Tekken is one of the most respected and revered fighting game franchises of all time, and Bandai Namco has managed to stay relevant over the course of multiple decades thanks to an engaging storyline and meaningful updates to the gameplay. After a long and arduous wait, Tekken 8 is finally here – and is looking like a bold step towards the future of the franchise.
Tekken 8 not only brings a ton of changes to the gameplay loop but also uplifts the visual presentation by a significant margin. While that is to be expected from a release gap that spans almost seven years, it’s always interesting to really zoom in on the nitty-gritty details and take a look at what’s changed under the hood. With this feature, we will be doing a comprehensive graphical analysis of Tekken 8, comparing it with what came before – and also talking about performance metrics.
Tekken 8 vs Tekken 7 – Game Engine And Overview
Much like Tekken 7 before, Tekken 8 is also using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to power its visuals. But unlike Tekken 7 which used Unreal Engine 4, Tekken 8 has switched over to an Unreal Engine 5 based rendering pipeline and the differences are pretty substantial. Everything from the texture work to the lighting and reflections and particle effects has seen a significant bump in quality over Tekken 7.
That said, there’s a general sentiment that Bandai Namco hasn’t fully utilized the power of Unreal Engine 5 with this latest fighter – and there seems to be some truth to the fact. As revealed by the developer, Tekken 8 isn’t making use of certain UE5 specific features like Nanite and Lumen to avoid performance pitfalls – and those things are pretty evident in the final presentation.
Character Models
Like every other fighting game, Tekken 8 places a ton of attention on how its character models are rendered. Take a look at Tekken 7 where we get to see what seems pretty rudimentary use of physically based materials for the clothes and similarly primitive hair meshes. They did look pretty good for the time, but they most definitely pale in comparison to what we have in Tekken 8.
Thanks to a switch to the newer generation of consoles, Tekken 8 has a ton of graphical horsepower to play with. And the developer makes excellent use of that added luxury to create character models that are brimming with details on every front. The skin meshes are beautifully complex with a high polycount, and the physically based materials on the clothes have a lot more detailing than before. In addition to this, there are also several improvements on the hair physics front, with hair strands both looking and functioning in a realistic manner.
Environments
Like the case with the character models, the stages in a fighting game like Tekken 8 play a huge role when it comes to shaping the overall visual presentation. Tekken 8’s vast array of diverse stages features a bunch of interesting details peppered throughout – ranging from the backdrop geometry to the destruction mechanics and much more.
Take for instance, the starting stage where we get to see several volumes of smoke rising in the background, a police vehicle set ablaze on fire, and a bunch of rubble which all adds a lot of details to any given stage. Asset quality in general has seen a major bump, and there’s also a significant improvement in how distant objects in the stage are rendered – which now have a lot more detail than Tekken 7 and look a lot more convincing as a result.
Tekken 8 also seems to place a lot of focus on destruction, which helps in selling the impact of each fatal slam and vicious punch that you land on your opponents. The stage slowly and steadily devolves into a crumbled version of itself as the rounds keep on progressing, and each fall is accompanied by a wave of dust spreading out from the character which looks really cool.
Lighting And Reflections
Tekken 8 is confirmed to not be using Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen technology, so it’s very possible that the game might be using some sort of pre-baked lighting solution given the static nature of stages or it might be using nonray tracing global illumination. It’s definitely not cutting edge in comparison with other contemporaries that utitlize the same engine, but it looks good nevertheless and provides a noticeable bump in comparison to Tekken 7.
The difference is most visible in how indirect lighting works, as you can see how light from different sources bounces across the screen to create a convincing look. Reflections also seem to take into account the transparency of different materials, and that combined with the general lighting effects makes for some really great backdrops that are rich with detail and character.
Post Processing
The jump to Unreal Engine 5 might be most pronounced in the post-processing aspect of Tekken 8. The post-processing pipeline has seen some great improvements, right from the alpha particles to motion blur and much more. Starting with the particle effects, Tekken 8 features some great quality alpha particles – and the game uses the extra horsepower on the current-gen consoles to flaunt that feature whenver possible. Motion blur is also of pretty high quality, and we didn’t notice any artifacts or oddities along object edges during our tests.
The game also makes generous use of volumetric smoke, and it looks pretty good in action – but not everything is great here. For instance, the anti-aliasing looks like it could use some work, since you will be find signs of upscaling artifacting pretty easily. It’s clear that the game is being rendered at a lower internal resolution, and is being upscaled using an FXAA or MSAA solution to 4K – but the implementation isn’t really up to the mark.
Graphics Modes, Performance, And Loading Times
Coming over to the graphics modes, Tekken 8 on consoles only features a single graphics mode. As previously mentioned, it internally renders the game at a lower resolution and upscales it to a target resolution of 4K while keeping the frame rate target of 60fps. While having a 30fps fidelity mode wouldn’t make much sense in such a fast-paced game like this, the developer could have also gone for a secondary performance mode that runs at 1080p or 1440p with 120fps.
Circling back to the start of the feature where we talked about how Tekken 8 doesn’t use UE 5-specific features like Nanite or Lumen, those cutbacks were made with the perspective of maximizing performance. And we think it’s safe to say that performance in Tekken 8 is rock solid for the most part. During our tests, we didn’t encounter any noticeable frame drops – and the game was able to comfortably chug along with its performance targets.
Tekken 8 also makes good use of the current-gen console SSDs to quickly load in assets, and loading times are pretty snappy across all modes. It takes a couple of seconds to go from menus to gameplay, which is a big step up from Tekken 7 which could take almost half a minute for the same job.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Tekken 8 is a solid step forward for the franchise and a considerable step up from Tekken 7’s visual presentation. It might not boast the best use of Unreal Engine 5, but it manages to strike a great balance between the visuals and the performance that’s rock solid and rarely falters.