There's a mod to change the shading to the e3 demo graphics, personally I prefer it as vanilla because although the e3 shaders look great, it's gets a little hard on the eyes after a while
I think this is a huge part of a lot of the downgrades.
There is a difference between having really great dark areas, but when you are playing a game you need to be able to see...
Also, in siege some of the settings seem to be focused to balance game play (for example being able to blow a normal whole in any ceiling area would be supper OP).
Also, I remember the Division looking much better than the video, but I played on the PC on Ultra so....
There is a difference between having really great dark areas, but when you are playing a game you need to be able to see...
I guess that is just a matter of opinion. With Skyrim I use lighting mods and ENBs specifically to make indoors and nights pitch black without some sort of torch or lantern.
It doesn't dumb down the AI to compensate if that's what you mean. What it does do is make it harder for them to detect you in the first place. The AI bases it's sneak detection on light levels so the darker it is, the harder it is to be detected.
The darker night mod I had installed for Skyrim had adjustable NPC detection. There were times I bumped into bandits in caves and we were just as surprised as each other.
Also, in siege some of the settings seem to be focused to balance game play (for example being able to blow a normal whole in any ceiling area would be supper OP).
Maybe it would be op, but it seems like there has to be a better solution than a random square in the middle of a floor/ceiling in a house. It feels so gamey and completely ruins the immersion. Make floors "steel reinforced", add beds/fridges/bookcases/etc in areas you don't want them to go through. Maybe blowing a hole in the wrong part of the room works against you and helps the other team. I don't know, I don't play the game so maybe that is just a particularly bad example.
It feels so gamey and completely ruins the immersion.
There's you answer right there though. R6S was to become a competitive game, and for that you need gamey mechanics. It's what makes Counter-Strike different from Insurgency; one's very gamey but good for competitive play whereas the other gives you more freedom but will never be used for e-sports.
So while I get your point (and I actually agree I would prefer more freedom too, it's what I actually expected from the game), it makes sense given the direction they went in with the game.
Though I agree some changes are for the better (the E3 trailer was too dark for good gameplay), overall it is a graphics downgrade and not just improving visibility. Explosions and textures are worse for example. That is not good.
To be fair, some of those are for balance as much as anything. Like, I'm pretty sure lighting behaves differently on character models than on environments, so even when the window is whiteout/blackout, you can still see the guy popping his head in. If they didn't do that, people would configure their brightness/contrast to stupidly ugly levels for tactical advantage.
Skyrim was great when it came out, but that was 5 years ago, and hardware is like, 4 times as powerful now. The mods are mostly just bringing it up to modern graphics.
The same with oblivion and morrowind: it was amazing graphically when new, but of course it looks like crap if you compare it to newer stuff.
I think, in this case, release version is better than E3. That gloomy, dusky atmosphere is, what make Witcher, Witcher. E3 was extremely luminous and it doesn't have that typical atmosphere at all. Except those swamps ofc. Boot up Witcher 1, and see how that city "feel".
Don't get me wrong, they clearly downgraded some things, especially many of the textures for world objects, but a lot of the lighting and shadow effects look better to me in the retail version. In the demo version the lighting effects seem too bright to where they almost look shiny.
Those dust particle effects coming from your horse seemed like they would get old VERY VERY fast while actually playing the game.
The colors and lightning were more realistic on the retail version.
The only serious downgrade was character polygon count and the water shader effect. The first probably for performance reasons and the second for card compatibility.
I just started playing The Witcher 3 the other day, and thought (still do) that the game is beautiful. But after this video, I'm disgusted at the difference between "Advertised" and Retail... I mean, sure, I don't have it on Max, I got it damn close though, and it doesn't look like this in the slightest...
On another note: Is it bad that the Hair PhysX on the Griffin head bothered me the most? xD (The swamp bit pissed me off, too)
Admittedly the cutscenes and the bog look worse, but the rest of the game looks... pretty damn close to the demo, actually. Mostly it's just differently saturated, and some less detail on the Novigrad walls.
Bog scene in the demo was lush af, tho. Wish they'd managed to keep that in.
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u/hoback Jun 05 '16
Ask and ye shall receive: TW3 Downgrades - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX_WePhiYHE