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Mochi

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
1,704
Seattle
I was actually disappointed in Anthem. It does look great, but not as mind-blowing as I expected.

Red dead redemption 2 looks amazing but I was disappointed in the hair and people in general outside of the main cast.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 probably takes the cake for me though. It's a fun game but I can't stand the IQ.
 

BizzyBum

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,132
New York
Was the Witcher 3 downgraded? Yes, but only because it had to run on consoles.

It was still an absolutely gorgeous game maxed out on PC and still is to this day and it came out in 2015.

Fucking lol at people who say the game looks ugly.
 

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,374
I mean, if they wanted TW3 to run on Xbox One and PS4 they had to downgrade the game lol
Publishers and developers will always want "parity" between version, Metro Exodus is the only exception thanks to RTX.

And lol at calling TW3 ugly.

The Division was downgraded
Anthem as well
The biggest offender is Watch_Dogs
PS4 & XO could have done better & the PC version could have kept it's visuals, the time & effort to optimise & develop that original vision though for 3 platforms was just too much for CDPR, they really should have never shown that demo, really the final game looked amazing for 2015 anyway & there was no need to BS.
 

GymWolf86

Banned
Nov 10, 2018
4,663
tlozwiiu2015.905f1115438.original.jpg


Breath of the Wild is one of my favorite games ever, but damn would this have been nice.
Lol this video always kill me
 

BizzyBum

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,132
New York
Yet games like Horizon and RDR2 look much better than Witcher 3 on console.

Okay? Those games came out years later further down the console's life cycle.

edit: and as Crossing Eden pointed out in his post below: One an exclusive tailor made with a specific sku in mind and the other one of the most expensive games ever made by a much larger team.
 
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Fart Master

Prophet of Truth
The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
10,320
A dumpster
Witcher 3 is really ugly.

It can look great at times but overall its a very ugly looking game. the trees and foliage look absolutely disgusting under some lighting conditions.

the game needs the right amount of weather effects like wind, overcast conditions, massive vistas and lighting to make it look good or actually great, but i would say 50% of the time it looks fugly like in the gif posted in the OP. i played the game for almost a 100 hours so i know it doesnt always look that badthat but it does look like that a lot.

Anthem had the biggest downgrade though.
Then Dark Souls 2
Finally Watch Dogs.

Dishonarable mention goes to Naughty Dog trying to fool us into thinking the first Uncharted 4 teaser was realtime. the final game clearly doesnt look as good but their gameplay demos were on par with the final product so i cant be too harsh on them. their cutscenes came pretty close to that initial teaser.

EDIT: for comparison's sake.

untitled_1_by_saxrussel-d8wwfjc.gif

tumblr_od5uubNiBm1rbijdfo2_r1_500.gif

tumblr_od5uubNiBm1rbijdfo1_r1_500.gif

6qszGFR.gif


Lighting and foliage quality looks a gen behind.
How about you compare it to games that came out around the same timeframe.
 

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
53,295
Witcher 3 is really ugly.

It can look great at times but overall its a very ugly looking game. the trees and foliage look absolutely disgusting under some lighting conditions.

the game needs the right amount of weather effects like wind, overcast conditions, massive vistas and lighting to make it look good or actually great, but i would say 50% of the time it looks fugly like in the gif posted in the OP. i played the game for almost a 100 hours so i know it doesnt always look that badthat but it does look like that a lot.

Anthem had the biggest downgrade though.
Then Dark Souls 2
Finally Watch Dogs.

Dishonarable mention goes to Naughty Dog trying to fool us into thinking the first Uncharted 4 teaser was realtime. the final game clearly doesnt look as good but their gameplay demos were on par with the final product so i cant be too harsh on them. their cutscenes came pretty close to that initial teaser.

EDIT: for comparison's sake.

untitled_1_by_saxrussel-d8wwfjc.gif

tumblr_od5uubNiBm1rbijdfo2_r1_500.gif

tumblr_od5uubNiBm1rbijdfo1_r1_500.gif

6qszGFR.gif


Lighting and foliage quality looks a gen behind.
I for one cannot believe that the witcher 3 does not look as good as games that came out 2-3 years after it's release. One an exclusive tailor made with a specific sku in mind and the other one of the most expensive games ever made by a much larger team.

So because it looks great it's not a downgrade anymore?
It is insanely difficult to be annoyed by graphical changes when the dev still released one of the best looking games of all time.

How about you compare it to games that came out around the same timeframe.
Inb4 screenshots of 2014-15 games with much smaller maps than the witcher 3 are posted.
 

Rodjer

Self-requested ban.
Member
Jan 28, 2018
4,808
Yet games like Horizon and RDR2 look much better than Witcher 3 on console.

A 2017 game developed for one platform looks better than a 2015 multiplatform game.

The most expensive 2018 game made thanks to over 1000 people and a high budget is better than a 2015 game.

Woaw
 

DigSCCP

Banned
Nov 16, 2017
4,201
Was the Witcher 3 downgraded? Yes, but only because it had to run on consoles.

It was still an absolutely gorgeous game maxed out on PC and still is to this day and it came out in 2015.

Fucking lol at people who say the game looks ugly.

Yeah no.
We have better looking OW games on consoles than TW3...even prettier than TW3 maxed out.
To be honest I was never impressed with TW visuals, not even on PC. The scale was really something else thats true but even games like AC Unity were already better looking games than TW when it released.
 

IMACOMPUTA

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,528
Hell even last gen, unless you are deliberately latching on to Sony's PR fuck up of calling a pre-rendered target as real time demonstration which they later rectified, it is hard to justify that claim.
Sorry to go off-topic, but that e3 2005 trailer was the king of all bullshot/downgrade/false-advertisement blunders. I said it mostly as a joke because its a very dead horse at this point, but it would absolutely be worth mentioning.
 

Pancracio17

â–˛ Legend â–˛
Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
18,690
Man if Zelda looked like its E3 2014 version...

Maybe in the Switch 2. I still really like the look though.
 
Dec 12, 2017
587
Anthem for me. It was so obvious from the reveal trailer that the final game would NOT look like that. The biggest offender is the city at the beginning, which looked staggeringly good in the reveal, and looks like absolute ASS in the final game.
 

noomi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,686
New Jersey
Anthem and Crackdown 3 IMO.

Anthem is still a gorgeous game, but the pre-reease trailers were on another level graphically.
 
Feb 10, 2018
17,534
Also i've come to expect visual changes from pre release gameplay to retail.
It's just the way game development is.

So don't expect cyberpunk to look like it does in the demo even on high spec pcs/ next gen, visual changes happen to nearly every game, cyberpunk won't be an exception.
 

Thera

Banned
Feb 28, 2019
12,876
France
Watch_Dogs
The Division
Rainbow Six
Wildlands
Ubisoft - The thread

The Witcher III was a let down

An other one I don't see often mentioned (even if cross gen) is MGS V. Remember Kojima, each time we saw the game, said we were seeing the PS3 version. The PS4 version is not even close to each of the gameplay trailer / presentation.
 

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
Sorry to go off-topic, but that e3 2005 trailer was the king of all bullshot/downgrade/false-advertisement blunders. I said it mostly as a joke because its a very dead horse at this point, but it would absolutely be worth mentioning.

There is a NoClip documentary on the making of Horizon Zero Dawn where GG rep talks about the witnessing the blunder unfold as they helplessly watched from Netherlands during E3. Yea, it was a real screw up.
 

kraftdinner

Alt account
Banned
Mar 8, 2019
254
I don't get how can The Division be a part of this list since to me it's one of the most beautiful game I've ever seen on PC. It's astonishingly good looking, even by today's standard. Of all the downgrades that were mentioned and represented via a picture comparison or gif comparison, this is the game that appears to me as the less downgraded of them all.


So because it looks great it's not a downgrade anymore? That's the most stupid thing I've heard today.

I don't think anyone is saying there was no downgrade when it comes to The Witcher 3. There really is a disparity between the old trailer and the game released. It's still a strikingly beautiful game though. But I'm pretty sure what the poster meant was that The Witcher 3 definitely isn't among the worst graphical downgrades of this gen. I'd say Dark Souls 2 and Watch Dogs would be the obvious answers for most.
 

zombiejames

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,916
I'd take The Witcher 3's visual downgrade if it came with a combat upgrade.

Right now I'd say it's a toss-up between Watchdogs and Anthem. With Anthem people are more focussed with the gameplay and bugs so the visual downgrade isn't getting much talk, but it's huge.
 

TenaciousD

Banned
Mar 6, 2018
481
Was the Witcher 3 downgraded? Yes, but only because it had to run on consoles.

In reality I doubt it had much to do with consoles. As those leak docs show, the game was running on consoles back in 2014 using the old renderer.

No one outside of CDPR will know the actual reason. I suspect there was a PC and console renderer, sort of like what they had with TW2 on PC and 360. They ran out of time and had to cut the multiple renderers, and hastily merged what they had. They cut the far more interesting combat system, and a significant part of the story that was promised (the plague questline with Iorveth, Roche, Ves, Thaler, Emhyr, Gaunter, Triss ect) as well as all the WIld Hunt content (the infiltration quest, the end game battle in Novigrad and the dream sequences).

The game was never going to look like the 2013 reveal and VGX trailers, CDPR literally said that, because it was still running in TW2 engine, but it should have looked like the 2014 Gameplay demo. Nothing in that demo looked out of reach. Cyerpunk looks far more complex, and CDPR still claims it's coming to current gen.

Anyway, Witcher 3 for me. The downgrade was one thing. Lying about the downgrade, and claiming that you'd need DX12 and that the team had to focus on making 5000 doors work in Novigrad were the reasons is a slap in the face to anyone with a brain. Cutting Iorveth after literraly saying he was in the game is still something that pisses me off. Then lying about that as well for two years before admitting they screwed up.
 

Edgar

User requested ban
Banned
Oct 29, 2017
7,180
I for one cannot believe that the witcher 3 does not look as good as games that came out 2-3 years after it's release. One an exclusive tailor made with a specific sku in mind and the other one of the most expensive games ever made by a much larger team.


It is insanely difficult to be annoyed by graphical changes when the dev still released one of the best looking games of all time.


Inb4 screenshots of 2014-15 games with much smaller maps than the witcher 3 are posted.
You would think as hardcore as this forum is , people would know how development process changes with each road block and year. You would also think context would be crucial to understanding these comparisons , thats just common sense
 

Dr Pears

Member
Sep 9, 2018
2,670
I think Witcher 3 and Watch Dogs are both equally the worst downgrades graphically.

It's just that Witcher 3 didn't get shat on as much as Watch Dogs because the rest of the game was good at least.
 

Blade Wolf

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,512
Taiwan
Why are people defending Witcher 3 so hard? It's a great game, it looks good, it's heavy downgraded. These are all facts, what's there to argue?
 

Bansai

Teyvat Traveler
Member
Oct 28, 2017
11,216
The worst was W_D without a doubt, the game not only looked worse but also you couldn'e replicate what was shown in the demo with the traffic light fuckery.

The most disappointing to me however was Zelda: BOTW :/

1487616440-1487600702490.jpg


Still hurts. Witcher 3 is up there too.
 

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
53,295
This would be a good argument if we hadn't actually seen the game pre-downgrade
They literally admitted that it would've been too expensive and time consuming for them to work with that version of the renderer. And no, it's highly likely that TW3 would've still been surpassed visually by games coming out years later. People always talk about the super quick glimpses we saw in those trailers, but never about the screenshots from when that time period:
the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-screen-8.jpg


It still wouldn't have looked as good as Horizon or Red Dead

You would think as hardcore as this forum is , people would know how development process changes with each road block and year. You would also think context would be crucial to understanding these comparisons , thats just common sense
Common sense tends to fly out the window when PRETTY PRETTY SHINY SHINY -----> PRETTY PRETTY SHINY.
 

Wamb0wneD

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
18,735
Was the Witcher 3 downgraded? Yes, but only because it had to run on consoles.

It was still an absolutely gorgeous game maxed out on PC and still is to this day and it came out in 2015.

Fucking lol at people who say the game looks ugly.
I'm not saying it looks ugly, but the PC version doesn't run anything close to the gifs in the OP, sorry.
 

AegonSnake

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,566

Tyaren

Character Artist
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
24,710
The most significant downgrades in no particular order:

The Witcher 3
Watch Dogs
Breath of the Wild
Anthem
The puddles of Spider-Man. :(
 

Trace

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,686
Canada
They literally admitted that it would've been too expensive and time consuming for them to work with that version of the renderer. And no, it's highly likely that TW3 would've still been surpassed visually by games coming out years later. People always talk about the super quick glimpses we saw in those trailers, but never about the screenshots from when that time period:
the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-screen-8.jpg


It still wouldn't have looked as good as Horizon or Red Dead


Common sense tends to fly out the window when PRETTY PRETTY SHINY SHINY -----> PRETTY PRETTY SHINY

This is a really interesting screenshot. It reminds me way more of how TW2 looked than how TW3 ended up, with the excessive bloom and sharpening.

http:///2JC.png