Watching a deep-dive into The Ascent is kind of mindboggling, especially when you see just how much detail there is in the game.
Xbox published a long video into The Ascent on their channel early this morning, showing off the game’s performance on Xbox Series X. The video isn’t really about the game’s performance on Xbox hardware per se, but more about the effort that Neon Giant put into the twin-stick shooter.
The Ascent has always looked fun since it was first shown off, but what’s neat is just how dense the in-game world is. Take this short clip of a character running through a set of markets that look more authentic than some of the things in Cyberpunk 2077‘s Night City.
Even in the gameplay snippets between the developer interviews, you can easily see just how much stuff is going on in any given scene of The Ascent. It’s actually nutty how hard the developers nailed not only the cyberpunk aesthetic, but how many people, objects, ragdolls and just things these places have.
The studio also talked about adding a lot of points of interaction in the world for players, and the amount of animation, lines and vibrancy they gave NPCs. Enemies started to feel static because they lacked the same human characteristics, so Neon Giant added those behaviours into enemy NPCs as well.
It’s the kind of little detail that people really missed from something like Cyberpunk 2077. And while it’s not a comparable game at all — The Ascent is a vastly different product — it’s hard not to see how The Ascent won’t immediately appeal to that crowd.
Hell, you can even see at some points in the video below where The Ascent users similar fonts to CD Projekt’s magnum opus.
The Ascent drops on PC and Xbox next week, and it’ll be a Game Pass title as well. It’s got co-op for up to four players, and it’s looking like an absolute banger. Small spoiler: codes have already gone out, and I’m supremely annoyed that I can’t say anything more about it until next week. Stay tuned, folks.
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