips need fixed, but she is attractively feminine and the guy seems regular male.

It looks sketchy as hell.

@Northern_munkey then again we have Elex 2 with the most horrific faces.

I love it! I don't know why but I love it

God, those botox lips lol

I’m interested but…….are the people robots? They move and talk like robots……..

@pyrrhic_victory Pretty sure it is the same VA who does Jensen/Coe. Has to be, right?

@Bunchesopuppies yeah that was pretty disturbing and a crap game too..

@Westernwolf4 I thought it was Elias Toufexis at the beginning of the trailer, but by the end I wasn't too sure.

Looks like they are still tweaking the facial animations. If not, someone needs to tell them to keep tweaking the facial animations. Also, that one office set with the red lighting, isn't that lifted right out of Arasaka HQ in Cyberpunk 2077?

It's a tale as old as time itself... Or rather, as old as Unreal Engine is. Smaller teams get access to high-end tools, but the budget stays small. End result is visually nice looking games that often lack in animation and polish in gameplay.

This new Thunderbirds looks great!

The facial animations appear as though all the characters have had a lot of plastic surgery to me. Especially the female character with the stiff upper lip, literal rather than figurative.

This is what happens when you have democratised tools that can render I credible things but not the talent in your company to deliver on the rest

@pyrrhic_victory its the same VA, Elias Toufaxis

Don't really care about face animations since gameplay looks horrible. Shoot-em-up simply doesn't suit such setting.

I thought I was watching a "Watch_Dogs" remaster trailer. I'll be calling this one "Neo_Berlin" from now on. Might have bene the coat? 🤷‍♂️

Wow they really nailed that modern day plastic surgery enthusiast look for her.

Supposed to be Cyberpunk and has normal buildings and characters, probably primarily an asset flip

@pyrrhic_victory Now I had to know, so I googled it and it appears it is him. He posted something on X about working on the game.

Star Wars Outlaw finna ask you to hold its beer.

@EchoRange
This whole game looks like an asset flip, it seems to have no coherent art style and like they just threw a bunch of assets and environments in because it looks pretty without accounting for how it all gels. I imagine this is what most Unreal 5 games will look like not made by AAA teams and I don't think I'm a fan of that.

I have a feeling she's a robot...

Agreed @Flaming_Kaiser

I'll take anything with ambition over another boring iterative sequel factory game (looking at you santa Monica, ND and Insomniac) .

Hope this one turns out. Perhaps it Can replace the gross Mismanagement of some like Deus Ex.

@Max_the_German Trying to be positive. The game is probably going to be a turd but maybe worth checking out for a 5er someday.

Graphics look very good but animations look stiff and rigid

Has a real "If Deus Ex Was Made In Unreal 5! Like and Subscribe!" feel.

Game looks fine overall and the jank is not a dealbreaker imo since this is made by a indie team after all.

Whether the actual gameplay and the narrative will be good or not remain to be seen, frankly I’m not impressed in those departments.

Jankyness aside, the dialogue at the end sounds like an abusive relationship. “Why did you hit me?” “I love you”then why did you hurt me?” “Because I love you.”

Honestly though? I was laughing out loud throughout this, despite some shots looking really good. I’ve no idea what to think.

@KundaliniRising333 eh, I don’t blame eidos (deus ex dev). I blame square’s old president, that guy was just an nft addict and Eidos was collateral damage so he could feed his obsession. Embracer shutting them down wasn’t even mismanagement, they were in the middle of developing an unknown project when they were closed.

Looks like a game I would have to get for PC. Looks interesting enough. Curious if this is a more focused shooter, or something with open world exploration.

@NotTelevision My free time is more valuable to me than a 5er. There are too many great games out there to waste your time (and money) with mediocre or bad ones.

What does jank mean?

Looks ok to me. I’m not understanding the jank narrative. Most trailers have staged gameplay that doesn’t quite reflect how it finally plays.

Very Bladerunner esque(my favourite movie) I’m interested for sure. 😊

If you guys think a game never looked so good then you must see Hellblade2, this comes nowhere near the graphic fidelity HB2 has. It screams AA from miles. And probably this is not in game gameplay but a cutscene.

@Raynor85x of extremely poor or unreliable quality

The jury is still out.

cyberpunk meets max payne?

@BeenGamingSince_83 luckily for you, that's one of the most copied settings and aesthetics. I wonder how far that can go for you? Like, do you dig the Bob Hopkins Mario movie, lol?

Game looks amazing. I’d buy it in a heartbeat, even in its current state. As cyberpunk is my fav genre and Blade Runner my fav movie- it’s a no-brainer. Thanks for letting me know it exists!

That trailer is trying way too hard. It's like it wants to be John Wick, Cyberpunk 2077, the Matrix, Max Pain and many others, all at the same time.

That being said, the dystopian future is perfectly represented by all those people who seem to be botoxed so much, they don't look human anymore.

It looks fantastic, I’m playing through ‘RoboCop: Rogue City’ and looks like it’ll be a similar ride - fantastic fun with a pulpy story (maybe less of a sense of humour). I’ll be keeping an eye out for the review

Looks like a poor man's Deus Ex with terrible AI. (Seriously, did the enemies even try to fight back?) And I don't know what's going on with the Megan Fox imitation lady with fake botox lips. So distracting. There's a difference between noir and being vague, and this looks like it'll fall into the latter.

Graphics looks nice, but something ain't right.

Team America meets Blade Runner? Why not?

Yup. High budget and dirt cheap at the same time fits this game right. Feels like the borderland movie 😂

@Max_the_German Indeed. Living’s mostly wasting time but to live is to fly, all low and high.

Added to my wishlist. Will get it some time down the line.

Modern normie gamers when not every single game in existence plays like the average Ubisoft game:

iT LoOkS jAnK

id be interested but the game needs more time in the oven those facial animations just look off and janky also character running movement needs more time to tighten up

@pyrrhic_victory same voice actor i think

Looks like Atomic Heart and Cyber Punk had a baby. Kidding aside, while the game looks technically impressive in some ways, it also looks super generic in many others.

Good luck to them!

This looks like absolute dog****.

@pyrrhic_victory Same VA

@Toot1st It is the same!

@Northern_munkey It looks like a blast thats a while since I had that feeling it just looks fun.

@KundaliniRising333 I love also love the PS studios but not everything needs to look the best and I think this looks awsome and fun just fun nothing wrong with that.

@ApostateMage Probably will run better then Cyberpunk on release and look better.

And it's from a indie studio.

I smell pre-rendered gameplay footage. Why is it randomly switching between first and third person?

@RadioHedgeFund Have you considered that you can simply swap between the two modes? I know most games struggle with this, but there are some that have achieved multiple camera angles for the player..

@Axelay71 I love a more streamlined game it really can make feel cooler and more unique. Open world is fun but less cinematic between the gameplay.

A Skyrim is fantastic don't get me wrong but I'll remember my epic moments with streamlined games more.

Looks at a Uncharted people call it walking simulators but lets be real here scenes like the beginning of uncharted 2 In the train. 😁

@Northern_munkey And smaller indies just have less resources and that does not always has to be a bad thing. They can take that risk because they are not as tied down as the big budget developers.

Less risk and more unique games like we had with the older firstparty PlayStation titles i really miss those times. 😢

@Flaming_Kaiser yeah I miss them too.

@Flaming_Kaiser Uncharted a walking sim lol, that just proves how diluded the openworld obsessives are. I love linear single player experiences where you can have amazing set piece levels. Like the train from Uncharted 2, that game is epic from start to finish.

@Axelay71 Thats how people name them don't know why.

@Northern_munkey We had quite a few insane games did not look the best but fun. And with those really older titles why not clean them up resolution, FPS, textures and modernised controls. Im not expecting a Rachet and Clank fix up with every smaller title.