Indiana Jones, Hellblade 2 and Star Wars Outlaws compete for DF’s ‘best graphics of the year’ award

Every year, the Digital Foundry team share their notes about the most technologically impressive games of the year – and in a wide-ranging 108-minute discussion, John Linneman, Alex Battaglia and Oliver Mackenzie share their honorable mentions and a top ten list of titles that caught their attention. However, just like last year, it’s the top three games that truly stand apart and once again, deciding which game takes champion standing was the subject of intense debate.

Where there is unanimous agreement is in the placing of Star Wars Outlaws in the number three position. The game is lauded for bringing the ‘lived in’ Star Wars aesthetic to gaming in a simply brilliant manner, powered by Ubisoft Massive’s state-of-the-art Snowdrop engine. From a technological standpoint, the use of RT reflections, diffuse global illumination and RT shadows is a remarkable achievement bearing in mind the relatively limited ray tracing hardware available on consoles. The fact that the PC version also has a path tracing alternative (RTXDI) for higher-end hardware is the cherry on top.

It’s a stunning achievement overall, let down only by its cutscenes where animation actually seems to look sub-par compared to in-game animation.

• 0:00:00 Introduction
• 0:01:58 Honourable mentions: STALKER 2, Persona 3 Reload, Metaphor ReFantazio, Nightdive Studios, Tiny Glade, FF7 Rebirth, Power Rangers
• 0:20:46 Dragon’s Dogma 2
• 0:26:35 Riven
• 0:30:32 Dragon Age: The Veilguard
• 0:37:24 Silent Hill 2
• 0:48:50 Astro Bot
• 0:54:32 Penny’s Big Breakaway
• 0:58:05 Black Myth: Wukong
• 1:08:49 Star Wars Outlaws vs Hellblade 2 vs Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Where opinion is divided is in the placing of the top two games: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Obviously, from a gameplay perspective, MachinesGames’ epic is a clear winner – but that’s obviously not the focus of a Digital Foundry ‘Best Graphics of 2024’ discussion. Hellblade 2 was lauded for its astonishing character work and virtual camera, to the point where some environments look almost indistinguishable from real-life footage.

The scope is far more limited than Indiana Jones but it also makes for a tight, commendable level of consistent quality across the experience. It’s a heavy game, but also surprisingly scalable – Hellblade 2 can run on Steam Deck, while the 30fps limit on consoles is easily surpassed on more capable PCs.

The team ultimately agreed that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle should take the coveted ‘graphics of the year’ accolade. The sheer quality and quantity of its objects, environments are remarkable, while the utilisation of good quality RT global illumination on all console versions – and at a high resolution on Xbox Series X – can’t be ignored.

The fact that the game is effectively locked at a perfect 60fps is another feather in the cap for MachineGames’ epic, while the PC version running unlocked is a remarkably consistent experience with no stutter. We were also impressed by how far the PC version scales beyond the console versions thanks to the inclusion of path tracing – and that’s ultimately why the panel gave the nod to Indy: while Hellblade 2 barely puts a pixel wrong in what Ninja Theory set out to achieve, there are hard limits there – no support for hardware-accelerated RT, for example. Indiana Jones provides that in spectacular style, while taking it to the next level with the ‘full RT’ upgrade… and while that is computationally expensive, it is still accessible even to hardware like an RTX 4070.

Of course, as the chapter list above strongly suggests, there’s a lot more to this discussion than just the top three alone, so if you have some spare time, do check out the full video (or podcast) where the team discuss a good many games!