It doesn't happen often in this industry anymore, but seeing a demo of Days Gone at Sony's big PlayStation 4 Pro showcase actually surprised us this week. The game looked pretty at E3 2016, no question – but running on the Japanese giant's supercharged hardware it's actually a candidate for the greatest looking game ever made. No joke.

The title was wedged up in the corner of the show floor, sandwiched between a wall and Horizon: Zero Dawn. But despite its poor placement, it actually wound up the most impressive thing that we saw on the day – and let us clarify that Guerrilla Games' post-post-apocalyptic adventure and the various other titles on display were no slouch.

The thing about Days Gone is that it looks so outrageously good on the PS4 Pro that we're even feeling slight pangs of scepticism regarding its authenticity. We weren't allowed to play or photograph it, but we were told that it was a special demo that developer Sony Bend had crafted in order to showcase the power of Sony's new console. And it sure succeeded.

Days Gone PS4 PlayStation 4 Sony Bend 1

Using a toggle baked into the control scheme, we were shown just how much clarity the 4K resolution adds to the scene. Switching from 1080p to UHD, individual leaves in the Oregon outback came into focus, each animated individually and governed by the game world's physics and weather effects. The stitching on protagonist Deacon's clothing was visible, and so too was paint peeling off walls.

And this is without even mentioning HDR, which brings a kind of drama and believability to the skyboxes that's hard to describe until you see it in person. One section that we were shown took place at night, and centred on Molotov cocktails being tossed into the darkness, illuminating the entire scene with showers of embers – truly incredible stuff.

Whether the teensy Bend-based developer can get the entire game to the same standard very much remains to be seen, but given the mainstream appeal of the concept and the fidelity of the visuals, it's very possible that Sony may have a sleeper hit on its hands here. Who'd have thought that an ex-handheld developer would graduate to the status of tech powerhouse so quickly?

[source bit.ly]