Dark Souls II - Graphics Comparison - PC Preview

Durante said:
I think that area (and lots of other ones) would mostly look better with less ambient light and/or more and better ambient occlusion. The problem is, adjusting the ambient light level will at the very least require understanding shading parameters and that's a rather involved thing -- and I no longer have as much free time as I did when DS1 was released. Someone needs to step up :P
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.... What if we crowd fund your work.

I'll pay 10 bucks for durante quality improvements.. who else is with me?
 
Why do Japanese developers do this? Western developers would stick everything in for the PCs.

Very unusual, or should I say, unreasonable, decisions.

Maybe the lighting will be dlc? I won't be surprised if they did that!
 
TheFLYINGManga_Ka said:
Why do Japanese developers do this? Western developers would stick everything in for the PCs.

Very unusual, or should I say, unreasonable, decisions.

Maybe the lighting will be dlc? I won't be surprised if they did that!
Click to expand...

The lighting doesn't exist anymore. It's time to accept that.
This is how DkS2 looks.
 
nbthedude said:
It's like nobody remembers what Dark Souls 1 PC port was like.

Here we have a port that pretty much has all the graphics options that would have made people who bitched about Dark Souls 1 happy but yet they aren't happy. They are angry and bummed and boycotting and other shit.

All not because of the actual quality of the game but because of the concept of what some dude on the team said or what some marketing people did or showed or some other abstract stuff that doesn't have much to do with what the quality of the final game, what it looks like, or how it plays. Talk about becoming way too invested in small ball politics.
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Everyone remembers what the PC port was like. That's another reason why this is bad though, thanks for reminding me. The first time round, their poor efforts to port the game were excusable to a certain degree since they were primarily console developers and didn't have much experience with PC. So people fixed their game for them and hoped they would make up for it next time. So then DS2 comes along and they promise a lot of things like ''improved graphical quality to drag you into the game due to more realistic expressions of what we want to show in the game''. As you can imagine, people were overjoyed. Wow, FromSoft is going to make DS2 look much better than DS1? Can't wait! This time, they actually promised things and they still didn't deliver. So that's 2/2 strikes.

The reason people are bummed is perfectly easy to understand and has been explained to you repeatedly in other threads. They showed off the game to be much better looking than it is now until about a week ago on Steam and are still doing so on the official website. They compromised on atmosphere and to some extent the gameplay by getting rid of both in-game assets and making most of the sconces useless. They haven't explained why the PC version looks so vastly different to the reveal footage. They said PC was the lead platform when it clearly was not. We had to wait 6 extra weeks just so they could implement basic options. But hoorah I guess. We got the ability to mess with settings that every PC game should have by default.

The game can be the next Zelda: OoT and it wouldn't change the fact that these are practices that some people don't like from companies they trust. For them and me, it definitely affects the quality of the game (note the hallway in the reveal footage with the gorgeous gloomy lighting, numerous torture devices and paintings scattered about, cobwebs and nicely textured walls, etc.). If you consider them silly small ball politics, good for you.
 
nbthedude said:
It's like nobody remembers what Dark Souls 1 PC port was like.
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Oh we do and we remember them being honest about it.
nbthedude said:
Here we have a port that pretty much has all the graphics options that would have made people who bitched about Dark Souls 1 happy but yet they aren't happy. They are angry and bummed and boycotting and other shit.
Click to expand...
That straw man is almost down, now finish him!
nbthedude said:
All not because of the actual quality of the game but because of the concept of what some dude on the team said or what some marketing people did or showed or some other abstract stuff that doesn't have much to do with what the quality of the final game, what it looks like, or how it plays. Talk about becoming way too invested in small ball politics.
Click to expand...

No, it's because the footage they were using to advertise their game both outside Japan and inside Japan (where they are the publisher and they control the message) did not accurately represent the product being offered for sale. The deceptive videos and screenshots showing the version of the game with the better lighting and effects were also on the Steam page until a few weeks ago. It was only when people concerned about the way that the console versions were advertised asked about them were they pulled.

The PC version is now being sold in an honest manner with representative media, it still reflects badly on them that they played fast and loose with the truth prior to the console release though.
 
YianGaruga said:
The lighting doesn't exist anymore. It's time to accept that.
This is how DkS2 looks.
Click to expand...
It's a stupid way of keeping parity among consoles because From/Bamco probably thinks they'll either lose some console sales or feel more backlash from console owners.

But that's silly because not everyone has a top rig. Western devs award those who forked out thousands of dollars for a good PC that can play their latest games the way it's intended. Respawn didn't hold back with Titanfall. Ubisoft didn't with Ass Creed IV. And I'm sure CDProject isn't going to hold back with Witcher 3, obviously.

Whatever. It's disappointing for sure. I expected a much better game especially for a newer game.
 
soontroll said:
Can you tell me what the difference is between DS2 on PC and DS1 on PC for this one not to be a port? What tips you off that the game was not ported to PC? Apart from the option to tweak settings in the vanilla release of course.
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A port like DkS. I didn't specifically mention it is not a port. Obviously, I can't really know that. I'm only assuming the difference of development over the two games.
 
First Pursuer WIF is done.

http://a.pomf.se/jizhur.webm

TheFLYINGManga_Ka said:
It's a stupid way of keeping parity among consoles because From/Bamco probably thinks they'll either lose some console sales or feel more backlash from console owners.

But that's silly because not everyone has a top rig. Western devs award those who forked out thousands of dollars for a good PC that can play their latest games the way it's intended. Respawn didn't hold back with Titanfall. Ubisoft didn't with Ass Creed IV. And I'm sure CDProject isn't going to hold back with Witcher 3, obviously.

Whatever. It's disappointing for sure. I expected a much better game especially for a newer game.
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I'm guessing it was at least partially for art reasons. They probably realized that it was necessary to downgrade the lighting at a point in development where only some areas of the game were done, so they had to make the difficult decision to do another "pass" finalize how each how area looked without the fancy lighting. This happened far enough into development that a ton of promo material had already been released of the parts of the game that looked nicer and had a semi-finished version.

It feels like an unfortunate scorched Earth approach to solving performance issues.
 
Grief.exe said:
Downsampled to 1080p via Bicubic Sharper

irAtJIoAPoBGv.jpg




Nope.
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That looks absolutely stunning. If I get to look at that view every now and then I won't be so upset. That should be Majula right?
 
Orayn said:
First Pursuer WIF is done.

http://a.pomf.se/jizhur.webm



I'm guessing it was at least partially for art reasons. They probably realized that it was necessary to downgrade the lighting at a point in development where only some areas of the game were done, so they had to make the difficult decision to do another "pass" finalize how each how area looked without the fancy lighting. This happened far enough into development that a ton of promo material had already been released of the parts of the game that looked nicer and had a semi-finished version.

It feels like an unfortunate scorched Earth approach to solving performance issues.
Click to expand...

That looks great.
 
Wow. Ok NOW they have some serious 'splainin to do. You can toute those graphics in ALL the trailers and previews and not even have a single version of the game look like that. Seriously scummy.
 
Well I am disappointed about the lighting but at least they got it running at 1080p at 60fps without needing to be modded. Can't wait to finally get my hands on this.
 
Durante said:
I think that area (and lots of other ones) would mostly look better with less ambient light and/or more and better ambient occlusion. The problem is, adjusting the ambient light level will at the very least require understanding shading parameters and that's a rather involved thing -- and I no longer have as much free time as I did when DS1 was released. Someone needs to step up :P
Click to expand...

I understand shader parameters very well. What do you need to do? PM me.
 
I haven't been able to look at any of the footage, but is it confirmed that the pc version is just a resolution/texture/framerate bump?
 
Lalalandia said:
Oh we do and we remember them being honest about it.

That straw man is almost down, now finish him!


No, it's because the footage they were using to advertise their game both outside Japan and inside Japan (where they are the publisher and they control the message) did not accurately represent the product being offered for sale. The deceptive videos and screenshots showing the version of the game with the better lighting and effects were also on the Steam page until a few weeks ago. It was only when people concerned about the way that the console versions were advertised asked about them were they pulled.

The PC version is now being sold in an honest manner with representative media, it still reflects badly on them that they played fast and loose with the truth prior to the console release though.
Click to expand...

And there are already several thread for the people that want to complain that the final game was downgraded over the course of development and/or that the marketing was misrepresentative.

This thread is about what the actual, real PC version looks like and how that compares to the other actual real versions of the game. I personally don't care that much about the politics of how a game is represented in pre-release media. To me that is all small beer compared to what the actual end game is like.
 
I would have settled for some baked lighting. A lot of areas in this game look really flat and drab, and I don't think that was intentional.
 
Putting aside the "FROM/Bamco lied" argument. Are you guys really cancelling preorders because a crossgen game looks not so pretty on pc?

I've read a shitload of opinions where you guys bash the gaming industry because the lack of innovation on gameplay mechanics and the obvious focus on graphics.

You guys are pretty much doing the same that you hate. Dark Souls is an 'ok' game visually that can look pretty awesome in some areas, the real meat of the game it's the gameplay.

Just my two cents.
 
PixelHorror said:
Putting aside the "FROM/Bamco lied" argument. Are you guys really cancelling preorders because a crossgen game looks not so pretty on pc?

I've read a shitload of opinions where you guys bash the gaming industry because the lack of innovation on gameplay mechanics and the obvious focus on graphics.

You guys are pretty much doing the same that you hate. Dark Souls is an 'ok' game visually that can look pretty awesome in some areas, the real meat of the game it's the gameplay.

Just my two cents.
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No, it's not because the game simply doesn't look like Crysis or whatever. I explained some reasons why I personally feel let down in a post on this page. I didn't pre-order initially though so I never had to cancel it.
 
PixelHorror said:
Putting aside the "FROM/Bamco lied" argument. Are you guys really cancelling preorders because a crossgen game looks not so pretty on pc?

I've read a shitload of opinions where you guys bash the gaming industry because the lack of innovation on gameplay mechanics and the obvious focus on graphics.

You guys are pretty much doing the same that you hate. Dark Souls is an 'ok' game visually that can look pretty awesome in some areas, the real meat of the game it's the gameplay.

Just my two cents.
Click to expand...

Putting aside reading the thread,
 
Anyone think they'll re-release on PS4 with the lighting?

If they do, at least a free patch for PC owners.

Unless they want to say some BS explanation like "The PS4 gives us enough power to do this," with grumbling GTX Titan owners!
 
VFX_Veteran said:
Cancelled pre-order for PC version.. oh well, I'll get it when somebody makes it pretty..
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You want the full old lighting engine back and bring back the gameplay mechanic of torches important in all areas?

Maybe wait for mod?

This is GOTY contender you won't be sad after 100+ hours if you get it now.
 
nbthedude said:
And there are already several thread for the people that want to complain that the final game was downgraded over the course of development and/or that the marketing was misrepresentative.

This thread is about what the actual, real PC version looks like and how that compares to the other actual real versions of the game. I personally don't care that much about the politics of how a game is represented in pre-release media. To me that is all small beer compared to what the actual end game is like.
Click to expand...

It's clear that big companies lying to you does not bother you and that's fine. But it does bother others, myself included.

And it is perfectly fair to complain that the game doesn't look like the preview videos prior to todays media. This is, after all, a thread to discuss the preview footage and screens. It's perfectly natural to compare a new preview to an old.
 
soontroll said:
That gif nuked my internet so:
http://zippy.gfycat.com/QuerulousPleasingIrishwolfhound.webm
Click to expand...

Ugh, this just happened to me in NG+, the skybox killed itself (just like it did at
Drangleic Castle
)

I have found a gamefaqs thread of other people experiencing the same problem and they appear to all be PAL PS3 users (like me). I really hope this error gets resolved in the upcoming update but I somehow doubt it as it was missing from the list of fixes...
 
Orayn said:
http://a.pomf.se/qsmthu.webm

Second WIF done. I tried and failed to make it loop properly, I am filth.
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I didn't notice the banner and cloth waving in the background before. Great touch.

soontroll said:
No, it's not because the game simply doesn't look like Crysis or whatever. I explained some reasons why I personally feel let down in a post on this page. I didn't pre-order initially though so I never had to cancel it.
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I don't think he was referencing you.

People came in and said pre-order cancelled right after seeing the footage.
 
If you want to encourage better PC versions, you should never have bought the console versions, you impatient children.

Here's hoping the whole 'false advertising' fiasco isn't worth repeating next time and they'll be a little more straight with us.
 
It's disappointing to see the original lighting absent from the PC version as well :/
But other than that it looks a lot crisper than the console version and 60 frames will be amazing :D

And lol at Anisotropic Filtering: "Strong"...
 
BruceLeeRoy said:
A friend of mine is asking if this will run on his Macbook Pro Retina. Anyone have luck with the first DS on a Macbook?
Click to expand...
If its the 15" model it will run DS2 with no issues. The GT 650M that apple uses is actually overclocked and runs most games with very good settings on 1920x1200. Only bad coded games like Skyrim will cause trouble.
 
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