Life after Ground Zeroes - what's new with MGS5: The Phantom Pain?

[Administrator]

Earlier this year we were given a taste of Metal Gear Solid 5 with the release of Ground Zeroes across four different console platforms. It was an impressive game with a robust graphics engine, but it only represented a small chunk of what will ultimately become Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, due next year. However, the release of a 1080p60 video of the 30-minute E3 demo (at 50mbps h.264 no less) allows us to post an update to some of the visible changes observed in this demo version of The Phantom Pain versus what we experienced earlier with Ground Zeroes.
First and foremost it should be noted that this demo was played on a PlayStation 4 and, as such, operates with the same 1080p FXAA sampled image quality as the Ground Zeroes sampler you've already played. In short, it still looks great but some areas where the game is a little lacking tend to be much more noticeable in the new locale - for example texture filtering is an area that could do with some improvements. This wasn't a particularly big issue with Ground Zeroes but it is more noticeable in this demo and smears a lot of the game's artwork during gameplay. Many PS4 and Xbox One titles tend to suffer in this regard, and we hope to see some improvement before release.
Looking beyond image quality we found a few other things worth mentioning. The most noticeable change in this most recent demo is the inclusion of a robust motion blur implementation. Motion blur is now appropriately applied to animations and camera movement, further enhancing fluidity of the experience. Interestingly these effects were already present on Xbox One but were missing in the PS4 release of Ground Zeroes. It would appear that The Phantom Pain addresses this by introducing these effects on PS4 as well. It's a nice effect, but there are some artifacts visible at points, for example around the wheels on the jeep as Big Boss drives away from the scene. At 60fps, motion blur is less noticeable than at lower frame-rates but it definitely adds an extra layer of polish to the experience.
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