Over the final week, I’ve sat by Horizon Zero Dawn‘s lengthy optimisation process more times than I care to count. Most people will only ever have to do this once when they play Horizon, but in my attempts to benchmark the game with lots of different graphics cards, it meant sitting through that 10-15 minute start-up sequence every time I put a new card inside my PC. Most times, it worked absolutely fine. But there was one occasion when something had clearly gone horribly, horribly wrong. I’d by chance turned Horizon Zero Dawn into an N64 game.
The perpetrator was my trusty AMD Radeon R9 290, which is the minimal AMD GPU listed in Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC requirements. It’s one of many few classic AMD playing cards that helps DirectX 12, you see, which can also be a requirement to get Horizon up and working. However, the R9 290 wasn’t at all times a DirectX 12 appropriate card. Back when it first got here out within the autumn of 2013, it solely supported the present Direct X 11.2.
Indeed, it wasn’t till Windows 10 arrived in 2015 that DX12 actually even grew to become a factor on PC. Fortunately, the way in which DirectX 12 labored meant it was nonetheless appropriate with a variety of current {hardware} again then, and any AMD graphics card constructed round their outdated GCN 1.Zero structure or larger was supported. This included the R9 290, however it’s additionally extensively documented that AMD playing cards on the time didn’t essentially assist each accessible DirectX 12 function.
This is the very first thing that got here to thoughts once I tried benchmarking the R9 290, because it was clearly loading in some of the game world, however not one of the buildings, bushes, or a lot of something, actually. The solely factor it nearly appeared in a position to do was render folks, and even then… YIKES.
I didn’t truly discover what had occurred to the folks within the game’s benchmark at first. I clearly noticed that half the town of Meridian had vanished into nothing, however the digicam strikes so quick by this big, city panorama it took me a very good minute or so to grasp precisely what was happening.
When I lastly clocked their blurry little faces, it was like I’d stepped again in time. Back to the age when you possibly can reduce your self open on a personality’s pointy chin, when faces solely had three massive pixels between them to indicate any type of element, and everybody walked round with tiny triangular pigeon toes. I do find it irresistible when graphics playing cards go flawed, and I ended up working it once more simply to drink in all its N64-style glory (and to verify it wasn’t a bizarre, one-time glitch, after all).
Clearly, one thing was up, however as I’d solely run the benchmark to date, I used to be curious to see if the identical factor occurred in-game. Lo and behold, it wasn’t simply the benchmark that had gone full N64. Aloy, Rost and the whole lot of the Mother’s Embrace area was additionally doing their greatest N64 impression – though poor Aloy didn’t even get the courtesy of a blurry face for her bother.
More horrifying than Assassin’s Creed Unity’s scary eyeballs.
Such magnificence, such majesty!
I really like Aloy’s little chibi ham fists.
Daddy Rost might have a face, however his arms have fully disappeared.
Thankfully, the following time I booted up the game with my R9 290, the game had sorted itself out and I used to be in a position to benchmark it correctly with all of its correct particulars in tact. We might by no means know precisely what made Horizon Zero Dawn out of the blue flip into an N64 game, however I loved the temporary glimpse it gave me right into a bygone period of gaming. It jogged my memory of happier instances, but in addition of simply how far 3D games have are available in (lawd) twenty years. If my ten-year-old self knew that games would appear to be this…
…in twenty years time, I believe it in all probability would have shattered my tiny little thoughts.
