The Witcher 3 - Visuals

[Rudoli]

How else can i vent spleen on a game i have followed since day 1, a game i talked about to everyone i know saying look how frikken amazing it looks and how CD were the best devs ever? i feel literally back stabbed.. the game is now not even 80% graphically as good as it was it has been downgraded so much it looks like a consol mmo.

So yes I am entitled to be angry at the bullshots... how the consols have rid us of the masterpiece seen in the trailers. how smoke and grass and particles now look turd, and how all the hours following new articles have finally ended up with me losing all respect for the utter utter bullshots CD have shoved down our throats... and for false advertising of the pc version... So yes I will come here and say what I want... am so angry about it I feel like smashing a dam consol to feel better. The PC version should look like the trailers and sod the sofa crowd who pay less that £200 for it.. most pc gamers pay the industry over £1800 for a pc. The pc should all those features and then the remove 50% of the features for the consol.

What would our version look like if there was a 360 version... my god.. I do not want to think about it. So yes at the end of the day, I am utterly disappointed at the game and at CD who I have lost all respect for, they knew this would happen but backstabbed the pc gamers anyway and continued to dupe us with how the game would look (trailers), by pc gamers who made it possible for them financially to make W3 in the first place..

I will usually defend CDPR to the death because they are one of the few game devs worth defending, and if the game doesn't look like the original trailers I wouldn't mind too much. But I agree with you, I also followed this game from day 1, read every article, watched every trailer and listened to every piece of soundtrack, but what I'm worried about though is that the game doesn't look as good as the 35 minute demo, if that's the case then I'd be really disappointed.

God I hope we can recreate those scenes on PC, as Marcin have stated. Otherwise it would've been flat out lies and it would hurt so much more coming from CDPR, than from Ubisoft or EA. I'm hoping against hope that come launch there will maybe be a "True Ultra" patch we can download for the PC, or some hidden setting in the files that will give us those high graphic fidelity.

 

[WildFinn96]

I'm glad I'm not playing this game for the graphics

 

[Shelledfade]

Regarding the lightning Adam Badowski said: "...During the development works, the rendering engine that provides, e.g., the lighting, was changed. “I think that there will be locations that will look jaw-dropping, and no one will claim that they differ from what was seen in the trailer. Unfortunately, there will also be fragments where the game will look worse..."
Unfortunately he didn't said why the engine was change but I have an idea why.

considering we're going to be looking at foliage during daylight for a large portion of the game, this is actually alarming to me that the lighting is killing the AO this badly. I thought the ps4 console leaked twitch gameplay I watched the other day had no AO in it at all, but now I'm thinking it was just the lighting being used.

We know for a fact there is AO from that other image. It would be stupid not to get it working properly in daylight, because that's when its critically needed for the foliage to look better. Otherwise its just a pointless waste of resources, on top of the fact that it makes grass just look odd in daylight when you can't see the ao. It is way too bright.

 

[May17th]

I want to play this game because I think it looks absolutely amazing, and atmosphere.. just want to jump into this world right now! I have never seen trees move with the wind before like they do in The Witcher 3, that the tree itself bends and not just branches. The game developers deserve praise. And the grass just looks amazing, shadow and light effects just amazing. And I think some people will agree on that.

 

[Gerudon]

what do you guys think they have been doing this delayed months ?? optimization or by other words cutting things to get a decent frame rate.
This is like a small blanket you cover your head and your feet are out, they had to make decisions , no loading times, tons of different npcs, entering in most of buildings , etc. so of course a lot of graphics sacrifice had to be made simple as that.

what bothers me its the way they build games now, back in the old days they build a game with very little engine demands then build up till decent frame rate can be handle, so when you saw the final game is was way better then the first screenshots, now the mechanics its inverse they build heavy on the engine then starts the cutting, that's why so many modern games suffer from "downgrade" problems.

Games were always made like this. I have old games were the screen shots on the back of the box were called "actuall ingame footage" but the game NEVER looked like this.

Oftne there are massive stuf cut out of games. Deus Ex was supposed to have a huge level in the White House, but they were never able to run it in a decent way with the UT engine they used back then.

Games like Mass Effect or Bioshock also had a lot of levels and other stuff cut out.

The problem is rather that now with the high speed Internet people expect to see 1080p trailer and 4k screen shots in which you can analyze EVERY little thing. Back in the day you had small screen shots in a preview in some magazine.

 

[Shelledfade]

I'm seriously hoping there is a bug with the lighting system and ambient occlusion. I sincerely hope the released version has better daytime ambient occlusion on foliage than this or I am going to be severely disappointed. Considering how much time will be spent in foliage and in daylight, this isn't something that anyone here should be taking lightly.

 

[Loki_Stormbringer]

One thing is a little bit baffling for me. This thread is the 3rd most discussed thread on the Witcher 3 forum, CDPR is interested in it because they've been seen lurking in the shadows (GingerEffect) almost every day and still we didn't get any response from them and smaller threads get response quite regularly from them. The only thing we'll probably get is thread lock.

 

[Jonek52]

One thing is a little bit baffling for me. This thread is the 3rd most discussed thread on the Witcher 3 forum, CDPR is interested in it because they've been seen lurking in the shadows (GingerEffect) almost every day and still we didn't get any response from them and smaller threads get response quite regularly from them. The only thing we'll probably get is thread lock.

So...either they want us to think that the game was downgraded and have a big "slap across the face" in the day of release, because it was not, or they don't want to confess that that it actually was downgraded, what is very sad.

 

[Loki_Stormbringer]

So...either they want us to think that the game was downgraded and have a big "slap across the face" in the day of release, because it was not, or they don't want to confess that that it actually was downgraded, what is very sad.

I hope that is the first part because if it is the second one the it is they who'll get the "slap across the face".

 

[Reod]

Most people disscusing "downgrade" grapshics etc doesnt have actual technical knowledge (including me)to give really technical arguments ~~ and disscuss about actual game assets ,even slightest change of colurs can change their opinion.



Btw what mean atmospheric lighting???

 

[Gerudon]

So...either they want us to think that the game was downgraded and have a big "slap across the face" in the day of release, because it was not, or they don't want to confess that that it actually was downgraded, what is very sad.

Or they just don't want to get fired by saying something stupid in a forum like this.

 

[OliverDK]

First of the REDs read everything of this board so there is no real surprise in them lurking around here very now and again.

Second of they already have taken a stance on this more than once and said that there is NO DOWNGRADE and repeating that in this thread is futile as it won't calm any waters whatsoever and only open up a gate to more questons about why does this look different then, why are there no fog here and so on.

Let us face it most here have already made up their mind that there is a downgrade and just want a RED to say yes there has been changes because what we initially set out to do wasn't possible and you will never get them to say anything like that. Especially less than two weeks ahead of release.

Personally while I agree the game has certainly changed visually I don't think that there is any point in saying it looks like shit, crap or whatever dirty words you can come up with. It is just rude and far from the truth. The game is actually quite impressive still in terms of graphic fidelity and while it most likely could have been much better it is still a milestone in this area.

Again for me the problem is not so much a "downgrade" that is the issue. It's the fact that the game feels different in terms of the mood, tone and atmosphere that made me fall for it initially. I hope the final product will be in league with the 35 min demo. But right now I am waiting for reviews and let's plays before I decide whether I will buy it or not.

 

[morrison1976]

I have seen the Xbox version, and it looks beautiful, so I am happy

 

[Faith]

Interview with Adam Badowski, Managing Director of CD Projekt RED January 28th :
- Platform unification exists (PC, XBONE, PS4) – we have a single build, which is distributed to each one of them. The game is the same; the draw distance is the same. Minor differences result from the fact that the GPU has different parameters on different consoles, which can result in, e.g., the changes in color temperatures.
- How will the PC ultra version hold up against consoles?
It will be possible to spot differences in, for example, Nvidia HairWorks, but those are very demanding graphically, so a strong PC will be needed.
- Are all the textures and models the same?
Yes, there is only one version, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to make the game in time.
- Aren’t you afraid that after its release the game will share the fate of Watch_Dogs, where the game was being compared to the first E3 gameplay?
If someone rewatches the trailer they will notice that the character models look better in the game

WTF CDPR?

 

[Avalos]

Most people disscusing "downgrade" grapshics etc doesnt have actual technical knowledge (including me)to give really technical arguments ~~ and disscuss about actual game assets ,even slightest change of colurs can change their opinion.



Btw what mean atmospheric lighting???

The technical aspect is quite straightforward, actually. CDProjekt have said that the game will have the same build across all platforms, because having a separate build for each platform would not be a realistic aim considering time restrictions. Certain graphical aspects of the game are tied to the (shared) assets of the game. For instance, draw distance is tied to the meshes. Not only does this mean you can't adjust the draw distance, since the meshes are part of those shared assets it is the same across all platforms.

In other words, many graphical settings that could be pushed further on powerful PCs, can't be because consoles wouldn't be able to handle them. This (most likely) includes the lighting system, which is why the lighting is mentioned in downgrade discussions.

I hope that sheds some light (no pun intended :X) on the technical aspect, and keep in mind that we don't know what modding tools the REDkit will provide in the future.

 

[Cloud_guy1]

One thing I noticed is that from all the footage we've seen, is that everything looks like it's still has the same assets. Go watch the old trailers and really look closely to the grass and foliage. It looks very similar to the ones in the current build, but much much higher resolution and detail. Could this mean that it can still be replicated on PC with a bit of fiddling in the config files ?

Completely different assets. It looked like this before.

And this

 

[Kinley]

If you have nothing new to add to this thread then please refrain from posting content free posts. Thank you.

 

[Cake_Eater]

I personally deeply dislike how satured the colors in the game are, compared to earlier videos/builds. It really kills the mood for me.

Do we know if there's a graphical option to tweak that ingame maybe ?

 

[SRSR333]

Has anyone seen these?

https://imgur.com/a/8I1He
http://imgur.com/a/K3uFC

Courtesy of the developer of "Skyrim HD - 2K Textures". See his latest FB post here.

 

[misho8723]

I can not imagine how this forums, reddid and neogaf are going to look like when people are going to finally play the game and if they confirm their assumptions of downgrade.. chaos.. and it can damage the reputation of CD Projekt RED in the future and maybe they aren't going to be the nice guys anymore.. I really hope for the best for them, but if they really messed things up, then they must bear the consequences and maybe they can learn from their mistakes