Is Uncharted 4 the generational leap we were hoping for?

[Administrator]

Gameplay reveals don't get much more exciting than this. This weekend's demonstration of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End gives us our first extended look at Naughty Dog's next-gen engine in playable conditions - and that's a big deal. After it was first teased at E3, the game was met with wild speculation and debate that would last for months over whether or not that level of visual fidelity could be achieved in real-time on current-gen console ahrdware. This brand new 15-minute gameplay demo helps to answer that question, while also giving us an idea of the kind of gameplay experience we might expect. Does the new footage stack up to the teaser trailer? Is this really a true next-generation Uncharted - or simply a prettier 1080p evolution of the existing formula?
The demo begins with a wide view of the jungle while the camera slowly pulls back to reveal Drake in his next-generation glory. However, it becomes immediately apparent that this isn't quite the same Drake we saw at E3 2014. While his facial structure appears comparable, the quality of his hair is reduced significantly while lighting and shading lack the sense of realism presented in the teaser, and the detail of his bandolier and shirt also seems pared back. Still, the transition from the initial cut-scene into gameplay is seamless, suggesting that the Drake we see here is at least the same model used during gameplay. The hair and shirt fabric also blow in the breeze, which looks quite nice in action, so while the overall impact seems to fall a little short of the teaser, Drake is still very nicely detailed here. He's also looking a bit younger - could this section be a flashback, perhaps, or simply at a point in the game before Drake really gets put through the wringer?
On a technical level, these early moments confirm that we're looking at a native 1080p presentation with some incredibly high quality anti-aliasing. It's not quite as clean as the near-flawless E3 teaser trailer but the results appear more impressive than just about any other solution we've seen on the platform to date. Edge-aliasing is all but eliminated, yet sharpness is retained while temporal aliasing (pixel pop and edge shimmer) is kept to a relative minimum. Some details, such as the skeletons early on, Drake's belt and some of the vines still show minor artefacting in motion but, overall, the solution Naughty Dog has adopted is looking really impressive. We're interested in learning more about this process - Sony shares its technology internally, so there's a strong chance we might see it deployed on other titles.
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