A couple of days ago, Square Enix released a new trailer for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and a lot of gamers claimed that its visuals were downgraded from its E3 2015 build. The good news is that both the E3 2015 demonstration and this latest gameplay trailer feature identical scenes, therefore we decided to compare them and find out whether the visuals have taken a hit.
First of all, let’s see the infamous GIF comparison that has been circulating the Internet lately (kudos to our reader Sabin Figaro for sharing it). As we can see, there are some noticeable lighting differences in this particular scene. Also, the satellite dishes have been changed, but this is most probably due to the game’s angular direction.
What’s really interesting here is that at the end of the E3 demo, we get another look at that same location and to our surprise, it looked exactly the same with the E3 2016 build.
The only explanation here is that EIDOS Montreal used a more advanced lighting system for its first cut-scene in that E3 2015 build, and a less advanced system during the second in-engine cut-scene. Either way, there is no real “downgrade-ation” here as the scene at the end of the E3 2015 demo looks similar to the one in the 2016 build.
Moving forward to other scenes, it’s pretty obvious that the game’s visuals have not been downgraded. Every scene from the 2016 gameplay trailer looks similar to its E3 2015 counterpart. Reflections, amount of light sources, TODs, shadows and pretty much everything remains the same, though we do have to note a stronger/bloomier lighting system that was used in Talos Rucker’s office/apartment. Due to the stronger bloom effects, ambient occlusion seems weaker in that scene. Whether this is something that can be fixed with NVIDIA’s HBAO+ tech remains to be seen.
Either way, we wouldn’t say that the game has been downgraded. It looks almost identical to its E3 2015 demo, minor some really subtle changes.
For this comparison, we used the high quality videos provided by Gamersyde.
The E3 2015 demo build is on the left, whereas the 2016 build is on the right.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Looks great, I have high hopes for this title as it is one of my favorite series.
Great work, thanks John!
2016 looks better in my opinion.
Actually yeah j agree only in a few areas i think it looks worse.
not the skin textures though
They are actually more realistic: you don’t get to see as much “pores” in real life as they are in the old demo… But mostly, the only change is the lighting system.
The tech demo looks a lot better though.
http://i.imgur.com/TJO8yPn.jpg
Yeah and people are prolly gonna cry downgrade because of it, just like they did with Division when Massive promoted their new engine tech. People can’t seem to tell tech demo promotion/presentation from actual games nowdays. I remember when the first Techdemos of Crysis came, and the final version actually looked better, that’s because those abominations called consoles weren’t involved back then.
Yeah as long as the game looks good in the end, who cares. The Witcher 3, The Division are great looking games for open world, but you are always going to get some idiots comparing them to something like Crysis 2, 3 closed map scripted games. Crysis 2/3 uses SSR but it wasn’t use that much at all, where The Division it’s practically on every surface that can reflect in an open world game
In multiplatform games now pc can affect console graphics not other way. Look at Uncharted 4-best graphics on all platforms for sure.
Consoles are the ones holding gaming back with sub £400 hardware. Learn to research mate.
Which is actually wrong, but whatever helps you sleep at night
If they’d only demo their engine with something else. Once you demo your engine with a game that is highly anticipated and is going to be out in a year, people have high hopes for the game. How is this different than a restaurant having beautified pictures of their food, raising your expectations and then disappointing with something that looks inferior. People will be disappointed when they are presented with a great looking game and then the final product does not look the same. Its their fault to raise the level of expectation. It does not matter if the game still looks good because you expected something even better and you see yourself compromising in someway. This is what pissed me off with Witcher. The final game looks and plays good but they showed us something that was even better at E3 and people who have superior hardware want that. The worse is that they took preorders based on those videos. So obviously people will feel cheated and its a completely sane reaction.
I like the new version better.
You can tell Adam’s hair is more detailed in the previous trailer, but I bet we’ll get options to crank that up on PC, just like in Rise of the TR.
If this is being handled by Nixxes there’s really no need to fret, it’ll likely be a stellar port.
A mix of both look better. Some of the new trailers “downgrades” are just what appears to be the brightness or compression or something.
The game looked slightly disappointing to begin with, compared to bullshots they released, and the fact that this time they aren’t so tight in resources as they were with Human Revolution.
I’m more concerned about performance, since Dawn Engine is the modified Glacier 2 (Hitman).
When i first saw the trailer i was like wow, then i saw the new one and something felt off. It did not look as impressive, am not saying it was downgraded but i am sick and tired of seeing something awesome in a trailer and then see it a few months later and looking different.
The face looks bad in comparison to last years build man last year i thought it looked like it wasn’t going to get cut down since i thought the graphics they showed could have been handled by the consoles
Texture isn’t as good, lightning isn’t as good, texture also isn’t as good & finally hair isn’t as good.
But colors are better and the “downgrades” aren’t even noticeable unless you are looking for them.
downgrade or not, this is just disappointing
Definitely an upgrade, especially in the skin department.
It looks great. Can’t wait to play it.
Glad they toned down the sharpening.
Denuvo will be there, no doubts
His arms look waaay too out of proportion its ridiculous.
This game could look like duke nukem and I would still play it
Deus Ex needs a good story and i don’t see one here, not only that, the publisher on this title is a new a**hole to the industry, bad ports, s**ty DRMs and forced online crap and tons of paywall bulls**ts etc…
And by the way, we can’t call those downgrade, can we ? because they said it’s a vertical slice (fake footage) back then. either way, lol at those facial animations.
Yea…those fine prints and corporate wordings. Also, do you remember that Kickstarter like preorder sham? Unlock preorder bonuses lmfao! I really hope the story is compelling. Too many of my favourite franchises are being butchered in recent years and I do not want Deus Ex to be one.
wow, that augment your pre-order thingy was just awful.
The story is very promising tho. And they improved every single aspect in the gameplay and level design.
doesn’t look that way but we will see.
It does. Read some articles about it on game informer and rocket, paper, shotgun.
The developers are very passionate about it.
That’s called marketing, we hear these things even from abysmal games.
Yeah but the developers behind deus ex haven’t lied before about the quality of the story and deus ex games are known for their stories. Even invisible war had a good story.
Most of them wont 100% lie, they just exaggerate the good parts of the game and IW was a terrible game.
The story wasn’t terrible tho
Everything else was.
Yeah but I’m only talking about the story.
i feel like they downgrade the skin texture.