Sucker Punch recently revealed in the last GDC that Infamous Second Son characters raised the bar for polygon counts, utilizing as much as 120,000 polygons per character.
To be clear, this is definitely a significant jump in polygon count. Heavy Rain, released in 2010, used 15,000 polygons, and Beyond had 30,000 polygons. If you can still remember Uncharted 2, Drake himself was 37,000 polygons.
Now compared to its contemporaries, Infamous Second Son actually runs around average, possibly more on the low side. The Order: 1886 is at 100,000 polygons. Ryse’s Marius was lowered to 85,000 polygons with LODs, but lest we forget, Crytek actually pulled off 150,000 polygons on characters, but dropped it to use with better shaders.
Now, the interesting thing is this has raised a debate on whether Infamous Second Son looks good at all. Does that seem surprising to you? Of course, polygon count is not the only factor that affects graphical quality. Shaders, as well as resolution, are also contributing factors. In fact, Ryse is the quintessential case of a game that deliberately dropped achievable benchmarks to prioritize better overall performance.
And so, if you are willing to deal with it, some fans have brought up graphical issues with Second Son after first hand experience. There are times where shadowing under the jawline starts to get weird, and then there are the low resolution skin textures. Some people even questioned whether Delsin wore the beanie to simplify animating him! For the record, his head made for 60,000 polygons, and the beanie another 7,500 polygons on its own.
Some fans also gripe that the game does not really make use of the PS4’s full graphical capabilities. Lest we get into pointless arguments over PS4’s power, and Second Son’s use of that power, let’s just make it clear; the game looks impressive, and that is one of the things that makes the game.
