The Ascent came out a little over a week ago, and it looks like it's doing pretty well for itself. The game raked in over $5 million on its opening weekend, which might mean people are getting drawn back to the Cyberpunk aesthetic after the whole 2077 debacle.
It helps that The Ascent is one of the most gorgeous indie games ever made. From the trailers shown off last year to the full 4K and ray-traced gameplay, The Ascent’s visuals put many AAA games to shame.
What’s even more amazing is that those visuals aren’t just great when looking down from above. Although The Ascent’s camera is fixed in an isometric view owing to it being a twin-stick shooter, a new video shows how the game would look in first-person.
Kotaku spotted this video from YouTuber Gaming with Griff Griffin that shows off The Ascent’s cyberpunk world from down in the gritty, rain-filled streets. Griffin uses a tool called Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker to unlock The Ascent’s camera during gameplay, allowing you to take control and really look at the game’s every nook and cranny.
What you'll find is an amazing level of detail. Everything from the floating cars to the parked hoverbikes to the streets and neon signs has intricate and detailed elements that you just can't appreciate from above. Go close into the bikes and you'll see each has a holo keyboard on the dash. Zoom into the character models to see their facial scars and fogged-up goggles. Even the skyline and billboards that surround each floor of The Ascent look positively stunning.
It almost makes you sad that this is a twin-stick shooter and not an immersive sim like Skyrim or even Cyberpunk 2077. But considering The Ascent's frenetic, almost bullet-hell-like action, trying to play this game in first-person would be impossible.
Just about the only thing they didn’t do is animate facial expressions on each character--probably because it would be both incredibly time-consuming and extremely unlikely that anyone would ever actually see anyone else's mouth move. But given how much detail went into the rest of the game, you gotta think that Team Reptile at least thought about animating each and every alien face you see.