The Wii U might not get as many Unreal Engine 4 games as we’d like, and so animator Michael Eurek thought it would be a great idea to recreate the Temple of Time from the Legend of Zelda games, just to show how good an HD Zelda game would look like in 2014.
It took him six months using Maya, Z-brush and Photoshop, capturing the results in UE4:
And here’s the original Temple of Time for comparison:
Temple of Time [Vimeo]
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11 responses to “Zelda’s Temple Of Time, Rebuilt In Unreal Engine 4”
Dammit Nintendo!
Why can’t you make powerful consoles like you used too?
Because ultimately while it had a more powerful processor, the n64 was hamstrung by the garbage tech at the time. Its why every game had a view distance of like twenty meters.
Nope.
The N64 had fantastic looking games at the time.
Not ‘top-of-the-line PC’ great, but consoles never have been.
If you think the N64 had garbage tech then you clearly never played Mario 64, OOT or Goldeneye anywhere near the time they came out. Those games were heralded as looking goddam amazing at the time and the draw distance in those games was as good as possibly could have been expected on 1996/97 (or whenever it was) hardware.
The ‘fog’ effect was used in lots of N64 games, but it was largely a result of the cartridge format. If you remember back to their competition at the time, the PS1 and Sega Saturn, then it was very common on those systems for gameworlds to ‘pop-up’ as you approached, often no further away than the N64 ‘fog’ effect would come into place. Neither are a good choice but I’d rather have a gameworld shrouded in fog than be able to see the end of the universe off in the distance only for the ground to pop (in large blocks) out of nowhere once I approached.
The N64 tech was undoubtedly more powerful than its competition at the time. It was at least as far ahead of its nearest competition (the PS1) as the PS4 is to the Xbone, probably significantly further.
The 64’s only strength was its processor, its texture memory was tiny and its format for games (cartridges) was terrible inefficient and expensive for publishers. You are ignoring some pretty important draw backs, all in the name of rose coloured glasses. I am not saying the competitors were better, I am saying that people always forget that its performance in exclusive titles weren’t that good as textures tended to be stretched over very large distances and at times the frame rate would fall apart at the seems while doing pretty simple animations.
It had the best looking, best running, most complex games available on a console during its generation.
I don’t know what more you could want! No hardware has ever been without flaws, everything could always be better. But it was great for its time. It’s got nothing to do with rose coloured glasses, I’m not saying it looks great now.
“its performance in exclusive titles weren’t that good”
WTF are you talking about?
ALL the best performing N64 titles were exclusive. Mostly because it was the done thing at the time (to make exclusives), but also because of the unique cartridge format. Mario 64, Starfox 64, Goldeneye, Waverace, Mario Kart, Banjo Kazooie, OOT… all brilliant looking games at the time, top of the market….. ALL exclusives.
The framerates were good for what they were doing at the time. They aren’t good now, but what the hell kind of comparison is that? Nobody ever complained about slowdown in Mario 64, nobody ever whinged about the (fantastic) draw distances on Hyrule field.
Goldeneye had slowdown, not unplayable slowdown, but noticeable. It’s “pretty simple animations” were absolutely revolutionary at the time. I’m not sure you remember, but prior to Goldeneye enemies walked forward and shot, that was it. When they died they fell down in the same scripted animation and that was the end of them.
Visual effects when you hit the guns, hats flying off, 15 odd different death animations depending on where the bullet hit, barrel rolls to avoid fire, shooting off their knees….. absolutely unheard of up until that point. Certainly not “simple animations”.
If I’ve got the rose coloured glasses on then I don’t want to know what yours are made of. All old technology is going to look shit years down the track.
You seem to think I am having a go about the N64, of which I am not. I just said that while the processor was better it had a terrible amount of memory committed to texturing, the cartridges were expensive (hence the relatively small library, which also led to it selling less that the PS) and it suffered from poor frame rates on a good chunk of its library (which is a well known problem).
PS, hyrule field is a poor example as there is next to nothing to animate and its textures are stretched to ridiculous levels.
Every console from that era had framerate issues in a large majority of titles though. Seriously are you telling me that the average PS1 game looked and ran smoother than the average N64 game? I couldn’t say for sure that the N64 was better, just that framerate issues in those days were par for the course across all consoles.
I’d have to say that the cartridge prices didn’t have a big as an effect on sales compared to several other factors too.
For one, the PS1 was a huge success in its own right. It had great games, was well marked and was always going to sell.
The other thing which contributed to the PS1 selling so much better than the N64 was piracy. I think for every person who said “I’m not buying a N64 because the carts are too expensive” there were 2 people who said “I’m buying a PS1 because I can pirate the games for a few bucks”.
Either way, there’s no denying at all that the N64 was a powerful console for its time, just like the SNES was and to a lesser extent the Gamecube (which was second to the original Xbox but more powerful than the PS2). To go back to my original statement, it is annoying that Nintendo don’t keep up in the hardware race anymore. The Wii and WiiU have undisputedly trailed their competition.
Also if you can name me a bigger, more detailed, better running open world than Hyrule Field from that era then I’d love to hear it. Seriously, have a go.
Off the top of my head the only game I can think of that actively had frame rate issues was G-police and any one that played that game knew why, there were absolutely insane amounts of things being animated on screen at any one point in time.
Any argument about sales is silly… Nintendo sold one third of the consoles that Sony did. ONE THIRD. Get reckt. JKS.
You say its more powerful and you are somewhat right, it took two years for them to come up with a more powerful processor and even then it still didn’t justify the problems it had with sharing memory between sound and video. The common theme here is your claim that Nintendo one upon a time release consoles later in their respective generations and that was how they maintained some form of technical superiority, but in reality their games were rarely of better quality. I personally feel like one of the worst ideas they ever had was making Mario 3D, it removed the charm and replaced it with barren 3D environments.
But that is the thing, Hyrule field isn’t detailed… and I can’t find a more detailed one because there is a certain point where a developer should ask why the heck is it here as it serves no real point other than to make the jump from areas a little bit more sensible. It might have a large draw distance, but there is nothing in it, I mean you could claim other games don’t have that draw distance, but the more accurate way of saying it would be that other games can’t afford to have it when they actually have to animate more than one object in the area. I think you are touting something that honestly is not worth even noting.
Oh and any map from Mechwarrior 2 for playstation 1… Jokes… Sorta.
Amazing
Stunning!
Eh, too realistic and sombre. While impressive looking, it doesn’t feel like a Zelda game. I really cannot understand the push for “realistic” as a hallmark of graphical quality.
I concur I do like the realistic Zeldas a bit more but I don’t think it needs to be a fully realist world which at least they admitted that they were not going to aim for hyper realism in this new game if it looked like their e3 tech demo I’d be good but I’m going to buy it and enjoy it no matter what it looks like.