Remember the Wild Hunt village scene from the game’s VGX trailer? Well, good news is that this scene is present even in the final version of The Witcher 3. The bad news is that this scene shows some of the differences between the VGX trailer and the final build. As always, the smoke effects are the ones that have been severely ‘downgraded. Particles effects are fewer in the final version, and the lighting system seems to have taken a hit. Kudos to NeoGAF’s member ‘JoeLT‘ for sharing the images. VGX trailer images are on the left whereas final build images are on the right.
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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Lol they even downgraded the model of the Wild Hunt King, new one looks so generic.
Fan boys were totally silent last time I pointed out the change in Armor designs. Sadly I was right.
BTW not sure why but when i played this cutscene looked twice as bad for me, it wasn’t a dark night like either of the screenshots but rather a really ugly blue evening or something?
I’m waiting for a few months before playing. By then Nvidia drivers should make the game playable for PC Gamers and with any luck modders will have fixed the royal f- up that CD Project did on the Graphics. Btw- I’m not complaining about any other aspect of the game- the previous two entries are my all time favorite games.
Yeah, I noticed that from few other screenshots too. It looked like fire has no affect on the environment. It felt flat as if someone placed fire on top of houses. These screenshots look a lot better. But yea Satori Adrian Ivy is right. Fanboys think everything was done for the right purpose while in fact they made a new, lower poly model of Eredin (King of the hunt).
Damn. I was starting not up care so much about the downgrade. That really is a massive difference. The thing I don’t like CD Project they have a history of fixing things that aren’t broken- look at the example of the king of the wild hunt’s armor- that original armor was badass- of course whiny little brats complained about the design and they changed it. Instead of having faith in their own original vision they keep trying to please the biggest common denominator- and end up alienating fans on the fringes- which sadly apparently now includes PC gamers.
Wait, people complained about the armor so CDPR changed it to look less amazing? That is very hard for me to believe.
complained about it being impactical and unwieldy… at least give that guy a heavy plate armor…
It’s definitely impractical and unwieldy, sure, but isn’t all fantasy armor?
Likely they changed it because of technical limitations – because the animations for the character had clipping issues which will look silly in-game.
It’s not just the impracticality of the armor they changed – they lessened the attention to detail considerably. Maybe that’s the artist’s way of disagreeing with the director for trashing his original design?
Perhaps there was some gameplay issues with the way it animated, I don’t know- I do remember when that video premieres there was a backlash against that spiky armor- because people felt it was too ungainly for elves. Now the king of the wild hunt looks more like his specter in the first game. I really like the spiky armor myself.
One way or another, models change from preview versions to the later ones.
Not the first or the last game to do so.
As for “downgrade”. Since the Wild Hunt was also in the first game and the King’s form was like this
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JrePxATfvTk/maxresdefault.jpg
It would make sense for him to be “slimmer” than that juggernaut of an armored knight that was shown in the old trailer.
Beating the “downgrade” horse until you’re just beating the pavement with its fleshy bits is so tiresome.
Game’s not are it was shown in 2013 or 2014, no arguing will change that, unless there’s an Enhanced Edition like the previous 2 games.
Play the game, enjoy the story, be Geralt, stop nitpicking every little thing.
That is a big change, but it’s not going to stop me enjoying it.
Disappointed with this game. Oh well, no suprise…
You clearly haven’t played it. It only looks amazing instead of incredible.
That’s subjective.
Mm not really if you look at it objectively. And it truly looks much better in game than in some sh*tty screenshots some have been posting.
It’s subjective because 1 man’s trash, is another man’s gold. Either or, I think I’ll give this game a go in 6 months, let a few patches out, and maybe even a mod or two.
The graphical style may not be your favourite but it’s still a pretty game. Or do you think ferraris aren’t fast because you like bugattis and they have a faster car?
It does look good no doubt, but if I’ve learnt anything from Game releases from the past few years, it’s to not play any of them from day 1.
The dead king dude got severely downgraded, wow. Pffft, consoles.
agree to the lowest kind ps2 graphics
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little…..! This is simply sad looking when comparing these two together side by side!
I guess I can hold off on buying this one until I hear good things about what mods are doing for the PC. You know what the developers should have done for it from the beginning.
So you’re saying a videogame outlet should stop reporting that the final product sold by CDPR is nowhere near as it was advertised?
Do you own CD Projekt stock or something?
And I don’t know where or when they said that, but they are on record lying about there being no downgrade and again lying about the 2013 footage not being in-game.
Lies, lies, lies.
Well, yes and no. Yes, because it IS a downgrade from the video. However, they did release ACTUAL screenshots and videos before release, so they did sort of rectify it.
Yes, they had to release actual screenshots as release date approached because the difference between builds would have been a lot more more shocking.
Also, Iwinski I think it was, is on record saying there was no downgrade.
Damn, those VGX screenshots and Eredin’s model in them look like a movie. They were aiming for the sky. It’s sad TBH.
The downgrade is real, holy sh*t. Still, I heard that it’s a good game in the end. I’m still happy with GTA V, I have no problem waiting for a sale before getting this game.
Man, the old armor design looked so much better. God dammit CDPR, you were our last hope.
There’s a couple of vids on YouTube showing it being played with SweetFX, trying to match the original trailer, not too shabby.
Seems like most people are fine with all this downgrade stuff. Good for them, maybe. Me? I just can’t be fine with this. Never going to buy or play another CDP game, starting from Witcher 3, unless they’ll redeem themselves in the eyes of the PC community somehow, though I doubt they even care.
Honestly, the game looks really nice on ultra, it’s doesn’t show up much in the screenshots, the clouds, windy foliage, trees look stunning in motion. The game especially looks good when it goes cloudy, night it also nice as well. There are parts of the day that look at bit too colourful though.
Having real issues with ultra with a 970/ i5 2400 , Have had to run it on high and it performs OK, whats sad is that even the cut scenes are set to 30fps( I know one can unlock it but yeah honestly don’t understand why they didn’t set it to 60)
I’ll admit the game looks good at certain points and times of day but when passing through familiar scenes from the trailers one does thing how it went from that to this.
But its fine in a sense I got the a free gog code from the 970 promo, sad thing is if they kept it the way it was I would’ve grabbed a retail copy as an extra way of giving them something extra, the game play is great but their marketing has basically aliented a huge chunk of their original fanbase in order to appease Subscription loving/ our console manufacturer can do no harm fanboys
cutscenes are 60fps dude, only pre rendered cutscenes are locked at 30fps and they are very few, i just saw two of them
Mmmm I’ll mess with the one .ini file and test with fraps, now that you said that I maybe am reading wrong and seeing wrong.
“the game looks really nice” Man the vegetation looks like sh*t.
For me Cyberpunk 2077 can root in hell
I’ve nothing personal against Consoles since I started gaming on Consoles and always owned at least one Console along with PC even after buying my first PC several years ago but I think modern Console gaming played a huge part in ruining game industry.
That’s because traditional Console gaming died a long time ago. The games that Consoles got in recent years are all from dumbed down PC genres. PC and Console gaming is not as unique as it used to be. Back then when when everyone was saying that PC gaming is dead, were the days when PC gaming was the strongest. Yes we now have more Console centric multiplats on PC but quality and innovation is nowhere near as good as ten years ago.
FPS, Third Person Shooters, RPGs etc were all much bigger on PC but when Consoles started to focus on these genres, all of them were dumbed down and since both Consoles are backed by Sony and Microsoft, everyone prioritize Consoles instead of PCs when paid by these companies.
While PC community voted with their wallets, and didn’t support Ubisoft after they released downgraded and broken games last year, Console gamers did and that’s the reason why nothing will change anytime soon. They are the reason why we don’t get map editors in FPS games anymore because they supported crap like Maps/Weapon packs, Day one DLCs, Pre order bonuses, annual franchises, dude bro shooters and so on.
Console gamers support every crap devs throw at them. When Blizzard came up with Auction house, we flooded their forums with hate comments and asked them to remove it. When Valve came up with paid mods, we didn’t support the idea and forced them to go back to drawing board. If mods weren’t PC exclusive, Console gamers would’ve supported that crap too.
Call of Duty, Fifa and Assassin’s Creed are the biggest sellers on Consoles. Now everyone targets that market and it’s stopping innovation and progress of the game industry. I’m glad those games do not sell much on PC compared to Consoles but that won’t change anything as long as those games are selling over 20 million copies every year on Consoles. Another reason is the death of some good publishers in late 2000s and we were left with 3 giants; Ubisoft, EA and Activision. All of them play it safe and don’t fund ambitious project.
And when some new devs join the industry and release some good games on PC, Sony and M$ take notice and bribe them to downgrade or dumb down their future projects and prioritize their platforms. It’s very sad state of game industry that we no longer get genre pushing games like World in Conflict, FEAR, Half Life 2, Freelancer, Supreme Commander, STALKER, Crysis etc. Early Access is another reason but that’s discussion for another day.
You made some great points there.
I just wanted to touch on one thing – paid mods. I wouldn’t be surprised if publishers sent Valve an angry letter, possibly threatening to remove their games if Valve didn’t stop paid mods.
First of all, mods often use game assets contained within the game, so copying and distributing those assets for a fee is undoubtedly illegal. But lets say that there was no pay-wall, and that all mod-makers were allowed a ‘donation’ button that can transfer your Steam account money directly to the mod authors – well that would be bad for publishers, too. Gamers all have a budget and all game publishers are fighting for your dollars and cents – if you give $30 to mod authors, not only does that hurt game producers, be it for full games or DLC, but also that money is not going back in to creating content. Mod authors are under no obligation to improve or update their content – not like game producers.
So, paid mods are a neat idea, but doesn’t work within the system that Valve has created. Valve can’t tell you how to spend your money, but enabling you to spend money on things that do not directly benefit the gaming economy is like poking holes in the bottom of your boat to keep your feet cool.
TLDR: Paid mods are cool, but Valve should not be the arbiter of such dealings.
Actually Bathesda supported Valve to do Paid mods. Paid mods are already here. It’s called donation. The problem with Workshop was that they were forcing people to buy mods. That was a terrible idea. It would’ve attracted other devs to support modding as well but at what cost???
Ubisoft clowns were already praising the idea but those money whor*s were praising the idea just because of that 75% cut. No quality control over Steam Early Access already flooded Steam with broken no name games, the last thing that we needed were broken games fixed by paid mods.
I’m on the Workshop page for a Skyrim mod, I do not see a donate button.
I was talking about Nexus. We need that option on Steam as well if they want to “support” mods instead of forcing people to buy them for their own profit.
Oh, no I was talking about Steam and enabling Steam users to spend money on mods. Wait, did you read what I wrote?
Ok I gotcha.
Of couse Bethesda supported the paid mods, they get a good chunk of money from the modder for doing nothing.
” if you give $30 to mod authors, not only does that hurt game producers,
be it for full games or DLC, but also that money is not going back in
to creating content.”
That wall of text was for naught. The game producers did in fact receive a cut of the mod profits.
You do not negate my ‘wall of text’ simply because you think you found an exception (and you probably didn’t bother to read what I wrote). How much money is spent is only part of the equation.
The *intent of the consumer* that donates to a mod-maker is to give money to the author of that mod for the content they have created. This creates a LOT of problems for Steam.
I don’t know the percentages involved, but let’s say that Steam takes a 20% cut (for distribution), and the game developer takes 30%. This means the mod author gets less than 50% (minus taxes) of the money that the consumer intended to give directly to the mod author. If I was that mod author I would ask people to leave Steam and download the mod from Nexus or to donate directly via Paypal, where he would keep some 95% of the donation.
This works against Steam because then people are clicking away from Steam and finding content elsewhere. Are you aware of the psychological aspects of a casino? They design the casino to be intentionally confusing – making floor plans asymmetrical, dead-ends that bring you back around to face you towards machines that are easy to use, mirrors that give you the impression the building is more opulent than it is, even the pattern of the carpet is specifically designed to keep you spending money – but above all, *it’s designed to keep you there.* Their chances of separating you from your money is increased if you keep a person in the room for a longer period of time – they know you came there looking to spend (or make) money.
Steam is the same way. It’s almost exactly the same, really. Steam is a casino for video games. The longer they keep you there the greater the chances you’ll find something you’ll like, the more money they can take from you. I remember spending like two hours selling trading cards (through a complex series of button presses and calculations) in order to earn $5 worth of fake Steam credits – I bought two games for $2.50 each. I thought, “Awesome! Free games!” But then I thought about it soon after and it dawned on me that I just spent two hours of my life working to make $2.50 an hour! “WTF did I just do? Ah, they got me!” I was ‘put to work’ helping to spin their wheels and I became part of the ‘closed loop.’ When you go to a casino (I live outside Atlantic City, so maybe I understand this better than you), look for exit signs (or lack of); look for how many times you circle around an area; elevation changes such as unnecessary ramps and stairs into other closed-loop areas. It is designed this way to keep you there.
Now, think about mod authors that ask you to leave Steam, or only put PART of their mods on Steam in order to get you to leave Steam and visit Nexus for the ‘Complete’ mod. That would be like putting clear exit signs all over a casino! Not gonna happen! You will never see a sign in a casino that advertises going somewhere else to spend your money (or your time).
Now, re-read my ‘wall of text’ and come up with a response that shows me you’re using your brain.
Funny thing is, as much as Ubisoft is screwing with us with their broken releases, they did not forget about the map editor for the Far Cry games.
I don’t own a console i never did i own PC’s since 1993!
i only played MK4 on consoles thats it
This should be comment of the week every week until something changes.
Your observations are 100% correct. It is truly a sad state of affairs but that’s how bad things have gotten. This won’t stop unless console gamers wise up and the console market crashes completely, again.
But unlike others, I sadly don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Just looks like a big artistic difference rather than a graphical difference.
‘Artistic differences’ and ‘graphcial differences’ are not mutually exclusive.
bad performance on Kepler GPU’s and downgrade !
Thank you CDPR
And great performance on AMD cards. Cry more. 🙂
no lol R9 290 have worse FPS than i do lol
Definite downgrade, but it still looks great. Maybe they’ll learn from this and realise you don’t need to lie about your game. Just be honest. Had they not shown the enhanced video, we’d all be praising the game about how great it looks for a massive open world game.
No comment….
I think we all know by now that it was downgraded. It’s time for people to move on and judge the game by its other merits.
And IMO even though it was downgraded it still looks damn good on ultra settings, especially if you use the shadow tweaks in Nvidia’s performance guide.
They do this only for running “next-gen” consoles. You know what the funny thing, even with the downgrade the game run like a sh*t. Lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkB8gpPzMkw
wow dem gfx is poo-poo. Like PC on low/medium 900/1080P and its only 22-35 fps hhahah
I’m getting 55-70fps at 1440P high/ultra no hairworks with i5 4690k 4.5ghz and GTX 970 at 1400mhz
when I put my game at console settings I get close to 200 fps! WTF! That’s almost 10x higher!
Well, moved further in Velen and — SPOILERS —
Here’s a Wild Hunt miniboss.
Recognise them shoulder pads?
Just because they are not on the King, it doesn’t mean he was downgraded. Probably another miniboss has the old King’s helmet.
pics are from a very long and beautiful quest, do the side mission after that it’s great and a side mission after that and something really good will happen
Agreed. Some nice quests around there. 🙂
Good to know they at least didn’t scrap the assets.
I cant and I wont accept this downgrade, if PC gamer accept a downgrade its like accepting a Ferrari car that has only 2 cylinder and Ferrari will tell you ( Hey it still has Ferrari logo on it, but you say.. No its not I cant even drive it. it doesn’t even feel like A Ferrari car but the manufacturer will say nope it has a Ferrari badge and 2 cylinder shut up its a Ferrari you see what it means to accept a low standard in PC games? ) at the end gamers are fooling themselves and letting developer lower standard of PC games and we are letting them walk all over them.. I just don’t accept how much this game is downgraded no one should.. its like letting politician go away with a murder or justifying why a murder committed a crime and sympathizing with it.. call me extreme but this is.. heck even witcher 2 looks better cmon guys..they promised us a Ferrari and gave us 2 cylinder Lada with Ferrari badge.. no thanks
I knew the fire effects and other particle effects were downgraded, just not this much!
The fire looks kind of dull and boring. I wish it was more flashy. Dragon Age has a better looking fire even…
looks like console version is on pair with PC’s medium settings, so parity stuff was like FC4.
“As a frame of reference, these consoles already appear to lurk at the PC’s mid-point in terms of overall quality”
Amir, about the open world. White Orchard seems to be the only closed map. Novigrad, No Man’s Land and Skellige Islands are all seamless. White Orchard was probably closed because it gives players time to understand the mechanics better.
good, thanks
Thanks, consoles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkB8gpPzMkw
VGX vs what i’m playing right now (only shadows on high)
I’m hardly beating the horse. I’ve made all of three posts about the downgrade. Overall the game looks to be fantastic. I also agree with you about Eridin- to a point, don’t you think if they had our modern tech back in 2005- 2006 that they would have made the model for the king more complex? What they did with his armor in the current W3 build was clearly to match it to the low poly 2005 look- personally I preferred the updated sword of destiny look, as massive and spiny as it was.
the effect these changes have on the whole experience the game offers is nonexistent, and the game delivers big time, this is not even worth mentioning. GOTY
Now I’m really confused, should I like this article? It’s full of sadness. Pretty much what we expected.
Sony and its fan base is too obsessed with higher resolution and cinematic frame rates.
OMG. Read this.
eurogamer…net/articles/2015-05-19-cd-projekt-red-tackles-the-witcher-3-graphics-downgrade-issue-head-on
Downgrade officially confirmed and graphics will be added via patch. Those flip floppers admitted it after those pre orders.
if a good patch that will fix Kepler performance will come then i will be extremely happy to play Witcher 3 1440p max out at 30 FPS
Finally some honesty from CDPR. That changed a bit how I feel about that whole fiasco. If the upcoming patch will add the missing shaders I’m gonna buy it, even though I’m already playing a pirated game.
I can say the same about 2014 materials. They looks different too, compared to the release version. Oh, well, it’s just another pile of damage control from CDP.
Quote from dev. “Maybe we shouldn’t have shown that [trailer], I don’t know, but we didn’t know that it wasn’t going to work, so it’s not a lie or a bad will – that’s why we didn’t comment actively. We don’t agree there is a downgrade but it’s our opinion, and gamers’ feeling can be different. If they made their purchasing decision based on the 2013 materials, I’m deeply sorry for that, and we are discussing how we can make it up to them because that’s not fair.”
After this comparison, it started to give me VERY BAD FEELINGS about Cyberpunk 2077.
A terrible headache is beginning right now… They can’t do this to that wonderful video!
And hope they keep Kasia Danysz as the female character’s model 😀
http://www.playboy.com/galleries/kasia-danysz-staycation-features/slide-1