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Digital Foundry: The Witcher 3 on Switch Hands-on – The Most Ambitious Switch Port Ever?
- Thread starter chandoog
- Start date
Jeez, those look good. I really can't understand people thinking this is ugly.
well if you wanna be a dick about it, I could say the console versions are shit because of the worse graphics and horrible framerate.
I play on PC, maxxed out with 120+ fps.
But playing this on the go? Now that has wanting to buying it again.
I would choose again to play this on PS4 / Xbone / PC first given the choise, but this game is so good it is worth multiple play throughs. And being able to play it on handheld is crazy.
I have the PC version, and given the choice, I'd rather play it on Switch. My PC's being used for more important things nowadays.
Fair enough. It is a beautiful looking game and there is a big difference visually, but it holds up to other Switch games pretty well (I would say Astral Chain looks more impressive in fidelity, detail, etc), but it has kept the complexity of the environments. This is a massive game.
Bare in mind this is the state of the game upon release. Who is to say there won't be any additional patches down the line that even squeeze out more performance as they optimize the game even further.
It happened recently when I fired up Warframe again after being away from it for a long time. I never recalled the game looking this sharp, but now areas where there were obvious performance drops have been smoothed out (like a certain HUB area where dozens of online avatars roam).
So while no-doubt Saber Interactive have pulled off some pretty amazing tricks here, I'm sure there's still room for optimization. Maybe they could look into more demoscene coders to work out more "black magic".
This looks far and above anything that I thought was possible on the Switch. There aren't even any obvisously blurry textures or stuff like it's always with these downports.
I hope this game starts a wave of developers getting more ambitious with the Switch. Even first party games like Fire Emblem have been lacking in the technical department recently.
I hope this game starts a wave of developers getting more ambitious with the Switch. Even first party games like Fire Emblem have been lacking in the technical department recently.
Sorry, this was about the new mariko switch test video of DF, the power usage is lowered but somehow the thermals are still the same as the OG switch.
yeah, they have only been working on it for a year, so that wouldn't surprise me. I am happy enough with the footage, but I do feel like there is a pretty decent difference between the docked footage shown on the witcher official channel here, and this handheld footage here. I think the encoding maybe messing up here though, it is apparently 25 fps, and messing up the image a bit? not sure. this looks better to me though than the handheld footage here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orbugcTgHEE
I was always refering to this footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ2rq9PLRpA
That's because the fan is not running as hard (or at all). The fan is set to maintain the same level of thermals on both units, so it only kicks in or ramps up after it gets to a certain temperature.
I mean, yeah that looks decent at 720p, but that ain't the game, thats cutscenes.
I obviously don't expect it to look like the PS4/Xbox One version 1:1, but it is a bit fugly and still better looking than I expected.
Still, these are in-engine cutscenes. And to be fair The Witcher 3 is probably like 75% cutscenes.
The Switch port negative band wagon really don't stop do they?
This is a technical marvel and still you got folks bending over backwards to paint it as ugly or unplayable.
Yall we know this aint a high end PC, there is always gonna be a trade off to get this on a very low power consuming mobile chip set.
The fact that we keep getting ports like this to a handheld are mindblowing especially considering last generation handheld capabilities. (Just look at what the 3DS and Vita could do maxed out and its leaps and bounds beyond them.)
This is a technical marvel and still you got folks bending over backwards to paint it as ugly or unplayable.
Yall we know this aint a high end PC, there is always gonna be a trade off to get this on a very low power consuming mobile chip set.
The fact that we keep getting ports like this to a handheld are mindblowing especially considering last generation handheld capabilities. (Just look at what the 3DS and Vita could do maxed out and its leaps and bounds beyond them.)
First it was "impossible", then it would be 170p with zero foliage and less than 3 NPCs in screen, and now that it's 720p with almost every effect and NPC persevered, all that remains is playing it snob and pointing the small compromises that had to be made to run the full experience in a glorified tablet. For instance, even if the npc density is the same, the fact that they appear 100m instead of 150m ahead of the character becomes somehow a big deal and completely changes the atmosphere of Novigrad. Whatever...
A) we already have plenty of gameplay footage, so we know how it looks
B) the in engine cutscenes are the majority of the gameplay, this is the Witcher 3 after all
Started the demo last evening in portable mode. And ... let me say it this way ... if you think that DQ XI portable is too blurry, don't play Witcher 3 on Switch. Neither portable, nor docked, not at all.
The majority of the game isn't cutscenes, what a ridiculous take.
Just watched the 10 min IGN vid. Pretty impressive that the devs pulled this off as well as they did, considering that there have been much less ambitious ports that ran much worse in the past
Gameplay almost always look better than direct screenshots, especially when comes to Switch games.
Those look crisp with pretty minimal aliasing. If it looks anywhere near that sharp during gameplay in handheld or blown up to a big TV I'll be impressed.
Not that it will affect me, I will play it anyway on the Switch, but wasn't it said somewhere that you can have control over this? Maybe I am wrong though, need to look this up.
We do indeed. And it's not like this. And more like this:
Those screenshots are the exception, not the rule.
Sorry, can't follow you here. What control?
The in-game cutscenes look better than the regular gameplay, simply because they're mostly zoomed-in while other gameplay is more zoomed-out. It gets blurrier the more zoomed-out it was and less blurry when closer to Geralt.
Close stuff, like when Geralt moves around in the tavern of White Orchard to ask for Yennefer comes close to those screens really.
The in-game cutscenes also look better than regular gameplay because you focus on a scene and not an open environnement with stuff loading and such. Point being, yess, cutscenes looks decent. But they don't reflect how the gameplay looks. And not all cutscenes look that decent. Some look pretty bad (the fire in Novigrad one, the bear attack one)
Look, i don't know what you're trying to tell me. I played it, it looks good for what this port is, save for the blurriness, which also varies on how strong it is. And i just told you that gameplay can certainly come closer to the screens than you would think, not only slow stuff, also battles, like the first battle against those 4 ghouls right after the first in-game cutscene.
Feel free to believe me or not, but i think i was able to get a good grasp about this port from the 20 minutes i played it. The demo obviously didn't allow players to play beyond White Orchard, so whatever Novigrad, Skellige or the DLC areas will keep performance is out of my knowledge.
Some people bought a new graphics card or a Pro or X especially for Witcher 3, played it 7 hours and than went to next game. Seeing the achievements of this game on consoles or Steam indicates that most people don't play to the end, perhaps to be forced sitting hours and hours in front of your TV/monitor is not exactly what most people want or can do.
And now people can play a fully intact version of Witcher 3 with some graphical compromises on a 200$ device on a plane, or TV, in bed and of course on the toilet, and that's bothers some, because they are human and want to assure themselves that they played the game "right" and spending hundred of dollars to play W3 was the right choice because the played it with better graphics.
Blurriness. This was something one could do with Doom (there were 2 controls that affected blur) and I seem to recall something similar said about Witcher 3. Could be wrong though.
"And now people can play a fully intact version of Witcher 3 with some graphical compromises on a 200$ device on a plane, or TV, in bed and of course on the toilet" - with a much better chance of completing the game or playing it for a long time and not just a few hours...
It seems that the HUD is always rendered at 720p in Handheld mode which is good!
At least it seems that way from the Nintendo at Gamescom coverage.
I'm seriously considering getting this on the Switch. I don't own it anywhere yet. But I also have my problems with making it through long games. So I'll see how and if I make it through 3 houses first and then decide.
At least it seems that way from the Nintendo at Gamescom coverage.
I'm seriously considering getting this on the Switch. I don't own it anywhere yet. But I also have my problems with making it through long games. So I'll see how and if I make it through 3 houses first and then decide.
I mean when "cutscenes" include every time you initiate dialog then yeah I'd say you will spend an enormous amount of time in these in engine cutscenes. Maybe majority is an exaggeration but not a huge one. I played the game for over 100 hours, outside of trying to climb some of those mountains in Skellige I felt like the majority of my play time was in dialog scenes or other cutscenes.
You're labeling "the other versions as if it was a monolithic block, but there's arguable more compromises going from PC to PS4 than there is from PS4 to Switch.
The former has reduced NPCs and effects, reduced foliage, and a drop from 60+fps down to 30. The latter has a reduced resolution and general asset quality, but the same NPC count, apparently mostly preserved effects, and the same framerate (which is reported quite consistent even in difficult areas). Overall, the experience from PS4 to Switch is in that regard closer than the experience from PC to PS4. "Butchered" is pure hyperbole.
The performance looks basically on par with the PS4 and XB1 versions when they launched. High 20s-30 most of the time, with some bigger dips into the low 20s in problem areas. I'm not sure where people are seeing big performance issues. Or maybe people just aren't remembering how the other console versions run.
I'd be surprised if they were on Switch, pre-rendered takes a lot of space and they need to cram everything they can in that cartridge.
Dev interview: https://nintendoeverything.com/the-witcher-3-interview-nintendo-switch-cd-projekt-red/
Saber approached them about the possibility of the port. Devs have dreamed about portable Witcher 3 much earlier. Loading times are sometimes shorter than on other consoles. Dynamic res is on at all times.
Saber approached them about the possibility of the port. Devs have dreamed about portable Witcher 3 much earlier. Loading times are sometimes shorter than on other consoles. Dynamic res is on at all times.