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[DieH@rd]

/M.Prashanth

Game will look fine [with lower res on Xbone].

As for PC vs nextgen, who knows. Black Flag has a tons of unique PC additions that clearly make PC version best looking [new fog tech for example, better AO, better DOF], and that's not even counting that PC can brute force 60fps, better aliasing and smoothing out of nextgen visuals.

 

[-Plasma Reus-]

I wish Ubisoft would just tell us the truth.

 

[Kiant]

Fellow Gaffers, what does your gut instincts tell you? Do you think when the game finally releases on May27th, do you think it's going to look downgraded? Or do you think it will be just as good if not better than E3 2013 and Feb reveals on PS4?

Die@Hard buddy what do you think?

I want to believe that the game will look great on the PS4/Xbox One

Spoiler

I don't want to be disappointed once again.

If it looks as good as the E3 2013 stuff or the September footage then I would be content, the E3 2012 footage is just a pipe dream and I don't even think the PC version will look that good.

Hopefully the B-roll footage was just poorly chosen.

 

[cpp_is_king]

This is why developers should never, ever show gameplay footage prior to beta. Anyone who has ever worked on a game understands why this happens, and there's really no solution except not showing footage until everything is really final

 

[GuitarAtomik]

Yeah. The game looks fine to me. Great even. I stopped thinking it would look as good as the original E3 reveal after the PS Meeting trailer.

 

[jroc74]

Ok...this looks alot better than the still pic in the other thread:

Biggest difference....its moving....(looking for other things I missed this in the clips)

Seems some ppl just try to take the worse possible parts of scenes and post them as overall quality....Some good explanations in this thread to about the differences in whats been posted. The weather, day vs night seems to make all the difference. This scene...in the still pic posted....made it seem like it was ultra sunny with all detail gone.

Appreciate this thread Die@Hard.

 

[Ragnarok]

Why do people bend over backwards to excuse this behavior? If you can't come close to the target render, don't release the target render

 

[Ragnarok]

The lighting is still nowhere near as dynamic especially at night

 

[todahawk]

Haha this thread made my laptop's fan kick on.

Game looks fine; I think some people are being cynical for no real reason.

Chrome? same here either way...

 

[Net_Wrecker]

Even if you leave out the 2012 footage, there's still a haze, and a "thickness" to the game's visual atmosphere in a lot of the 2013 footage that feels completely missing from the new stuff, even comparing nighttime to nighttime scenes, much less the daylight stuff that looks completely flat and sterile. GTAV in "perfect" noon, high sun conditions still looks good, so it's no excuse to say "Well all these conditions is why the game's not as good looking."

I'm definitely not damning the game, and graphics aren't the most important aspect by any stretch, but the downgrade is real, at least going by the footage we have.

 

[dark10x]

/M.Prashanth

Game will look fine [with lower res on Xbone].

As for PC vs nextgen, who knows. Black Flag has a tons of unique PC additions that clearly make PC version best looking [new fog tech for example, better AO, better DOF], and that's not even counting that PC can brute force 60fps, better aliasing and smoothing out of nextgen visuals.

Yeah, but those AC4 features are incredibly subtle. They're nice, for sure, but they ultimately make very little difference.

Some people seemed to hope that Watch Dogs would feature PC exclusive settings that would bring it back to E3 2012 quality. That's an entirely different type of thing and not something that will happen.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

I think anything we've seen so far looks fine for a multiplatform cross-gen open world game. It's nothing special but it's not blatantly bad either.

The gameplay is what I'm most concerned about.

 

[sant]

The PS meeting footage looks better than the March stuff

 

[dr_rus]

Yeah, but those AC4 features are incredibly subtle. They're nice, for sure, but they ultimately make very little difference.

Some people seemed to hope that Watch Dogs would feature PC exclusive settings that would bring it back to E3 2012 quality. That's an entirely different type of thing and not something that will happen.

We don't know that. PC WD is the exact same Ubisoft-Nvidia collaboration as PC AC4. From all the console footage that I've seen I don't see any big downgrade beyond the usual resolution/AA/lightning/LODs - all of these can be bumped up to extremes on PC very easily.

 

[Steel]

How you can look at these GIFs and say the graphics haven't been downgraded will ever be beyond me. And I usually neither care about nor notice these things. Not to say it doesn't look good, but it's worlds apart from E3 2012 and even Feb 2013/E3 2013 version.

One is post rain shiny the other is dry high noon. NPCs look meh in both.

 

[nelsonroyale]

Funny thing is, in the Italian footage the IQ of the gameplay and the trailer are different. Despite the footage being 720p the gameplay stuff has noticibly better IQ than the trailer. Ubi seems to have messed up with trailer.

After seeing all this, it is difficult to tell whether the game has had a downgrade from the PS4 footage or not, since the quality of footage is not sufficiently high and conditions are not the same. However, the bit with the car, especially at the bridge, just looks crap. What is up with that bit...the motion blur effect is terrible.

 

[KORNdoggy]

If ubisoft made a thread on neogaf as a form of damage control, i feel like this is what it would be like.

 

[Rodney McKay]

I was someone who didn't watch much, if any, of the footage after the very first they showed which is not examined in this comparison thread because it was apparently too good.

That original footage was what I was hoping next-gen consoles would be capable of and was one of the only reasons I was excited to play this game. Without extremely impressive graphics that consistently WOW me, it just looks like any other run of the mill open world game.

At least the Assassins Creed games and Sleeping Dogs had interesting settings to play in. (no offense meant to Chicago GAF, but the city looks the same as any other generic modern-day video game city I've seen a dozen times already)

Maybe it's my fault for falling for the amazing reveal footage, but that's what I was shown of the game and at the time it seemed reasonable that next-gen would be capable of that. Maybe we will get there eventually, but definitely not from a cross-gen developed game.

 

[Rogue_Ledr]

I'll wait for the hands on direct feed vids from gametrailers and others, but the downgrade is pretty serious all things considered. Kind of a let down considering the initial video's graphics were total achievable on PS4.

 

[TyrantII]

If the cinematics don't look good, Montreal, we have a problem.

But if were sticking to what the game is and isn't, we should probably stick to gameplay videos.

 

[LegendofDragoonLives]

Still buying it day 1, I enjoy the premise of it. Hope the gameplay stands up and doesn't get boring mid way through.

 

[TyrantII]

Ok...this looks alot better than the still pic in the other thread:

Biggest difference....its moving....(looking for other things I missed this in the clips)

Seems some ppl just try to take the worse possible parts of scenes and post them as overall quality....Some good explanations in this thread to about the differences in whats been posted. The weather, day vs night seems to make all the difference. This scene...in the still pic posted....made it seem like it was ultra sunny with all detail gone.

Actually the biggest difference is it's whatever its rendering at shrunk to 693X355 vs 1920X1080 which is what the game displays on a TV. It also doesn't look much better than GTA5 GIF's at that size and quality.

 

[SeanNoonan]

If the cinematics don't look good, Montreal, we have a problem.

FYI that's all in game.

Spoiler

Obviously footage taken from fly cam though

 

[McLovin]

They are so lucky that there's a severe lack of open world shooters this gen. I'll pick it up anyway.

 

[Skeff]

FYI that's all in game.

Spoiler

Obviously footage taken from fly cam though

In that case, I'm still looking forward to WatchDogs PS4.

 

[Rains]

This difference is massive company's should be fined for this kind of thing

 

[BurnOutBrighter]

Actually the thing that bothers me the most is the texture filtering. Ugh.

 

[TyrantII]

FYI that's all in game.

Spoiler

Obviously footage taken from fly cam though

Get marketing on the phone and capture the 2012 unveil or the 2013 gameplay as close as possible in the newest build and show it! If it does look a lot better than this, it'll put out the fire and serve a buffet of crow.

I'm hoping someone in marketing just really screwed up (again) in this capture. Most of the gameplay without the bokeh effect looks like it was taken from PS360 or the XB1 version (soft, lack of clarity).

:/

 

[DieH@rd]

Actually the thing that bothers me the most is the texture filtering. Ugh.

What are you talking about? Texture filtering looks great in these perfectly representative screenshots Ubisoft gave us yesterday.
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/ps4/watch_dogs/screens/watch_dogs_45.jpg
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/ps4/watch_dogs/screens/watch_dogs_44.jpg
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/ps4/watch_dogs/screens/watch_dogs_43.jpg
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/ps4/watch_dogs/screens/watch_dogs_41.jpg

 

[I'm new be nice]

Yeah, but those AC4 features are incredibly subtle. They're nice, for sure, but they ultimately make very little difference.

Lol, you think this shit is subtle? It fills the entire screen!

 

[velociraptor]

So.. it looks the same? E3 2013 impressed me. I just hope the game looks like that.

 

[WeAreStarStuff]

Chrome? same here either way...

Firefox!

 

[nelsonroyale]

What are you talking about? Texture filtering looks great in these perfectly representative screenshots Ubisoft gave us yesterday.
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/ps4/watch_dogs/screens/watch_dogs_45.jpg
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/ps4/watch_dogs/screens/watch_dogs_44.jpg
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/ps4/watch_dogs/screens/watch_dogs_43.jpg
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/ps4/watch_dogs/screens/watch_dogs_41.jpg

Good to see they have got the game up and running on photoshop. I am happy to say I can also run this version. It is real guys!

 

[DieH@rd]

PhysX smoke for AC4 is pure shit. They went overboard with it [heh, overboard ]


Best PC-centric graphical effect for AC4 was volumetric fog

 

[Brannon]

I'm fully willing to believe that we'll get eye-popping graphics on PC, but it's Ubisoft, so they're gonna fuck it up in my fact. You know they will.

PS4, I'm going to need larger, full-resolution gifs or vids before I even consider if it's possible. But there is a chance...

Xbone.

Well, looks like we're once again waiting on Watch_Dogs. Gotta admit, Ubi does know how to keep their games in the media, even amidst all the Titanfall and Dark Souls behemoths.

 

[BabySlayer]

Losing interest in this game... too much shady shit going on.


What we have now still doesn't live up to par with what I saw and imagined from original debut trailer... I hate it when devs play these tricks and show us a preview that they cannot deliver

 

[Jigolo]

The Feb demo and E3 2013 demo look better. I really don't understand what happened here. OP doesn't even include the footage from September that looks better than what was shown this week.

Sep footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z3iG2QlJXk

 

[Mr. PlayStation]

The Feb demo and E3 2013 demo look better. I really don't understand what happened here. OP doesn't even include the footage from September that looks better than what was shown this week.

Sep footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z3iG2QlJXk

Excuse me, did you even check OP's post? He has everything in gif form.

 

[Yoday]

Is the game downgraded since the initial reveal that was done on insane hardware specs? Absolutely. Is it downgraded since being shown on the PS4 in the past? I don't know, maybe, but if it is then it isn't by much. Either way it doesn't matter if it's been downgraded or not, because it still looks gorgeous. When it releases, Watchdogs will be one of the best looking games ever made, regardless of downgrades, and that is made even more impressive by the fact that it is a cross gen game. People really need to dial in their expectations, because this shit is getting flat out crazy.

 

[Jigolo]

Excuse me, did you even check OP's post? He has everything in gif form.

lol scrolled too quick

 

[Nilaul]

Why are we using tiny, heavily compressed GIFs to try to discern IQ?

Should these be viewing on an iPhone for best quality as well?...

It probably looks like real life on small screens.

 

[DieH@rd]

lol scrolled too quick

Big red marker, gifs, YT and Gamersyde links for each time Ubi showcased the game. What more must I do?

 

[airmangataosenai]

You mean to tell me a single animated gif taken of a horrible artifacted capture of the game might not be indicative of the final product?

 

[AkIRA_22]

Why is everyone so butt hurt? Tomb Raider Legend, released 6 months after the 360 launch;

Did Ubisoft over shoot with their estimates two years ago? yes, who cares the game isn't going to look as good. This happens all the god damn time.

 

[Mr. PlayStation]

That gun shop owner's subtle reaction to the media coverage on Pearce being shown on tv and then stealth triggering the alarm, felt so realistic. It's not just graphics, it's also about details, making it feel like a living breathing world.

Even in the reveal footage back in E3 2012, the one thing that impressed me apart from the obvious things like spectacular lighting, atmospheric effects etc, it was how the crowds reacted to the accident which occurs when Pearce starts to mess up the traffic lights. If I remember the some of the crowds would drop their umbrellas since it's pouring, and immediately attend the people who are stuck inside the cars.

 

[DieH@rd]

You mean to tell me a single animated gif taken of a horrible artifacted capture of the game might not be indicative of the final product?

No, but Gamersyde links maybe will. And downgrade was never focused on small details, but on that awful looking jump over bridge and empty-looking warehouse. After those few bad looking segments in the b-roll, people started over-analyzing every single bad looking thing they encountered. When that happened, there was no going back.

 

[Mr. PlayStation]

No, but Gamersyde links maybe will. And downgrade was never focused on small details, but on that awful looking jump over bridge and empty-looking warehouse. After those few bad looking segments in the b-roll, people started over-analyzing every single bad looking thing they encountered. When that happened, there was no going back.

Yup precisely, that warehouse segment where Pearce takes cover while shooting, the textures lacked detail, and the lighting was off, everything felt flat. And then the car jumping off the bridge, it looked very weird too, something wasn't right.

 

[Yoda]

If ubisoft made a thread on neogaf as a form of damage control, i feel like this is what it would be like.

Lol was about to post the same thing.

 

[TyrantII]

No, but Gamersyde links maybe will. And downgrade was never focused on small details, but on that awful looking jump over bridge and empty-looking warehouse. After those few bad looking segments in the b-roll, people started over-analyzing every single bad looking thing they encountered. When that happened, there was no going back.

I just want to know why the game appears to be rendered at 720P in the ubi media. Was it overlooked when recorded, or is this the resolution we have to look forward to?

 

[Portugeezer]

Great thread, it was needed (sadly).