It has been an entire yr since my Early Entry overview of Sons of the Forest, in which I discovered a deeply creepy – and deeply compelling – survival recreation that improved on its predecessor in nearly each manner. Having put round 10 hours into the now closing model since its 1.0 launch this week, I’ve discovered that it is largely the identical recreation to date. Rather a lot of the new stuff is positioned in the again of this unsettling story, which I’ve but to get to as of this writing, however I’ve positively seen a welcome armload of touch-ups and optimizations already.
The factor I observed instantly is how rather more polished Sons of the Forest has grow to be on the technical aspect. The animations that conceal the loading instances between the exterior world and caves, which might beforehand hitch for a number of seconds, now really feel fully seamless. The pop-in with floor litter is considerably much less distracting. My body charges, throughout the board, are significantly better. In reality, I reviewed the Early Entry model on a 1080p monitor. I am now taking part in at 4K on my identical, trusty RTX 3080, and the solely setting I wanted to vary was bumping DLSS down from “High quality” to “Balanced.” This has allowed me to take care of a really comfy 30+ fps in the outside world, and far increased in caves.
There’s additionally fairly a bit extra richness and context to the story, even in the early parts I’ve completed. Extra characters have voice appearing now, there are extra paperwork to be discovered explaining what is going on on with the island, and I’ve even come throughout a pair new surprises that weren’t there earlier than. One of my major criticisms of the Early Entry model was that the ending felt rushed and unfinished (which it was, to be truthful), so I am excited to see what they’ve completed with that, too. I have not performed by way of any of the late recreation story stuff that was added in a parade of patches between its Early Entry launch and now, so I can go in largely unspoiled. These little teases appear promising.
I’ve additionally observed some enhancements to the spawning and conduct of cannibals. They’re extra harmful than earlier than on default issue settings, with extra clever fight techniques and higher teamwork. Additionally they began showing in bigger teams a lot earlier in my playthrough than I had come to anticipate. It seems like defensive partitions and traps are literally a necessity now if you wish to have a profitable base, whereas in Early Entry I felt like they had been largely non-obligatory.
Kelvin is… nonetheless Kelvin. However for all his tendencies to sleep by way of a base raid or scare the shit out of me by popping up in my peripheral imaginative and prescient once we’re out mountaineering by way of the woods at night time, it is now simpler to difficulty him instructions. And there are extra of them, too, which makes him much more useful in maintaining with day-to-day base chores.
Except for that, nearly the whole lot I stated in the Early Entry overview holds up. Examine again all through the subsequent week, as I will be giving additional updates on my progress and assigning a closing rating at the finish!