The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt releases in a couple of months and last week, CD Projekt RED held an event to showcase the latest build of its title. Our dear friends over at Enternity attended that event and interviewed the game’s Art Producer, Michal Stec, who told them that its visuals have not been downgraded.
As Michal Stec told Enternity’s Pavlos Papapavlou, CD Projekt RED is currently optimizing the game and has not downgraded the game’s visuals in any way.
“No. That’s the answer. We are not downgrading it. We are optimizing the game but in a way that doesn’t affect the visuals. So there is a lot of work for us, and this is also one of the reasons why we delayed the game. Because we still have to optimize it to get the best performance for you guys as possible.”
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt releases this May, and below you can view the entire video interview!
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We will see.
Proper game optimization has never been a problem for CDPR. If your hardware doesn’t cut it, then its just not powerful enough.
That is after Witcher 2. The first Witcher wasn’t that good.
Witcher 1 ran horribly in certain areas even on top end hardware. It also had insanely long loading times until they fixed them in a patch.
I agree somewhat with the Witcher 1 but the problems effecting The Witcher 2 when it launched where caused by a conflict with Nvidias 3dVision drivers and people trying to run the game with ubersampling on.
What about the other interview over at gry-online with the CEO where he said that they use the same build, same textures and models for the console and PC versions?
Maybe it’s really not a downgrade but that’s not worth a lot if they’ve been aiming low from the beginning and what we saw initially were classic bullshots.
I want to believe in CDPR to deliver a great final product but when the CEO of the company announces parity with Xbone and PS4, what am I left with to hope for?
the performance difference between X1 and PS4 is not that significant. Achieving parity won’t be as drastic as you’re making it out to be. Y’know, I’d be more worried is they tried to match the PC to the console…
That’s exactly what he said though. The same assets for all three versions, consoles as well as PC.
PC version was running on high. PS4 version had worse textures than that and Xbox textures were even more blurry. Lighting also seems to be better on PS4 (in a leaked photo). PC version featured nVIDIA powered hair simulation. Console version featured no hair on sideways of Geralt’s head.
I still want to hope, man.
It’s just the signs and the actual words from the devs that scare me.
I don’t think it’s gonna be bad either way (a good game is still a good game even with downgraded/lower than expected graphics) but I would prefer not having been lied to by some of my favorite devs. I don’t think that’s being a whiny kid. You shouldn’t tolerate being lied to, nor should you berate others for not wanting to be lied to.
We can only hope CDPR learns from Bioware’s mistake.
If they end up lying to the pc customer base the way Mike Laidlaw and co. did right up until the release of Inquisition, it’s clear that console $$ has become more important to these companies than artistic integrity.
Bioware got in bed with EA and we all know how that ended. CDPR got in bed with Microsoft. I’m afraid of what’s gonna come out of that.
CDPR is known for terrible PR. Have you forgotten what they said about 4.5 copies of Witcher 2 being pirated? In the end it turned out that Witcher 2 wasn’t even in top 5 pirated games of 2011 and Crysis 2 was announced as most pirated game of the year and even THAT wasn’t pirated 4 million times (let alone 4.5 despite being leaked 3 months before the release). 5th most pirated game was Portal 2 (1.3 million times). On other hand they also talked about Xbox 360 version getting “next gen lighting” which some fanboys still believe, while in fact Xbox version was advertised by showing PC footage on medium settings while actual Xbox version looked like trash compared to PC. Still an amazing job, considering the hardware was potato. So, don’t take their words seriously. They do that.
Yeah, I have noticed that their communication with the press and public is nothing short of disastrous. Countless different people, all not qualified to do PR, talking with anybody and all saying conflicting things. It’s really maddening and infuriating if you are starved for information.
But just going of the footage they’ve shown lately, it does not look up to par with the earlier trailers yet, that vegetation, especially those ugly grass bushels, are so last gen and just so ugly. If that’s final and they are done with the graphics and only fixing bugs and coding optimization, then the graphics are not as great as initially advertised and less impressive than Witcher 2, which didn’t have grass that was this ugly.
At this point I’m hoping for an enhanced edition down the line to deliver the graphics I had been hoping for and dreaming of. I can live with that as long as the writing and gameplay are solid, which they seem to be.
what did you expect?this is not CRYENGINE
they don’t have the same experience this is their 2nd engine frostbite took 3 to be what it is now
you shouldn’t have believed anyone who said the game was going to be the best looking game.i didn’t based on how the witcher 2 was not that either and some said the same about it.what should gives you hope is the attention to the little details alot forget while making games like that goose walkng and reacting to you.have you seen the goose?
Even if the PC version were unaffected, which LMAO you better believe it will be, the idea of limiting the PS4 version to Xbone level is still a travesty. PS4 users should boycot the game.
People are gonna preorder anyway
It’s really disappointing to see CDPR become no better than Ubi or Gearbox, in the way they treat their fans like they’re idiots.
Mmm not even close. And all this is just speculation. This isn’t a company that would deliberately just disable graphical features and hide them in the PC version.
Don’t forget Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games.
WHAT? YOU DARE SPEAK ABOUT SONY DEVELOPERS? ILL FREAKING KILL YOU AND YOUR WHOLE FAMILY, I BOUGHT A PLAYSTATION AND I DONT WANT ANYONE CRITICIZING ANYTHING ON IT.
Sorry i just had to say it. Freaking fanboys.
What’s to forget? Those studios have ALWAYS used smoke and mirrors in promoting the graphical prowess of their games. I’m talking about a dev like CDPR, which was once considered beyond reproach in the PC gaming community, being lured by $$ into the console space and ultimately dilluting their product…and rep… because of it.
guys the witcher 3 locked at 30 fps? on pc
Ok thx
wow that greek site is pretty good. The dragon age review is actually talking about the bad pc controls and how dumbed down the game is and how many problems it shares with dragon age 2.
Kinda shows you how bad the US media have become.
US media : a bunch of “journalists” and “websites” that do their best to promote and praise their national console and brand, the xbox, before writing any comment about the fantastic ps4 sales, its great specs, its future-proof design and components, its great games and future AAAA titles, etc etc.
and when someone from that US media dares praising a different console or games, because he simply enjoys playing it, well, he gets destroyed and banned from that press. ask HIPHOPGAMER, for further info about it.
the US media haven’t become. they HAVE been acting like this, since 2005.
praising everything from microsoft, and bashing anything from sony.
who hasn’t read at least 50 articles these last 2 months, about how bad The order 1886 will be, why it will flop, why people shouldn’t preorder it, why people shouldn’t buy it, etc etc ?
meanwhile, the halo anniversary online component, which is totally broken and gamers can’t play online, this press still gives it 9.5-10/10 scores. but if Driveclub online component isn’t working flawlessly, the game gets a 4/10 score down its throat.
seems obvious, right ? why would an american press praise a japanese console, praise japanese games, instead of praising its national brand and console-games ? that’s why any x1 exclusive will always get a 9 or 10/10, and a ps4 exclusive will get a 6,7/10, if the author isn’t too mad, that day.
the US press, last gen:
-1 bad pixel or texture found on a ps3 game : score: 8.5/10. xbox360 score: 8.7/10
definite version people should run and buy : the x360
this gen:
100% of the ps4 games destroy anything done on the x1, visuals, resolutions, framerate, antialiasing, more effects, more particles, crisper textures, better EVERYTHING.
the US press :
-resolution and framerate aren’t important, only the experience counts
– AC:Unity runs at 2fps higher,at 27fps, during 10 seconds, on the x1, vs the 25fps on the ps4: the US press: “ohhh, it’s clear that the kinekt removal and the hidden cpu are closing the power gap, and soon, the x1 will be as powerful as the ps4”
too bad, despite all the hate and bad press and the permanent bashing, downgrading, low scores, negative articles, negative reviews, VS the love and praise the x1 gets, all the positive articles, all the fantastic esram-directx12-cloud-blabla PR BS and amazing announcements, despite all that, it’s still
2-1
and with all the great AAA titles in 2015, despite all the negative reviews (we all know the ig n, pol ygon, gam espot, etc etc reviews of The order 1886 are already written, with its 6/10 scores, 2.5/5 or 60-65%), because, hey, if the US press can’t do nothing to make the ps4 less powerful, they can still try to hurt it, with bad reviews and articles for every single ps4 exclusive title, and with fantastic 9.5/10 scores to all x1 exclusive titles, to boast sales. Despite all the hate and negative craaap, the ps4 will continue dominating, destroying every single x1 game.
and this isn’t last-gen.
this time around, people know they can’t trust a gam espot or pol ygon review. gamers know everything from those websites are pure trash, and if pol ygon gives a 7.5/10 to a ps4 exclusive game, actually, it’s a 9 or 9.5/10.
this is the sad and desperate US press, since 2005.
Look i can tell you are massive sony fanboy, there are sites like gamespot that trash xbox or ign, then there is dualshills who is italian and posts the most clickbaiting articles i have seen totally pro sony.
The order is gonna suck no question there everyone bashes it, dualshills even praised driveflop so wtf they know?
If you want based sites, dont go to dualshills either.
“100% of the ps4 games destroy anything done on the x1,”
Funny because xbone games are rated higher on metacritic.
What on earth you even doing on a pc site is beyond me go lick sony some more.
bad news is , EA says it has earned them the most money of all DA games.
crappy games sell more it seems
I am sad, to think in the begining it didnt sell well and ea tried to make it like a goot thing like “HUR DUR GOOD GAMES DONT SELL WELL”
From what I understand this videos were made on High settings and without any Nvidia specific options. I guess Ultra has FPS problems but they can fix that.
It’s sad that gamers have become whiny little kids. Some are mentioning VGX 2013 trailer that, that’s how the game used to look. That trailer barely showed any footage, apart from few locations for few seconds.
So, it’s downgraded compared to what exactly? The Pax demo looked better than 35 minutes gameplay demo. Better textures, foliage, weather effects, hair simulation, lighting and so on.
The main things here were Storytelling and Gameplay. Storytelling looks amazing as usual (the part when he enters Nilfgaardian camp was the best, if you’ve played first two games). On other hands sites are reporting that Witcher 3 feels more difficult than Witcher 2, so PC crowd can stop worrying about game being targeted for the masses.
You know what looked way better than any of those? The two minute long E3 gameplay trailer. Those were the graphics that had me hyped and planning for my next upgrade.
Whatever happened to that build?…
Looks same to me. May be I’m missing something.
Honestly ever since they first revealed it was coming to the PS4 and Xbone I was worried and felt CDProjekt was going to slowly lose their way and sadly for them all I’ve seen is console quality game play and the main reason why it was delayed, Look I’m all for CDProjekt looking to expand and build their company but they seem to be falling into a trap, I’m not talking about any downgrades since I can’t see any but in terms of their marketing , that’s the true thing that’s been downgraded
Im starting to dislike CD-Project
To make a blanket statement lke “no downgrade”, just doesnt seem correct.
In that ‘elder’ trailer, you could clearly see that on things like clothing, some of the textures were high res, and others were low res.. it was a mix of different resolution items on the one character model.
To state that “nothing is downgraded” just seems flat out fallacious and contrary to the way game optimisation works. For instance, all the different objects in the game are going to be rendered at different resolutions. Character models might be as much as 4k texture packs over the face, 2k over the clothing, etc. Environments varying between 2-4k over each object. The entire game is a mix of different things optimised at different rates. What i saw in the VGX/Elder trailer was clearly a maximum of 1k texture over some of the clothing components, while others were clearly 2k+. This is a clear indication of downgrade at play. There is no way on earth the original assets as part of those clothing items looked that bad.
To state outright that they havnt had to downgrade any of their initial expectation just seems like a flat out deception to me. When you are designing the textures, they are always going to be designed at the highest resolution, then you are going to downgrade quality as a matter of practice in STANDARD game design. Probably the only game that hasnt done this to date is Star Citizen and it doesnt even run properly on SLI Titans yet. However, perfect resolution isnt everything. The art design and gameplay are the most important factors. I’ve got every confidence the game will be good… SO WHY LIE.
Where’s your proof? Of course asset quality varies across the game, but show me the same place in the game or the same cutscene that has clearly downgraded assets. The recent screenshots, if anything, look better than the old ones.
The proof is in the difference in asset resolution. All assets are developed in a higher resolution than they are used in game. At least in the way that not many assets are ‘lossless’.
So, the initial fallacious statement was that no assets are downgraded, because its inconsistent with practice.
When we are talking about downgrades, we were talking about Geralt being shown where all his clothing textures etc were like a 4k texture pack with minimal compression, then they show another asset where its probably .5-1k during that trailer… and blame the whole thing on youtube compression.
This is dishonesty at its finest, and in my opinion, the development team would have face palmed at this dishonesty from the PR team about “youtube compression”, because they know anybody who understands game development would understand that they were merely showing LOW QUALITY ASSETS. At this point, we didnt know whether this was ever going to be fixed… perhaps they were going to be redone….
And guess what, it turned out i was right. I’ve read some recent interviews that were translated, and theres even a post on the OFFICIAL FORUMS – where the developers talk about going back and redoing some of the NPC clothing assets etc. We’ve seen the new 4k resolution screenshots and everything is looking better. There will probably still be a bunch of environment assets that look sh**ty here and there, and this is a direct result of the compromise for optimising for 3 platforms. And to suggest that this isnt the case is pure lies. However, as long as they are honest about it, people can accept it as something that happens with all development cycles.
So yeh, you either ignorant or a fanboy who doesnt want to look at things objectively. Nobody is saying its going to be a bad game, and even if the graphics sucked, i bet the game will rock. However, we wont just cup the balls and let them BS everybody about youtube compression when they show inferior video clips, you have to call a spade a spade to promote the good practice and shame the bad ones. We dont want CDPR to turn into another EA/Ubisoft. Regional Pricing, Exclusive Console Content, DLC when they said never DLC, now pre-order bonuses. They are still reasonable about all these new practices but they are breaking promises when they claimed they would NEVER have these.
Open world but no generic filler (fetch) quests. Main platform is consoles but expect no downgrade on PC.
LOL
LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH, INCREDIBLE. I expect the fans to stay optimistic for now but when the game launches there’s going to be a lot of complaints.
He cannot be serious. If that is now downgrade, then what is?
Old – http://bit.ly/16yb8ve
Old – http://bit.ly/1AxkRiu
New – http://bit.ly/1zVHmOE
That’s not a downgrade, that’s a stupid comparison.