The only thing that feels off is the flashlight effect used to depict the scene at night. The sound of cicadas and station loudspeaker announcements enhance the immersion, as the light reflects off of damp concrete with remarkable detail. Enhancing the effect is a virtual camera that moves around like a smartphone would, vertical orientation and all.

The footage comes from 3D environment artist Lorenzo Drago, who replicated Toyoma, Japan’s Etchū-Daimon station in Unreal Engine 5, with the stated goal of getting as close to photorealism as possible. With games achieving the level of visual fidelity they do now, it’s hard to be impressed with mere “realism.” That said, it’s not impossible, because I've spent the last 15 minutes staring at a YouTube video of an empty train station that, if no one told me it was an Unreal Engine 5 demo, I would have sworn was real.

In the early days, video game technology advanced in dazzling leaps and bounds, from a few pixels to countless pixels to polygons to whatever they use in The Last of Us Part 2.

Unreal engine reddit