The downgrades of TLOU2's final version compared to that E3 2018 demo.

The final version looks better in half of those clips. The main complaint seems to be that the scripted animations during the initial demo are not always present in the final game, but are still context sensitive and in the game to some degree.
 
Some people really have a beef with this game and it reviewing and selling it extremely well are giving some popcorn worthy moments... will probably all be something like the famous Puddlegate and the Uncharted 2 downgrades :LOL:...
 
Funny thing is ND has a lot of clout that they don't have to resort to doing this every single time. Now I feel sorry for that Tomb Raider dev calling the animations "fake" from all the pro-trailer mobs.
 
Op
tenor.gif
 
It was probably rendered on a high-end PC workstation. Running on Quadro RTX 8000 or something like that.
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And not only that, that build from E3 2018, was probably not optimized to have a stable frame-rate of 30fps through-and-through. Which means that on the part that we saw in the E3 2018 trailer, everything looks good framerate-wise, but it doesn't mean that the frame-rate would have been stable throughout the entire build.
 
The scenes they used in the original shots were all set up with very clear and distinct point lights like they would use in a hero asset cinematic.

To even be shocked that wouldn't happen in the final game is a bit daft. There is no way you can light a world and have every single shot be lit perfectly in any situation.

The games boring as fuck with a trash story, but the one area you simply cannot poke holes in is it's visuals, they are incredible.
 
The lighting downgrade is pretty egregious when shown side by side. It's no Ubisoft downgrade though.
 
The game remains visually impressive and is in the top 5 of the gen easily but

  • The lighting has been dimmed.
  • Some NPCs in the game have full transluminescence.
  • Color calibration has been changed.
  • The intensity of the God Rays has been reduced.
  • Specular clarity has been disabled.
  • Some pop-ins.
  • The disappearance of some puddles.
  • The quality of the motion blur appears to have been reduced.
  • The quality of some shadows has been lowered.
  • The enemy AI no longer interacts with the environment.

It would be a shame if the PS5 version can't fix this.
 
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I personally always find the last touch changes that happen a year or two before the games are being released as an pure artistic touches, where I cannot even tell if the game looks better or worse, it's just different, and so slightly that without side-by-side comparisons no one would ever noticed.
 
these are mostly pretty obvious downgrades from dev to retail hardware you would expect from any game, no doubt ps5 version will bring it back up to e3 and in 4k
 
Evilms said:
The game remains visually impressive and is in the top 5 of the gen easily but

  • The lighting has been dimmed.
  • Some NPCs in the game have full transluminescence.
  • Color calibration has been changed.
  • The intensity of the God Rays has been reduced.
  • Specular clarity has been disabled.
  • Some pop-ins.
  • The disappearance of some puddles.
  • The quality of the motion blur appears to have been reduced.
  • The quality of some shadows has been lowered.
  • The enemy AI no longer interacts with the environment.

It would be a shame if the PS5 version can't fix this.
Click to expand...
But we all know they would not be fucked to do any sort of adjustements.
 
The fact that people call an unfinished game vs a final product a "downgrade" always makes me crack up. Do people understand how resource allocation and engines work?

Not a TLOU fan but no developer would intentionally make their game look worse unless it was necessary to get it running.
 
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Well, I thought and hoped this practice was done after the Watch Dogs fiasco and it's surprising that it's still very much alive. I don't know when it started, just that in the 90's and 00's games tended to look better on release and not worse, so you can argue about what you want, in the end this is false marketing, period. I don't understand why one of the very best companies of the industry has to resort to such things when the final game they delivered is this unbelievably insanely amazing anyway. I was skeptical and wanted to/did believe it before since it is ND we are talking about but I knew the E3 demo was scripted bullshit after the first real gameplays were released. I can live with the graphical downgrades, because the game technically is the most ambitious thing ever, next to RDR2, but the scripted bullshit is false marketing. If anyone read my previous posts they know that I'm drooling over it and I'm totally amazed but this practice has to end.

TLDR: ND doesn't need to resort to false marketing when they can deliver the best that the industry can offer anyway. Without the bullshit scripted animations everyone would be still amazed and their reputation wouldn't get worse because of false marketing. I'm done for now, continuing to drool over it :)
 
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People are shocked that ND dongraded something ? Didn't last The Last of Us downgraded back in PS3 days didn't teach you anything ?

And no that is not just "different lighting conditions". All trough this scene you can see how lighting model was simplified. Lighting model simply doesn't have enough resolution to properly show small details on face. Much like they always switched lighting model for cutscenes and gameplay in their previous games.

unknown.png


And that is now new. ND has been doing it for years. First releasing work on clearly much better hardware or straight up PC renders.

U2:

4TrIvwt.jpg


 
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Dontero said:
People are shocked that ND dongraded something ? Didn't last The Last of Us downgraded back in PS3 days didn't teach you anything ?

And no that is not just "different lighting conditions". All trough this scene you can see how lighting model was simplified. Lighting model simply doesn't have enough resolution to properly show small details on face. Much like they always switched lighting model for cutscenes and gameplay in their previous games.

unknown.png


And that is now new. ND has been doing it for years. First releasing work on clearly much better hardware or straight up PC renders.

U2:

4TrIvwt.jpg


Click to expand...

I'm not arguing that TLoU2 looks exactly like the demo, but those U2 screens are bogus, those cinematics are pre rendered, lol.
 
Not shocked at all, the gameplay reveal was too much perfect to run like that, they did the same with tlou1.

Still, the single animations are probably very close to that level and best in class anyway.
 
I'd like to kindly remind all the fanboys that the E32018 footage was being recycled and used in promotion material, hype trailers and Sony dev interviews in just the last couple of months before release.

Last year, many tried to point out these easily apparent visual downgrades and got mocked by people on this forum. Its Spiderman puddlegate all over again they said, no the graphics are the same or even upgraded they said.. Where are those people now?

But the better question is, why does this keep happening to ND games?

Uncharted 4 teasercould be forgiven for a dev not completely familiarized with the PS4 hardware 6-7 years ago... but ND by 2018 had released their 3rd game on the system. ND engineers are part of the ICE team and are known for having the skillset to squeeze every bit out of the hardware while using performance analytic tools showing where and how its used.

So what happened in 2018 that they thought that this could run on a PS4?
Its simple. They didn't. They have a history of being intentionally disingenuous with E3 showings, cranking details to the max and making specific animations for a show to whip the hype up into a frenzy. They seem to not give any fucks about misrepresenting their games pre release.

To me this shit is false advertisement and should be called out. There were no artistic choices made here, there were no optimizations that they didn't already know were needed when they released that video 2 years ago. Its bullshit.
 
Dontero said:
People are shocked that ND dongraded something ? Didn't last The Last of Us downgraded back in PS3 days didn't teach you anything ?

And no that is not just "different lighting conditions". All trough this scene you can see how lighting model was simplified. Lighting model simply doesn't have enough resolution to properly show small details on face. Much like they always switched lighting model for cutscenes and gameplay in their previous games.

unknown.png


And that is now new. ND has been doing it for years. First releasing work on clearly much better hardware or straight up PC renders.

U2:

4TrIvwt.jpg
Click to expand...
Where did get that U2 "final game" screenshot from? I played it on a PS3 and it was pretty close to the above picture.
 
Not going to watch all that, because the outcome is the same.
Game looks good/great for a 7 year old console with shitty components, but fans also do it to themselves by supporting a company seek to cut too many corners.

PS5 is no different (if there won't be a Pro model), it might sound great and all and the jump is 5x of base PS4 (whoop di fucking doo!), but they are butchering their own talent by limiting them.
I often feel that PlayStation studios spends a large amount of their time trying to figure out how to get shit to work because the parent company is cheap as fuck, fake this, fake that, variable bla bla.

At the end of the day you could also call it smart business, you could also call it taking your consumers for granted and for fools, because the average ones don't see it or know better.
 
It's definitely not looking good as E3 demo, but the video is not really good comparison.
in term of animations this is closest thing I've ever seen to E3 demo.
 
Are there any marketing materials which aren't straight up fake out there? For me I realised when a famous AC:Od screenshot couldn't be replicated in-game no matter how hard I tried, even in photo mode. Now the lies are just obvious. I never really looked at pre-release stuff before a few years ago, so that's why I didn't notice how much marketing lies.

This below is fake on almost every level (dd, shadows, lods, camera, everything except models existing):

ACOdyssey_GreeceEstablishingShot.jpg
 
Dontero said:
People are shocked that ND dongraded something ? Didn't last The Last of Us downgraded back in PS3 days didn't teach you anything ?

And no that is not just "different lighting conditions". All trough this scene you can see how lighting model was simplified. Lighting model simply doesn't have enough resolution to properly show small details on face. Much like they always switched lighting model for cutscenes and gameplay in their previous games.

unknown.png


And that is now new. ND has been doing it for years. First releasing work on clearly much better hardware or straight up PC renders.

U2:

4TrIvwt.jpg


Click to expand...


U2 shot is completely difference in lighting. Also, if you noticed, some detailes were added, like necklace and curtains

Regarding U4, IIRC ND said they wete targeting 60fps, not it will be 60. That's different
 
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But it was real time gameplay! That's a even bigger deception than showing a CGI trailer labeled as CGI trailer. Imo.

Now you can't trust real time gameplay , either.
 
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And that is totally normal.
There is a big difference between design-target and end result.
Who know what other technical tricks they had to use in order to make it run like it does and sacrifice some image quality here and there. It always comes at a cost.
 
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