I am well aware of that but I phrased myself a bit ambiguous earlier. I was referring to engine optimizations and improvements that might be needed for the next-gen Upgrade. For example, if they game cannot handle anything above 4k textures but a UHD texture pack has 8k textures the engine must be updated to handle those textures. I assume there won't be a 4k version of the engine and an 8k version, but rather one 8k version where according to the specification the 4k or 8k textures will be used respectively.
Thus, the UHD texture pack can be downloaded and activated by gamers, but it is also only the tip of the iceberg. I think the same relation is between 1.5 and the next-gen upgrade.
I may be wrong, but I think you may be overblowing the Next-Gen Update by quite a bit. I don't think we're going anywhere near 8K anything. 4K
textures might be possible, but I really don't think anything can be done with this update to get close to 8K. Definitely not on consoles. (If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.)
I think the optimizations are going to be rather subtle. For example, ray-tracing added to TW3 is not going to revolutionize the graphics, just add ray-tracing. So the lighting will be a little nicer and more natural, at the cost of performance. For CP2077 on XBX and PS5, I'd expect to see perhaps more accurate lighting, thicker crowds, draw distance being pushed out a bit further, maybe some added LOD stuff. It's not going to transform how the game looks...just get it looking nicer and still running smoothly. I don't expect that people with high-end PCs will notice any huge difference visually, but it's likely that fidelity and performance will be more smooth, with a few new bells and whistles.
Primarily -- remembering that I'm speculating -- I think it will mostly add to the complexity that is possible with any, particular, on-screen scene. Variations in characters, the way 3D objects or particles can interact with one another, the way light can be used to create certain gameplay challenges, etc. I think we're likely to see the changes really shine with upcoming content, not existing content.
And, yes, doing even that much is a monstrous undertaking with outrageous levels of complexity requiring massive amounts of work between cooperating teams over many years. This stuff is neither simple nor easy, and CDPR is not a "gigantic" company, comparable to the thousands of employees and resources that corporations like EA, Activision, or Ubisoft can bring to bear. CDPR is doing this with a relative handful of people, but the scale of both TW3 and CP2077 is far bigger than most anything that the big corps produce. The core complexity of gaming has increased exponentially over the last 10 years. Things have grown faster, bigger, and more complex in that short time that the entirety of the 50 or so years preceding it combined.
But I do not think the Next-Gen Update is going to be a remaster that totally redefines the games. I think it's just going to smooth out some of the burrs and open up new levels of detail for the future.
What is going on with this marketing department? Just when you think they've learned to not hype the fuck out of every thing they do; It's just an update for heaven's sake.
This is not an official announcement. It's a 3rd-party source reporting on unofficial speculation. It's also not even "hype". It's simply identifying that a step to release the update may have been taken. How...else...would they eventually release the update?
