The Witcher 3 - Visuals

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As others already said, dark and devoid of color world doesn't make a dark and gritty game, and I also think this way.

I'd like to see the game in various times of the day under different weather conditions, I'm pretty sure there will be noticeable difference in the mood and the feel, even for the same location.
I also don't agree with the cartoony look statement, Diablo 3 is cartoony, TW3 is not.
 
So you are speculatiing why sunny days reflects vivd colors? or is there's must not be any sunny day in a gre game? or the different saturation and gamma in each screenshots?

At the moment you get the impression, as soon as the sun comes out things start to glow and contrasts become as sharp as a knife - but that is a very special kind of light only to be seen in special moments - for excample after a heavy rain in the summer, then it is clearing up very fast. I hardly doubt, that Medieval Europe was glowing like a childrens painting as soon as the sun came out.
 
Here you go with toned down colors. As u see it all depends on weather and time of the day( HOW SURPRISINGLY)

 
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At the moment you get the impression, as soon as the sun comes out things start to glow and contrasts become as sharp as a knife - but that is a very special kind of light only to be seen in special moments - for excample after a heavy rain in the summer, then it is clearing up very fast. I hardly doubt, that Medieval Europe was glowing like a childrens painting as soon as the sun came out.

Why not? Books and novels and poems dated in the middle age tell about light, sunny days, happiness as the same way they tell about misery and wars. Humanity those times were not more unhappy than we are actually.
 
Why not? Books and novels and poems dated in the middle age tell about light, sunny days, happiness as the same way they tell about misery and wars. Humanity those times were not more unhappy than we are actually.

Sorry, you´re loosing me here. Never mind.
 
Sorry, you´re loosing me here. Never mind.

Maybe I'm the first lost here :p

Sorry. I was referring to the topic of a sad and miserable middle aged gray, which rules out the existence of joy, sunny days and vivid colors in every day.

Obviously assign a technicolor of 40-50 years is not unrealistic, but we can give to the peassants a brown tone, soldiers very vivid tones equal to the emblems of their masters ... etc. What we can not deny the colors of nature, always changing according to the time, the position of the sun and the seasons. Asking for a darker view of Novigrad or any tempered land doesn't seem me a "mature" option.
 
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This topic came up in the downgrade thread more and more and I think it's better separating the two discussions. For those of you who weren't following, it's the debate about whether or not TW3 should be a dark, melancholy and grey world, or a more colorful and "fantasy"ish place - Wild Hunt in particular and the franchise in general. Bear with me, I'm paraphrasing here.

What do you guys think?

I'll just give two cents briefly and expand on it if this thread picks up.

I think the franchise earned a reputation of "dark and gritty", in atmosphere, that might not really be accurate or justified. Partly because the books have a lot of humor, high-fantasy and even whacky moments, and very colorful locations. Partly because of a constant motif, that men are capable of worse things than monsters. I think that that message loses much of its impact if the world always looks like a shitty place, but keeps its punch if you're traveling, say, in the beautiful Skellige archipelago, and then suddenly come across an act of deep cruelty. It's that contrast and sudden shift that I think make it powerful, and prevent it from becoming hackneyed.

Of course, what I say is relevant only to those areas not ravaged by war. In No Man's Land, I expect to see scorched fields, burnt and emaciated trees, death galore and suspicion from the survivors. Fortunately, TW3 being a big multi-region open-world, can take us across many different locations, each with its own different atmosphere. It can be balanced.

I also think there's place to argue against "dark and gritty medieval'esque world" being equated with "realistic", as I've often seen written, but I'll stop here for now.

Dude !!!!
Stop reading the thread and wait for the game till then read the witcher books or play bloodborne or any other game
 
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Why not? Books and novels and poems dated in the middle age tell about light, sunny days, happiness as the same way they tell about misery and wars. Humanity those times were not more unhappy than we are actually.

Sorry but that is not quite true. The middleages were pretty hard if you were a peasant as most were. What books, novels and poems represents as well as paintings are for the most part a "perfect" picture that reality didn't quite live up too. Go to a museum/university and talk to a historian, watch documentaries or read history books. Literature and art were created by and for the aristocracy who had many more privileges and advantages that the common people who had struggles that you and I can't even imagine the reality of like hunger, slavery or bound servitude, simple diseases (you actually die from), children dying before they got old was common place, hygiene was out the gutter, people rarely married from love, injustices was every day occurrences, torture was common practices to get confessions and I could go on. Hardly the happier times you and I live in.
 
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Sorry but that is not quite true. The middleages were pretty hard if you were a peasant as most were. What books, novels and poems represents as well as paintings are for the most part a "perfect" picture that reality didn't quite live up too. Go to a museum/university and talk to a historian, watch documentaries or read history books. Literature and art were created by and for the aristocracy who had many more privileges and advantages that the common people who had struggles that you and I can't even imagine like hunger, simple diseases (you actually die from), children dying before they got old was common place, hygiene was out the gutter, people rarely married from love, injustices was every day occurrences, torture was common practices to get confessions and I could go on. Hardly the happier times you and I live in.

Really? If the whole amount of inhabitants of Midlle age or any else, didn't live moments fo happiness as moment of sadness, humanity were disappeared. Viruses would exterminate humanity. Reproduction without endorphines cannot be reach. And you must be happy to create endorphines.

Someone like US coul be not happy living now there and then. But they only knew that way of live, what is horrible to you was normal for them.
 
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The novels are not dark novels. They have a lot of cinism, blood and strong personalities, but you laught a lot with them. Witcher world is not a dark world. But it has a lot of grey.

And it means they can do whatever they want, with the look and feel, because it is ambigous. You can imagine something with a look similar as a tale book, in the colors and the draws, but at the same time with draws that are not for children. Or you can imagine something dark, in the visuals, with time to time laughts that doesn't fit the dark.

The main point of that world is cinism. Nothing else.
 
what is horrible to you was normal for them.

Well, I wouldn't want to simplify it that much. Yes, they were born into that world, not knowing anything else. But, say, the feeling a mother gets from their son or daughter dying in infancy due to disease wouldn't be that much of a disparity to nowadays (or at all).

They were still humans with the same instincts and emotions as us. You only have to look in poorer nations even now and see the famine and suffering.
 
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Really? If the whole amount of inhabitants of Midlle age or any else, didn't live moments fo happiness as moment of sadness, humanity were disappeared. Viruses would exterminate humanity. Reproduccion without endorphines cannot be reach.

Someone like US coul be not happy living now there and then. But they onlyh knew that way ol live, what is horrible to you was normal for them.

You are simply mixing things up. If your theory was correct and they were as happy as we are we would still live like that and the world wouldn't evolve. People always seek towards better things and as such we have moved forward to the world we live in today were the common man are "free" and have rights of their own.

We could of course enter a discussion about what happiness is and what it stems from but it will be far off the topic.
 
Well, I wouldn't want to simplify it that much. Yes, they were born into that world, not knowing anything else. But, say, the feeling a mother gets from their son or daughter dying in infancy due to disease wouldn't be that much of a leap to nowadays.

They were still humans with the same instincts and emotions as us.

NO, so they had a lot of children. I never said life was easy, but they knew to be happy with things we could never imagine. A lot of toys and pieces of g children games were found, children played a lot that time, they died more often? sure, but because life was so shorte they appreciated every little moments more than us actually.
 
You are simply mixing things up. If your theory was correct and they were as happy as we are we would still live like that and the world wouldn't evolve. People always seek towards better things and as such we have moved forward to the world we live in today were the common man are "free" and have rights of their own.

We could of course enter a discussion about what happiness is and what it stems from but it will be far off the topic.

No, I'm not expressing mself correctly, but I'm not mixing. Happiness or comfort level is very relative, not matter the age, because is an abstract conception. Mixing dark scene for a game with dark feelings of the characters is , to me, a wrong conception of The Witcher's World
 
We could of course enter a discussion about what happiness is and what it stems from but it will be far off the topic.

I think that's what was needed, actually. But I realise this is completely off topic. The general levels of happiness between nations now have differences depending on individual freedoms and lifestyles. But hey, I'll stop. This isn't the right forum for that.
 
And a dark and gritty world in the terms of the Witcher universe was (to me) far better reflected in the older material..

To be honest, I loved the brownish, grainy filter effect of early screenshots together with it's high sharpness (as if present in the one early gif in which Grealt walk through the little village with the windmill in the background). But I don't like it because it looked more real or more gritty. I liked it because it gave the game a kind of unique, "cool", artistic look. The more plain, unfiltered gameplay of newer footage is of course basically the same stuff but it looks more "generic" to me (in the lack of a better descriptive term), more like everything else. I think the atmosphere of these early shots were indeed great and better than the one of now but that's surely subjective and I think it might be based on different reasons (as stated above). It was mainly a distinctive design with a big recognition value, especially combined with the already unique art direction of the game. I wouldn't call it more mature though because I think that color palettes, filters and such have little to nothing to do with how mature a game is. But there is one thing we might agree on and it's maybe your starting point after all: the staging and the way graphical assets and effects are used to strengthen the narrative vision. That is much less about the overall tone of the game or the overall quality of graphics or the color palette or filters but in which way graphical assets are used in very specific locations and settings (and maybe in the overall game, like the graphical display of violence). The problem with the location and setting specific assets is that there is just no real basis for a solid comparison. We'd need the same two locations displaying the same situation from early and latest footage for a sound assessment on whether there is a difference in how graphical assets are used to present and strengthen the narrative, e.g. the attention to detail and the quality and selection of assets used.
 
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