Introduction
God of War Ragnarök is the highly anticipated sequel to 2018’s God of War reboot on PlayStation 4. As an exclusive PS5 title, Ragnarök aims to showcase the graphical capabilities of Sony’s newest console. I analyze Ragnarök’s visuals in depth, examining how its graphics push PS5 to its limits across various aspects like lighting, textures, characters, and more.
Lighting
Ray Tracing and Global Illumination
God of War Ragnarök utilizes ray tracing and global illumination for realistic lighting effects. Ray tracing accurately simulates how light behaves in the real world, calculating the path of light rays as they intersect with objects. This enables effects like accurate reflections, shadows, and global illumination. Ragnarök uses ray traced shadows and ambient occlusion for natural shadowing on characters and environments.
Global illumination is a key aspect of photorealistic graphics. It determines how surrounding light affects the color and brightness of surfaces. Ragnarök uses ray traced global illumination to realistically light scenes based on light sources and bounced light. This captures the complexity of real-world lighting.
Volumetric Lighting
Ragnarök renders volumetric lighting – light shafts, rays, and scattering effects that illuminate the air itself. This adds depth and realism, visible when light shines between trees or raindrops. PS5’s ray tracing hardware enables screen space volumetric lighting, avoiding the performance cost of full ray marched volumetric lighting. Still, the quality is excellent, enhancing atmospheric effects.
Lighting Summary
With ray tracing and screen space techniques, Ragnarök delivers movie-quality lighting on PS5. The natural shadows, reflections, and atmospheric effects contribute tremendously to the game’s graphical showcase of the console’s power.
Textures and Assets
High Resolution Textures
Ragnarök uses high resolution 4K textures for detailed, crisp environments and characters. PS5’s Kraken compression allows for efficient streaming of these large textures from its ultra-fast SSD. This prevents low resolution blurring while retaining high texture detail. The result is crystal clear texture work at native 4K and beyond.
Photogrammetry Assets
Many assets are created using photogrammetry – 3D scanning of real-world objects. This photographic reference ensures natural, realistic textures, seen in branches, cliffs, rocks, and other environmental objects. Photogrammetry assets shine in PS5’s 4K clarity, retaining their real-world detail.
Texture Streaming
PS5’s SSD enables optimized texture streaming. High resolution textures load instantly as needed instead of lowering quality to fit into RAM. This dynamic loading prevents texture pop-in while allowing enormous 4K texture packages. Texture quality remains consistently high.
Texture Summary
With 4K content created using photogrammetry, displayed through optimized streaming, Ragnarök offers some of the most detailed, high-fidelity textures on PS5.
Characters and Creatures
Detailed Character Models
Central characters like Kratos, Atreus, and Freya utilize extremely detailed character models with realistic materials, facial animations, hair, and skin. Triangle counts reach into the millions, enabled by PS5’s processing power. Their faces showcase PS5’s ability to render human characters photorealistically.
Creature Variety
Ragnarök’s bestiary contains over 40 unique creatures like wolves, bears, draugrs, and trolls. Each features high polygon models with smooth, detailed textures. They avoid repetitive clones through unique designs, bringing this Norse world to life.
Character Summary
Whether it’s the ultra-detailed main cast or the diversity of fantastical creatures, Ragnarök’s characters demonstrate PS5’s graphical potential through sheer detail and variety.
World Building
Expansive Environments
Ragnarök’s world stretches across the Nine Realms based on Norse mythology. Each realm has expansive, fully explorable environments like lakes, mountains, mines, forests, and temples brought to life through immense level of detail.
Destructible Environments
Certain objects can be destroyed during combat, adding dynamism to the environment. Debris, wood shards, and other particles spray in realistic fashion thanks to PS5’s physics processing. DualSense haptics even provide feedback when Kratos bashes through barricades.
Vivid Atmospherics
Volumetric fog, smoke, embers, and other effects fill the air, contributing to the ambiance of each location. Particles behave naturally as wind and character movements disturb them. These volumetric and particle effects are only possible through PS5’s strong atmospheric rendering.
World Summary
From the intricately crafted environments across Norse realms to the destructible objects within them, Ragnarök builds a vivid, grand world that lives and breathes on PS5 like never before.
Technical Showcase
4K Resolution
Ragnarök displays at a native 4K resolution (3840 x 2160). Sharp UI elements and text confirm its 4K assets aren’t simply upscaled. Combined with high quality textures and assets, 4K clarity is a defining visual feature.
60 FPS Frame Rate
Ragnarök maintains a rock-solid 60 FPS frame rate with v-sync for super smooth combat, traversal, and exploration. PS5’s custom processors allow 4K resolution simultaneously with a high frame rate where predecessors often sacrificed one for the other.
Instant Loading
Instant loading eliminates waiting screens thanks to PS5’s SSD. Coupled with virtual texturing, levels stream instantly with no pop-in. Fast traveling between realms happens in seconds, keeping the experience seamless.
DualSense Implementation
The DualSense controller adds immersive haptic feedback and adaptive triggers across gameplay, complementing the visuals with tactile sensations. Feeling every axe swing or bow shot reinforces the graphical showcase.
Technical Summary
Ragnarök simply checks every box – 4K clarity, a flawless 60 FPS rate, instant loading, and DualSense integration. It’s a true current-gen experience that flaunts PS5’s technical capabilities.
Conclusion
Through cutting edge lighting, extraordinarily detailed textures and assets, immense environments, and flawless technical features, God of War Ragnarök pushes PlayStation 5 to its utmost graphical limits. Few titles demonstrate PS5’s visual prowess to this degree. Ragnarök sets a benchmark in console gaming graphics this generation. Its mastery of PS5’s capabilities makes it a true sight to behold.
