Witcher 3 downgrade arguments in here and nowhere else
- Thread starter Jigolo
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Aww that's too bad.. These two females need glorious hair too! It seemed that at some point they had it too judging by this screen
Do we know what this scene looks like in the final game?
There is a screenshot floating around. However Ciri is in it and obviously Yennefer looks different. It is a ps4 screen so it looks worse than this. The character models look just as good if not better than before, mostly.
Confidence Man
Member
"It's not a downgrade, what we showed earlier was just all lies"
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
So watching the Sword of Destiny trailer again, 90% of it seems like it would be easy to replicate in the final game given what we know now.
There are only a couple shots in the trailer, which look to have the increased draw distance and whatnot of the 2013 stuff.
Also the Wild Hunt scene we all know was changed completely, for better or worse.
The trailer though is itself internally consistent, probably using footage taken months apart from different builds. Some scenes in the trailer look on par with what we got or even worse. Some scenes however look like the did indeed get scaled back.
Really just would like to know if there is still awesome stormy seas on the boat on PC. If that's in, all of the other downgrades I can swallow.
There are only a couple shots in the trailer, which look to have the increased draw distance and whatnot of the 2013 stuff.
Also the Wild Hunt scene we all know was changed completely, for better or worse.
The trailer though is itself internally consistent, probably using footage taken months apart from different builds. Some scenes in the trailer look on par with what we got or even worse. Some scenes however look like the did indeed get scaled back.
Really just would like to know if there is still awesome stormy seas on the boat on PC. If that's in, all of the other downgrades I can swallow.
ryanthelion123
Neo Member
That dev makes no sense. They showed 35 minute gameplay presentation in 2014 and there have been multiple trailers that said in game footage. The 2013 footage got downgraded to 2014 which got downgraded to what we see today. Im surprised more people aren't pissed.
I don't think the intention is to outright lie - they're showing heaps of gameplay now - but it was to sell a very exaggerated and hyped up version of the product which will unfortunately never exist. The VGX trailer (and I'd say any trailer, ever) probably doesn't benefit from having "In-game footage" plastered on it unless that can be reproduced very closely by the end user.
CDPR and a lot of devs don't want any of the early stuff they release to be criticized or compared to the final version. To them it's all subject to change at any time - because it is! They still have to sell a game though, so they make it look as good as possible and hype as much as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if they worked on certain areas (which might have been cut or heavily changed later) just for trailer ammo. And I bet a lot of the game looked like shit for a long time too, but they're not gonna show that.
Basically confirming that everything we saw before E3 last year wasn't really a game, which is totally fine... as long as you don't say "in-game footage" at the start of your trailers. That's more than a little deceitful.
I don't even care about downgrades. I remember Halo 2 being a bummer after that infamous E3 demo, but whatever, I understand games change during development. It's the blatant PR talk that really annoys me, coming from CDPR.
Just say you took a few features out of the game because you had to, and don't fucking tell me your tech demos are "in-game footage."
Really disappointing.
Still can't wait to play this.
mrqs
Member
Target rendering it's different than showing a lie. I don't know if they said at one point if the older build was actually how the game would look like, but i don't care.
THE GAME LOOKS BEAUTIFUL. Stop this mess. CD PROJEKT RED it's one of the few humble developers out there. They are doing a great job with the game, the free dlc content...
I feel a little bit sad for them. Work your ass off for so long and have people demanding a game that was never complete.
THE GAME LOOKS BEAUTIFUL. Stop this mess. CD PROJEKT RED it's one of the few humble developers out there. They are doing a great job with the game, the free dlc content...
I feel a little bit sad for them. Work your ass off for so long and have people demanding a game that was never complete.
Latvian Hitman
Member
I think it's probably time to officially leave that insider's info behind. The picture he painted was a bleak one. Said that we were being sold a false bill of goods, and that they were promising us a game that didn't exist.
Given the review scores and initial player reaction, it sure appears that the insider was a bit exuberant with his assessment. A game of this size and scope doesn't just magically come together in its last year. I think it's clear now that he had a beef with CDPR, and was simply looking to cause as much damage as possible.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Okay, so I just went and watched some of the trailers again, and aside from a couple shots, (the ones from the Nvidia trailer) the original 2013 trailer doesn't look so hot.
I would say the game currently looks better than 90% of that 2013 trailer. Yes there are a couple shots that wow, but if you took those shots out, and showed the trailer today vs the current builds, we would be screaming downgrade at that footage.
Really. Watch this trailer again, full screen, 1080p. It looks kind of bad in most scenes. The scenes that look better than what we have today, are the nvidia trailer scenes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ_G6XiHoUA
I would say the game currently looks better than 90% of that 2013 trailer. Yes there are a couple shots that wow, but if you took those shots out, and showed the trailer today vs the current builds, we would be screaming downgrade at that footage.
Really. Watch this trailer again, full screen, 1080p. It looks kind of bad in most scenes. The scenes that look better than what we have today, are the nvidia trailer scenes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ_G6XiHoUA
Dear god I hate gamer culture.
Every game ever made has been downgraded. And upgraded. And downgraded again. That's how making things works.
no. most of, if not all of that trailer looks better then the weirdly flat version we currently have. even if the weirdly flat version still looks nice.
nelsonroyale
Member
That is an immensely well put together trailer. And yeah, it seems perfectly shot like the AC trailers.
Lostconfused
Member
That's not how marketing works though.
frankly couldnt give a toss who is making a game. if a dev is doing the same BS as ubisoft did with watchdogs i think it's only fair for them to get called out on it as bad as ubi was. if that "never complete" version wasn't indicative of the final game, then they shouldn't have shown it pretending it was what we was going to get. i guess even the best devs fall.
I hate gamer culture too. I also hate companies who release purposely misleading advertising to sell heir shit. Am I not allowed to hate that? Am I not allowed to call a spade a spade? Can I not wish that these people wait to show me something when it actually exists and is a game and not some trumped up lie in an attempt to "hype" me and pre-sell me?
I'm not really how hard such a concept is to grasp.
This is doubly hard on me since I work in video game retail and have to actively sell this shit to people before it even exists because its my job. =x
"You see that Battlefront trailer?! Want to pre-order?"
When I know good and damn well nothing in that trailer was close to gameplay in any way, shape or form. =/
universalmind
Member
Problem for me is they said the 35 minute gameplay vid was what we would be getting, but what we see now is downgraded from that still.
Starting to agree with you. I don't understand what people want here other than to have the 2013 footage erased from the annals of history. We all know what the real game looks like now, and have for quite some time - the decision is binary: buy it or don't.
If CDPR was to come out and say "yes there has a been a big downgrade" what would that even do? People would just use that a platform to complain more about lies and betrayal, which seems to be the real objective rather than getting anything to show for it.
Raven77
Member
Everyone keeps talking about this being a purposeful downgrade, etc. etc. It most definitely has CHANGED since the 2013 stuff and I would say definitely looks worse.
The question is, did they KNOW when they made those segments of the game that it would be unachievable at the scale they planned to create the game? I'm not sure who knows the answer to that or if we'll ever find out. I would like to TRUST CDPR to not have done this on purpose. That they had a grand vision for this game and just couldn't pull it off on ANY HARDWARE at the scale they wanted this game to be.
If the answer is "yes" then what you are all referring too is not simply a "downgrade", it is what they call in business a BAIT AND SWITCH. A classic, textbook, bait and switch.
The question is, did they KNOW when they made those segments of the game that it would be unachievable at the scale they planned to create the game? I'm not sure who knows the answer to that or if we'll ever find out. I would like to TRUST CDPR to not have done this on purpose. That they had a grand vision for this game and just couldn't pull it off on ANY HARDWARE at the scale they wanted this game to be.
If the answer is "yes" then what you are all referring too is not simply a "downgrade", it is what they call in business a BAIT AND SWITCH. A classic, textbook, bait and switch.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Eh. I think just the opposite. The shaders all look less advanced, textures are lower resolution, there is no PBR, Geralts character model looks horrible. Etc.
To me this looks extremely flat.
Compared to what we actually got in the end.
Now again, the shots from the Nvidia trailer stuff is a different story. But the majority of the 2013 trailer looks dated compared to what we actually got.
Actually, I don't believe this. We, as people and gamers, tend to understand when someone tells the truth. "Yeah, during the development process, things changed, art was redone, etc. That said, I believe what we had is really quite something!"
However....CDPR has never really said that. Instead they kept denying things. Why would they deny the obvious when its easier to state the truth? We get the truth. It's easy to understand.
Sure, but you're ok with them using the previously non-downgraded build as advertisement, that's messed up man.
This is how I have felt since I saw this in 2013. Specific shots I can recall that impressed me back then were the combat scenes where he is using the 360 Aard sign, and a few horse riding scenes. The rest looked didn't look much better than TW2. I actually thought Inquisition was shaping up to be the better looking game when we had early screenshots/footage of both.
IMO the game looked it's best at E3 last year with the SOD trailer and then the 35 minute footage released a bit later. I'm not convinced that the final build will be able to look like that even with the extra stuff like light shafts or HBAO+.
robertsan21
Member
what happend to the water effects in the game? do they look anything like this that we saw in the reveal trailer?
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
Yeah clearly no PBR in the old pics: all materials look flat and not realistically interacting with the lighting.
If a game is announced 2 years in advance, just assume that it's going to look different after 2 more years of work. What they show you 2 years in advance is not a "lie". It actually exists. But it should be basic common sense that it's going to change. You're being childishly vindictive.
If you preorder the game that early, then A) LOL, and B) When the game gets close to release and it doesn't have enough frames or bones or pixels, or whatever random metric you care about that makes it worthwhile to you... cancel the preorder. :O
If they're doing that then they probably shouldn't.
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
So it basically looks like a better Witcher 2, but open world?
Sure, it's not looking like those trailers from years ago but i'll take a better looking Witcher 2. Maybe i just have really low expectations about these things.
Sure, it's not looking like those trailers from years ago but i'll take a better looking Witcher 2. Maybe i just have really low expectations about these things.
I'm not being Vindictive at all. I can just understand that some people are tired of being lied to. Yes, its going to look different. So why was it hard for the developers to admit to that obvious fact?
Why did they use something that didn't exist...
To officially sell you their game by asking that you preorder right after the trailer? By doing that, they're telling you "this is our game. Buy it!"
If none of this concerns you, why are you in this thread? Why do you care that people care about being misled and lied to within this hobby?
Latvian Hitman
Member
Yet here we sit. Monitoring a thread filled with people who can't understand why a reveal trailer using footage pulled together from at least two full calendar years ago might not be a 1:1 representation of the final product after the realities of multi-platform development set in.
It's a no-win situation for devs and their marketing teams. You have E3 around the corner, and you need to show your game to the public and get some momentum building toward launch. You're sitting at a point in time where your engine isn't anywhere near finalized and you only have vertical slices here and there that you can even use in a trailer. You can either:
A: Use the best looking stuff you've got. Carefully choose lighting and camera angles to make the best impression possible at the time, and run the risk that internet kiddies will lose their minds over it two years down the road if your finished product falls anywhere short of that whatsoever, or
B: Try to be conservative, and don't use the best assets and scenes you've got for fear of avoiding scenario A, and, instead, see a bunch of internet kiddies immediately start shitting on your game for being, "meh."
Outtrigger888
Member
Game looks incredible to me, I'm a console gamer so I take what I can get and not bitch about stupid graphics options and just enjoy my game.
Anton Sugar
Member
what happend to the water effects in the game? do they look anything like this that we saw in the reveal trailer?
According to a gaffer, the water tesselation effect is still present and tweakable in the ini/config, so most likely, yes.
The_blonde_and_blue
Member
A-freaking-men.
I'm not sure why this is such an argument. It's clear that the game looks drastically different than the "gameplay" 2013 trailer. Very different.
I don't think anyone shouting "downgrade!" is saying the game looks bad in its current form. It does look pretty nice sometimes. They're just saying it's a pretty huge departure from what we were shown.
If you think it looks better now, great! Others, myself included, think it looked far more interesting before, and I wish that was the version of the game we were getting.
Option C: You use Option A with a disclaimer that product is still in development and will change over time and its not representative of the final game. Oh, and don't throw up a pre-order link begging for money. =P
As a console gamer, you have no options. So you have no choice but to take what is given to you. Enjoy! =)
No, it depends on what you release after the "meh". Case in point: The Witcher 2.
But option A is because you simply can't afford the luxury of option B.
After having replayed TW2 maxed out on PC, I can assure you that TW3 looks a lot better than that.
Also, I feel like most of these comparisons really are mute until we see the PC version on Tuesday.
artsi
Member
This right here. Personally I understand the situation and I'm not on a crusade against CDPR for this downgrade, I'm excited for the game. But all this shit could've been avoided if the trailer was properly labeled as pre-rendered.
Was that reported list of downgrades (which includes the water effect being scripted now) debunked or something?
Latvian Hitman
Member
At the time of that E3 2013 reveal, the game wasn't set to be released for another year and a half and the specs of the new consoles were still something of a mystery. Can't imagine why such a disclaimer should be necessary. The game obviously had a long way to go in terms of development.
Moreover, it's not like CDPR hasn't been fully transparent about this. They've been feeding us a pretty steady diet of trailers, demos and screens for two years. I could understand a bit of the angst if they had been hiding things from us along the way and pulled a big bait and switch at the end of the cycle, but that's not what's happened here at all.
robertsan21
Member
You can tweak the graphics for PS4?
It exists - in a vacuum. It's terrible practice to show that kind of stuff without a big disclaimer flashing brightly at all times. They had a "work in progress" banner for their 35 minute demo, but nothing else. Conflicting signal, don't you think?
I'd also bet a million dollars their marketing team doesn't share any of your views. They're not promoting the game, they're promoting its image, its concept. Movie trailers do the same thing - bits and pieces are used to create an impression of the product.
Mad Season
Banned
lol no
If you could the game would run at 15fps
C'mon, don't pretend that a disclaimer would make any difference, internet outrage isn't so easily diverted. Anyway, a disclaimer is implied when you're any kind of reasonable person looking at footage of a game 2 years out, desinged specifically to garner hype.
Latvian Hitman
Member
Interesting. I wonder if you would be so willing to work on a "meh" reveal trailer for an event like E3 if it was your livelihood at stake.
All bad timing. Watch_Dogs fell on its head doing the same thing (but the backlash for the game was much worse considering it was revealed via a 15 minute stage demo).
The only relevant screens and info they've been feeding have been over the past year where the game has really come into its own. All other media is obsolete; it's pretty, but it's a fairy tale.
Above all else, a disclaimer is honest. If a people still chooses to outrage over it, they look the fool. However, by selling your title with footage from a game that doesn't exist at that point? You're being dishonest. That's all there it to it. Why was their such a big uproar over Watch Dogs? I mean, it was implied the game would never look like its reveal and gameplay right? So why did gamers and journalists hold Ubisoft's feet to the fire over that game?
Because it was dishonest.
Latvian Hitman
Member
They look the fool either way.
Look- I realize that some things in the pipleline changed between May 2013 (a time where the new consoles were just being finalized) and May 2015. Some things changed for the worse. Some changed for the better. But, a fairy tale? Good god. There's just no reasoning with some people.
That's why you don't quote me out of context:
You really think I don't understand the costs... Interesting indeed.Yasae said:
Furthermore, I do put together demo reels, and I do select the best parts of the best work. That's part of the job. Is it completely honest? Not really. You don't have me here, sorry.
If wishing for honesty is foolish, call me a fool. I'll call you a liar.
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