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Most disappointing graphical downgrades of this gen?
- Thread starter BAD
- Start date
Games dont render the whole goddamn world at the same time. every game has a streaming tech. most games are smart about where to place mountains and 100% of the games only render what the player can see at any given moment. If anything games like Infamous and Batman Arkham Knight are even harder to render because they basically allow the player to fly around the map in speeds and at vertical levels witcher 3 just couldnt.
AC Unity is pushing literally thousands of NPCs on the screen at once. Their rendering budget was spent on that and yet the game still looked phenomenal. Witcher 3 has like 10 NPCs on scren at once. by your logic Witcher 3 should look a 100 times better.
Two of the three games i mentioned werent even exclusives. Witcher 3 runs at 1080p on PS4, same as other games and has some of the worst foliage ive ever seen.
The bottomline is that they were running the game at those graphical settings until they werent. its a downgrade.
Its like when people were complaining why fallout 4 does not look as good as witcher or other open world games , like ffs . Or why sony exclusives look quite a lot better than multi platform titles , nothing to do with resource management or having advantage of focusing on one platform , really
Real time demos aren't games but rather test on what the hardware being demoed is capable. A game has to account for a player moving a camera and other stuff while a Real Time demo doesn't have to account for that because it's not trying to show what a game looks like but rather the graphical effects the giving hardware can do. That's why this demo has a ton of ridiculous effects like the floor that is reflecting everything.Ooof. i forgot about Zelda.
And lets not forget about the so called realtime tech demo that made everyone think Wii U was capable of these graphics.
It kinda sucks the game comes out probably late 2020 or 2021 and being made with current-gen systems in mind.
I don't know what you are seeing but none of the examples you have posted look as good as that initial Witcher 3 reveal.
Days Gone is being released 4 years after Witcher 3 and also being developed for only 1 platform. Witcher 3 on the upgraded Cyberpunk 2077 engine would exceed Red dead redemption 2 even let alone the games you are mentioning.
cant lie days gone look crazy right thereI dont understand this logic. Witcher 3 cost $81 million to make. the in house team was 240 people but a lot of work was contracted out. Over 1500 people were involved in the production.
by comparison, Horizon cost $50 million and the first three uncharteds cost $20 million each. Sucker Punch made Infamous Second Son with 100 people. Sony Bend only just hit a 100 people recently and managed to create something like this.
And the point isnt that the Witcher doesnt look as good as other games, it's that it DID look as good as the other games BEFORE it was downgraded. They changed the entire rendering engine a year before the game came out. PS4 and X1 devkits were out a full year before they revealed the trailer. So this means two things. One they knew the specs were too low for their vision and showed the trailer a year later knowing it was going to get massively downgraded. Two, as we can see from other games that have launched since and came out around the same time, the graphics were definitely possible on these consoles and they just downgraded the engine instead of sticking with it and making it work like everyone else did.
Yes frustum culling is a thing that exists.
And still have less to handle on screen vs. The Witcher 3. On top of this, all of the games you mentioned have set TOD at all times. Compared to a dynamic TOD. So ofc they're going to look better and with more consistency.
See above.
If I understand rendering budgets and simulation as poorly as you then yes I would argue that. What you're doing is essentially the equivalent of arguing that TW3's dialogue sequences don't look as good as Infamous Second Son's 1 and a half worth of cinematics.
you do realize that i am applying YOUR faulty and poor logic here right? for someone who routintely insults the intelligence of other people, you seem to lack a basic understanding of your own logic.
A thing you have to understand is that first party studio have a lot more resources than a studio like CD which has little to no support from the big three. So Horizon and especially Second Son where more than likely thought about during the hardware choosing process, CD and most third parties don't have that luxury so early on in the gen they have guess what the hardware will be like.I dont understand this logic. Witcher 3 cost $81 million to make. the in house team was 240 people but a lot of work was contracted out. Over 1500 people were involved in the production.
by comparison, Horizon cost $50 million and the first three uncharteds cost $20 million each. Sucker Punch made Infamous Second Son with 100 people. Sony Bend only just hit a 100 people recently and managed to create something like this.
And the point isnt that the Witcher doesnt look as good as other games, it's that it DID look as good as the other games BEFORE it was downgraded. They changed the entire rendering engine a year before the game came out. PS4 and X1 devkits were out a full year before they revealed the trailer. So this means two things. One they knew the specs were too low for their vision and showed the trailer a year later knowing it was going to get massively downgraded. Two, as we can see from other games that have launched since and came out around the same time, the graphics were definitely possible on these consoles and they just downgraded the engine instead of sticking with it and making it work like everyone else did.
The Witcher 3 didn't look bad for its time. I don't think it's fair to compare the very rural environments of that game to modern games using more advanced techniques like photogrammetry to create realistic environments, nor is the comparison to games set in modern, urban environments that meaningful.
There are tons of factors. If I recall correctly a cause of The Witcher 3's downgrade was changing the lighting model, due to it being unable to accommodate the changes in lighting (such as a day-night cycle) that the game would need. Batman Arkham Knight, Infamous Second Son and Assassin's Creed Unity all lack a day-night cycle. It's not as simple as "making it work like everyone else did".
One interesting opposite situation was Ryse which ended up looking better when shown in its final form, but at lower resolution. Crytek had such a bad rep at that point that when they said that the game was running at 900p instead of 1080p people would actually try to convince you that the screenshots with the older flatter lighting looked better than the final product, or that there must be a catch.
this right here is it. its the crux of the issue. They already HAD an upgraded engine. they got rid of it. read their interviews. they changed their entire rendering pipeline to get witcher 3 to run on current gen consoles. its the classic example of a downgrade.
it does not exist really , and all engines work in the same way and all games have same budgets and priorities so all of em should look as good as the next one , context and reason be damned
It was a downgrade in visual fidelity. It's still an incorrect statement to say "the graphics were definitely possible on these consoles and they just downgraded the engine instead of sticking with it and making it work like everyone else did. "
*raises hand* I really dont get how anyone can think it looks good. At best its passable.
What?
Witcher 3 - RED Engine 3
Cyberpunk 2077 - RED Engine 4
You also mentioned Arkham Knight which was released the same year as Witcher 3.
http://www.gamechoiceawards.com/archive/gdca_16th.html
No you're not. You reduced the argument of resource management down solely to npcs. TW3 isn't just handling npcs. It's handling a lot of other systems on the regular. For example, every npc in the witcher 3 is systemic as they have a day/night schedule, react to weather, react to other entities in the world hostile/non hostile. Gee, those "ten npcs," (there are multiple scenes and areas in the witcher 3 that have more than 10 npcs onscreen at once) sure do a lot. Surely it's not resource intensive to manage something like that.
Yes. We are smart gamers.
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As much as I hated Ryse, it looked phenomenal at the time and again, despite the fact that it was 900p just like Unity on the PS4, it looked amazing regardless of the non-native yes.
the downgrade in witcher 3 was absolutely massive. they downgraded the foliage, their lighting went to shit, the water, the weather effects were all severely downgraded. the city buildings and crowd density was massively downgraded.
sigh,.
It was captured PC footage, not pre-rendered, Badowski confirms, but a lot had to change. "I cannot argue - if people see changes, we cannot argue," Adam Badowski says, "but there are complex technical reasons behind it.
"Maybe it was our bad decision to change the rendering system," he mulls, "because the rendering system after VGX was changed." There were two possible rendering systems but one won out because it looked nicer across the whole world, in daytime and at night. The other would have required lots of dynamic lighting "and with such a huge world simply didn't work".
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They changed the engines. They call it a bad decision themselves. i think i am done here.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...he-witcher-3-graphics-downgrade-issue-head-on
They are literally defending devs who admitted to making poor decisions.
Is the overall point of your thread to just complain about games not looking as pretty as in earlier vertical slices and just not acknowledge any sort of context?
I like how the dev says "maybe" and then states the following:
And we're supposed to treat it as an across the board downgrade.
You can accept that games change during development and compromises must be made and still be disappointed with the final product.
I thought the reason was because the old lighting model didn't work well with realtime day/night changes?
Many people don't do this, especially when they not only make braindead comparisons but also call the end product ugly regardless of the context. Even OP started the thread with stating that a four year old game is actually ugly along with the implication that the only way for it to be consistently pretty is by editing ini setting.
it is or rather it was. i just posted the dev quote from an interview with eurogamer.
wow those last two gifs amazing, would buy a nintendo console for that.Ooof. i forgot about Zelda.
And lets not forget about the so called realtime tech demo that made everyone think Wii U was capable of these graphics.
That´s not a "hot take". The thread describes the intent very well. Witcher 3 experienced a severe change in IQ between the gameplay videos reveal and the actual game launch. That is a fact. And some people were dissapointed.
Whats´"hot" about that take?
thats exactly what i said and went out and bought Wii U. never again.
I don't really understand the context for the arguments in this thread. Are we even talking about downgrades anymore, and what merits "most disappointing"? Page 2+ is basically a mosh of whether or not games are even comparable based on different priorities, and available resources of a dev.
I'm sorry but I don't see what's bad about this.
I know why some areas in Dark Souls 2 looks the way they do, but they're still ugly. There being a reason for it doesn't make them less unpleasant to look at.
That the end game is ugly. And the difference wasn't IQ.
I tend to take issue with poor argumentation and bad logic. Better discourse should be the end goal, not worse discourse overall.
There is a difference between "this game looks worse from reveal to launch" and "this game is ugly".
A very large difference.
Also no, the difference is not in IQ lol
Digital Foundry also called the downgrade minor as there were improvements made elsewhere.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-we-learn-from-the-witcher-3-downgrade-fiasco
The downgrade of Watch_Dogs on PC can be partially reversed with a mod (unlocking features). It is crazy to think about that. Some crazy money hatting might have occurred.
https://www.pcgamer.com/watch-dogs-mod-aims-to-recreate-e3-2012-visual-effects-improve-performance/
https://www.pcgamer.com/watch-dogs-mod-aims-to-recreate-e3-2012-visual-effects-improve-performance/
I think if the OP is to be followed, Watch Dogs is probably the most disappointing on the basis that it had all the hype of the upcoming generation and didn't deliver.
When it came it was easily best looking game on market. That was almost 4 years ago, beginning of generation.
Sure there was huge downgrade, but the game still looks beautiful. Ofc it is nothing compared to new games like HZD or RDR2, God of War etc.
Because it came out in 2015. The Witcher 3 was the most ambitious game of the generation at the time of release.
