Yeah, I think so. They went super cyberpunk with the first design but scaled it back for the final release...WAY back.
What's the most disappointing downgrade?
- Thread starter MrMatt555
- Start date
It's funny how the final game got defended and ppl pretended it's not downgraded lol.
I absolutely loved TW3 but I feel like CDPR don't get enough shit for the massive downgrade the game received not only on console but on PC too. That gif above along with the horse riding next to the ocean gif and the famous gif of the little town with the kid jumping and insane micro details were some real top tier BS.
Those gifs represent the quality of visuals I expect out of an open World game next gen.
Beyond Hill and Dale was the closest we got in the game that matched the quality of that old render.
Those are all really good examples, although I must point out that WD1 had shadow casting from headlights removed because they were broken. You can re-enable them on PC, and they cause serious visual problems.
Then there's PoM. And that one is particularly interesting. Watch_Dogs didn't actually use parallax mapping. It used relief mapping. Which is similar, but depending on the game can be a lot, lot cheaper. This was disabled in the final version and... nobody is actually sure why. Re-enabling it manually on PC doesn't have a performance impact as far as anyone can tell. Why did Ubisoft turn it off? Did they intentionally turn it off, or was it accidentally turned off and never reenabled?
I'm not making excuses for Ubisoft -- and please bear in mind I never meant to imply that WD1 didn't lose certain minor visual effects during development, but rather that people saying it "looks like a PS2 game" need their eyes checked. There were changes, you're quite right. But they're fairly subtle for the most part.
Rockstar accidentally turned off parallax mapping in the 8th gen console versions of GTA V at one point. But unlike Ubisoft they turned it back on in a subsequent patch. Parallax mapping and relief mapping are visual techniques that are very subtle and often overlooked during testing. I think games being split across 5 platforms lead to these kind of accidental or simply sloppy omissions.
Prey and Homefront: The Revolution both completely broke screen space reflections at one point. Prey had them broken at release. Homefront broke them in early 2017, IIRC. They were later fixed, but these games spent weeks/months with a major visual effect broken, and a lot of people didn't notice. That fact has always concerned me.
While The Witcher 3 we got still looks pretty good, both with and without mods, it really the downgrade still hurts because the game itself is great. ENB could do wonders for that game, but seeing as Boris stated working with that game is/was difficult, I don't think we're getting anything for it any time soon. I know I'd donate the man at least a couple thousand to make it happen if I happened to win a lottery.
for me the retail looks better, care to explain
For me is Watch Dog that E3 Demo was way too good to be true anyway.
The faux Watch Dogs announcement demo is awesome. The series as a whole is one of the most disappointing and fascinating ever for me. Outstanding concepts and aesthetics wasted on extremely inconsistent game design and awful storytelling.
Hoping we don't see Anthem in a thread like this once it's released. What they showed in the E3 reveal looked amazing.
Came in to post this. Massive Aliens fan, I waited years for this game, always keeping up with its development, and the final product was a massive slap in the face in all areas.
I remember before launch outlets were talking about downgrade, you could not have a discussion without someone mentioning the downgrade, people wanted to sue CDPR for that , and i lasted quite long. Even Eurogamer did an interview about that with Cdpr guys .
And I wonder what game looked at that time beyond the 2 min trailer and just snippets for some areas. Like full one 1h quest with day and night cycle and stuff. Then I might have been more bummed, but as it was at the time we only knew that trailer and maybe e3 MS reveal.
I've never played the Dark Souls games, but I intend to. For the uninitiated, did the remastered version for the PS4 and Xbox One restore the game to the glory of the demo shown in that comparison video? Because man... I see what you guys are talking about, that was a serious downgrade.
I don't have any particular opinions on TW3 downgrade thing, but it was the first indication that something wasn't right behind the scenes at CDPR, with anonymous employees claiming that they were marketing a game that didn't exist.
All the good ones are already taken, so let's go with an odd one.
FFCC:Crystal Bearers on Wii.
Remember the gifs with the blonde guy dropping onto an airship that got spammed for a while over at the old forum? It was hyped as... something. And then it came close to release and people became aware that it was a minigame collection.
Heh.
FFCC:Crystal Bearers on Wii.
Remember the gifs with the blonde guy dropping onto an airship that got spammed for a while over at the old forum? It was hyped as... something. And then it came close to release and people became aware that it was a minigame collection.
Heh.
A big difference is that the pre-release version has real time shadow maps and self shadowing (which is more realistic of course). Retail does not, in that scene.
Presumably it was a global system.
Killzone 2 reveal trailer, dont know if I could call it a downgrade but at the time it felt like it. The power of the cell processor and that trailer made me a day one purchaser of the insanly expensive fat PS3.
It wasn't a minigame collection though.... it had event minigames but there was a whole Zelda-esque game there as well. Actually thinking back on it the design of Crystal Bearers has a lot in common with BOTW and SMO, but with a distinct lack of polish.
Back then there was no day night cycle and the areas were no even connected into a one landmass map because when those trailers were made, they did not even have the streaming engine ready yet. Only after that got done they started redoing all the lightning and weather system to be consistent across the single streaming map.
Do those Killzone 2 and Motorstorm E3 2005 trailers count? If so, then those.
Killzone 2 still ended up looking incredible though.
Killzone 2 still ended up looking incredible though.
It's funny how the final game got defended and ppl pretended it's not downgraded lol.
Yeah even with couple mods the game looks different, less grass and different lightning. Plus of course the placement of buildings, orientation of the mill is different.
Star Wars 1313
From this:
To this:
From this:
To this:
For real though, even if the game did come out (which is a big "if," even if Disney didn't shut it down) I can guarantee it would be in this thread.
This
That lightning engine was everything and because of that damn parity with consoles, we couldn't even get it on PC.
Same with Witcher 3
I know it can be argued from a technical level that the E3 07 footage was better. However, to me, the picture on the right looks much better on the left. That filter was way worse than the one MGS4 already has in the final release.
Might not really count as a downgrade 99% of Xbox 360 games at the time. You'd see a bullshot or a trailer of a PC version (of which they'd say it was representative of the 360 version as well), but you'd get the game and it'd be running at 15 frames per second in borderline sub HD resolution and much uglier graphics.
It didn't prevent me from absolutely loving my 360, but it was really noticeable.
It didn't prevent me from absolutely loving my 360, but it was really noticeable.
Nope :(
Graphically, Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin Edition (which is also on PC) just tweaks the post-processing to add more contrast. The demo lighting was never restored.
You are kind of overselling it, but I did exaggerate my point as well, sorry.
Let's put it this way, it was a very mild ActionRPG with challenge-based progression system. You went to a new area, smacked some monsters around or talked to a few peeps, grabbed some collectibles, ...and located the inevitable minigame. Upon completion of that minigame, you'd advance the story, unlock new areas or otherwise progress in the game.
I liked it more than most people back in the day, although I never completed it. At some point the Minigames just got too tedious. My memory is sketchy, but I do seem to recall a beach area with a minigame where you controlled a bikini clad girl that had to bump another girl in a swimsuit off a platform using your butt and a beachball. Butt-wrestling? Something like that. It was motion-based and didn't parse the input very well. I think I spent several gaming sessions and too much of my dignity and self respect trying to get through that. It was like being forced to play a round of waggle-DOAX, minus the pretense, or at least that's what I remember of it. It's probably way less offensive than my description, but it is what comes to mind first when I think of the game.
It was an affront to the FFCC franchise and a gut-punch after all the hype, no matter how you slice it. It's like Red Steel and quite a few other games on Wii, in that regard. A pretty okayish game, nothing special, kinda buggy at times, kinda low budget, ultimately forgettable; but not bad for a B-tier release, it could be enjoyed for what it was - unless you had sky high expectations from the pre-release PR. Which most forumites definitely had, both from the hype train inducing prerelease media and due to the FFCC franchise being well beloved.
It was touted as A to AA tier game, and what we got was maybe B+ to C+ tier. People were livid.
Those gifs would require a completely different renderer that isn't feasible at all on this gen's hardware with a game as large as TW3, and that includes time and budget. They were basically in-engine target renders, not actual gameplay of the game.
No need for revisionist history.
The game ran fantastically on PS4.
Almost feels like a rule of thumb is that if something looks so good that it almost doesn't look like a videogame, at least one from the current gen, that it will 100% be downgraded until it does look like a current gen game.
Sonic the Hedgehog GENESIS for the GBA. It's the GENESIS game but done wrong.
It's slow, low rez, missing frames and the tunes are just horrible to hear!
(Trashman)-1.jpg)
A fan port on the GBA appeared and is actually better in every ways than the SEGA one.
SEGA's version
The fan made version
It's slow, low rez, missing frames and the tunes are just horrible to hear!
A fan port on the GBA appeared and is actually better in every ways than the SEGA one.
SEGA's version
The fan made version
The butt bumping bit was the worst point of the game, the parts after that were a lot better and one of the big mistakes they made was that the game really opened up(even with sidequests) right before the finish line.
Layle still the best FF MC ever though.
Look how fast everything is and how the camera moves. The final game was pretty boring but what could have been
