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Dark Souls 2 Lighting changes/Downgrade
- Thread starter Moral Panic
- Start date
swazzyswess
Member
Frankly, I'm outraged. Like most people, I came to the Souls games for their cool graphics and this one looks barely playable. Figures the corporate overlords at FromSoft would rather sit around counting their money than make a proper sequel. More like Downgrade Souls.
I also have a backlog, but most of the games I need to finish haven't really held my attention. I put a lot of hours into Demons/DS1, so I know it won't be any different.
I should wait though, since I'm getting Titanfall on the same day. :/
SneakyStephan
Banned
Please tell me this is still in the retail release with all the atmosphere and lighting effects!
this reminds of of a thread we had a while ago that was about the dark souls graphics being bad/good in people's eyes, there was also a lot of discussion about the footage shown of dark souls 2 and some of the ugly looking recent screenshots.
the argument of the bad camp was the assets and environments being really poor and inconsistent
some said it looked like a ps2 game in places
Personally I called the engine used for the game very primitive
the argument of the people who thought it looked good and that those screenshots were not representative and that you couldn't call the engine primitive what with the nice looking lighting giving the game a really cool atmosphere
which was a valid argument (the assets still looked primitive regardless)
Why does there ALWAYS have to be a defense force for absolutely everything
They hyped the lighting engine and then quietly removed it
they hyped the graphics in the trailers and previews and demo and now it looks bad
why do you defend this? blind brand loyalty is so messed up, especially the ones that are telling others not to get mad at false advertising
'as long as I get mine' ,right? that's what namco thinks too
graphics and gameplay (mostly) exist seperately, one being bad does not invalidate the other being good, you don't have to defend misleading advertising and a graphics downgrade just because you like the gameplay
The tree is off the ground. How are you so sure that the sun is obscured at that angle at ground level and ALSO from a higher vantage? The sun could be low on the horizon and obscured based on vertical orientation.
Seems hyperbolic to say the least.
Please tell me this is still in the retail release with all the atmosphere and lighting effects!
If its not in the console version, that is understandable.
If it is not in the PC version, that is sad.
Sword Of Doom
Member
Bait and switch? Unheard of
The answer to this can not be given without receiving a month long GAF ban. I'm sure you can guess.
Dr. Buni
Member
Because the Souls series is (imo) far better than anything From has done before. Why should they go back and make a new King's Field instead of Dark Souls II?
GamingIsDead
Member
Didn't play the original ds (only demons) on ps3 but i haven't really noticed them in ds2. So my guess they are good.
Screen dump directly from modified ps3, maybe considered spoilers i guess.
Game is excellent nothing to be afraid of.
Lighting is far better then dark souls and graphics are comparable to it. DS had booth great looking and ugly places, this game is no different. People will forget about the graphics 10 minutes into the game imo.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2042/13044436405_2f9ccd72fa_o.png
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http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2414/13044770394_89d978e0d1_o.png
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2400/13044412815_e968b64734_o.png
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http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7453/13044572313_c80671b392_o.png
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7425/13045020085_a3c47f01d0_o.png
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7309/13044550793_9a1e80c819_o.png
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7308/13044437485_ddf3fe1a10_o.png
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http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3700/13044564823_7070e5fa78_o.png
Wolfe
Member
Outraged! Are you yelling inside your house right while your face gets red or something?
Also while I love the graphics of the first 2 games they always come secondary to the gameplay for me. A game looking pretty only goes so far if I don't care enough to actually play it.
If it bothers you so much don't buy it. Or I dunno, let your rage subside a bit and then rent it before passing final judgement. Just an idea.
Personally I'm not trying to defend any of this, I just find it silly when people go completely overboard with it. I agree that if it turns out the game looks far worse than what was originally shown that sucks and I can't fault anyone for being disappointed or upset with that. Calling From scum or saying that you're "outraged" is going above and beyond that though. I think the issue with bullshots and whatnot is pretty crappy in the industry atm and don't deny it would have been nice having a message from From about any downgrades that took place for whatever reason.
I see a great deal of dynamic lighting in those shots, and that is the console version.
He/She said it's from his/her PS3, I think it looks better than I thought. I'm still disappointed in From, though.
From probably told people that the original demos were a target render for PS3, but were running on PC hardware.
Dynamic lighting tends to be expensive on the CPU, the 360/PS3/PS4/XBO are very weak on the CPU side.
Looks a lot better than what people were claiming, nice one.
But, again, the public network tests/betas they did had the supposed removed lighting (people did say it suffered some frame rate issues), so I don't know what to think there.
When I say disappointed, I mean disappointed they didn't announce this. I'm perfectly alright with the downgrade, but locking down and not telling people who are about to spend $60+ on your product shakes my trust in them.
SargerusBR
I love Pokken!
I know you have worries about the torch since the beta, perhaps this should ease your concerns:
there is an item you can get that removes the need to lit the torch at a bonfire
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
There will be a "defence force" as you put it, for as long as there are FANS of the series.
Because you know, some of us are excited about playing a new Souls game for it excellent gameplay, and having the whole pre-launch period soured by the relentless negativity of some folk and their obsession with graphics is irritating as fuck.
Personally, I'm running out of patience with the gaming equivalent of the Tea Party crying conspiracy over everything. There's more than enough evidence out there to support the fact that FROM did in fact engineer and implement the lighting original scheme, and therefore if it is unfortunately not present in the final build, there are probably good reasons why it had to be changed... or maybe its just a bug that will be fixed with the day #1 patch... either of these things being far more plausible than faking it in the first place in order to "mislead".
This is not white-knighting or being an apologist; this is simply applying Occam's Razor to the question based on the facts at hand.
Cloud Strife
Member
Well Well Well...
Seems like better lighting than Dark Souls to me. Not dynamic lighting.
Clear
This post contains disingenuous arguments meant to disguise my fanboyism. Reader beware!
(Today, 11:54 AM)
KCroxtonJr
Member
As an artist I know how the suns position, lighting, and shadows work.The tree is off the ground. How are you so sure that the sun is obscured at that angle at ground level and ALSO from a higher vantage? The sun could be low on the horizon and obscured based on vertical orientation.
One, the setting of the area is SUNSET, which means that the sun is very close to the horizon, which is why things are casting very long shadows. Two, and as I already said, you can literally see the shadows being casted on the ground that go all the way up to and past the tree.
If you want to see everything at a better angle, watch this twitch recording at around 29:21. He walks right up to the dead body next to the tree you can see the tree isn't being shadowed properly. Even the player is shadowed as he should be. Spoiler tagged, just in case.
Here is a pic if you don't want to watch.
Pie and Beans
Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Now tackle the concept that areas are more easily navigatable without the torch than with it due to the switcharound on lighting and how that changes the torch mechanics intention baked deep into the games original concept.
Or just chalk it up to graphics whoring for strawman ease.
I wouldn't feel so ill at ease with this situation if PC previews were out there to compare, but as with most things in the games industry, this shit is treated with more lockdown controlled communication channels than nuclear launch codes. Let consumers make choices please or risk continually pissing them off over and over and over.
You are right, it could be prebaked, but the torch system leads me to believe that much of it is dynamic.
You should just stop visiting this thread or stop trying to shut down discussion. Let the people who want to discuss have an intelligent discussion.
Cloudius12
Member
From what I seen, most of the dynamic lighting only occurs when holding a torch.
GamingIsDead
Member
It does have dynamic lighting but not usually from multiple light sources at once.
The ones from the sun are very feint so they can be hard to see.
The lightning in areas not present in the beta might have hammered the framerate really badly, and having two different lightning models spending on the area might not have been a possibility for all we know.
Metroid-Squadron
Banned
They didn't remove it, but it's lost much of it's usefulness.
I didn't meant that room specifically but those that in the reveal were pitch black and now have flat ambient lighting.
Is that supposed to refute anything? We know that areas where there's direct sunlight or bonfires look good. But what about all those that only have ambient lighting? Like this one:
This one shows that specular effects are pretty much gone for the most part.
EatinOlives
Member
maybe they want us tu use the torch lightning system, lightning a torch in a room completely changes the lightning from bland and lifeless to yellow bright light and if you die the torch stays on. I made some shots.
without torch
with torch
this torch stays on forever
same here
The "untorched" shots were originally meant to be pitch-black. As it stands you don't need a torch to see well.
On the other hand, I've seen this too:
No indication if they're needed, just that it's there.
Dynamic lighting is there, obviously. It can be seen from the official screenshots. It's just not entirely clear if they removed the "no torch? no visibility" mechanic.
I wasn't really privy to their PR announcements. If they really did hype up the graphics themselves to this level, then they absolutely deserve the scorn they're getting.
Taken by itself, I don't care if the graphics took a downgrade to make the framerates better. BUT, if they really did tout these features to this level, then I absolutely agree with the backlash.
Try not to paint me as some sort of blind loyalist though just from one post. I was not privy to the marketing train that had already been running at full steam ahead from From software when I made that post.
I'm going to go on a limb and say that is not the case.
We can always hope though.
No one here - irrespective of what was/wasnt "common sense expectations" - can expect to be taken seriously in defending FROM:s actions in this case.
It's not about "well duh, did you REALLY think it would work on ancient hardware?", it's about false advertisement. You wouldn't have said the same if some car manufacturer advertised a car that has features x,y and z, and then when you buy it all those features are gone. You would sue the shit out of that company.
Granted, suing FROM is out of place, and a 1:1 comparison to a car manufacturer is invalid, but the principle still stands: they flat out acted in bad faith when releasing those pictures. As does UBI with all those bullshots of far cry 3/watch dogs.. But just because UBI is "on the evil side" and we all oh so love our dear FROM software, does not make their actions any less foul.
Fuck From for lying to us; Id rather they showed us the game as is actually is than send us bullshots. I/we've been here since Demon's Souls for a reason - we LOVE the series for other reasons than groundbreaking graphics. But when you start messing with your customers like this, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because it reminds me that the relationship we have with FROM is not that of us being "fans of their work", its of us being customers to their products, with all which that entails - trying to SELL us with dirty tactics included.
It's not about "well duh, did you REALLY think it would work on ancient hardware?", it's about false advertisement. You wouldn't have said the same if some car manufacturer advertised a car that has features x,y and z, and then when you buy it all those features are gone. You would sue the shit out of that company.
Granted, suing FROM is out of place, and a 1:1 comparison to a car manufacturer is invalid, but the principle still stands: they flat out acted in bad faith when releasing those pictures. As does UBI with all those bullshots of far cry 3/watch dogs.. But just because UBI is "on the evil side" and we all oh so love our dear FROM software, does not make their actions any less foul.
Fuck From for lying to us; Id rather they showed us the game as is actually is than send us bullshots. I/we've been here since Demon's Souls for a reason - we LOVE the series for other reasons than groundbreaking graphics. But when you start messing with your customers like this, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because it reminds me that the relationship we have with FROM is not that of us being "fans of their work", its of us being customers to their products, with all which that entails - trying to SELL us with dirty tactics included.
Garcia
Member
Sounds good.
Also, thanks for posting those screenshots. The console version looks vastly different from the original demo and trailers.
How unfortunate that we still have no way to know if the PC version will be loyal to the promoted product.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Don't you think its a bit sad that people are now supposed to be ashamed of being a fan of something? Liking something shouldn't disallow you from contributing to the discussion.
Nothing disingenuous about that.
How many times do you hear negativity in a PR campaign? These announcements are tightly controlled by the publishers, From may want to say something, but you will rarely hear anything negative. If you do hear something negative, it is spun into a positive element.
Its pretty obvious what happened here, From wasn't lying when they said they developed the engine for PC/next-gen, they got a little ambitious with the lighting features out of the gate and probably showed off a 'PS3 target render build,' that was running off a PC.
Namco will not allow them to publicly say they were removing substantial lighting elements from the game due to performance concerns. Generally, optimization is one of the last things to happen in game development, From probably realized sometime in the last two months that these elements would be an impossibility on last-gen hardware.
ugh_the_boot
Banned
In my experience GAF always goes overboard with pretty much any piece of gaming news so i'm going to wait and see what the final game looks like before passing judgement. I'm on a media blackout anyways so I haven't seen any of the screens and vids mentioned in this thread (work computer automatically blocks images unless I allow).
It won't make much difference to me either way as long as the gameplay hasn't been changed too much from previous souls games, as they were the best experiences I had last gen.
It won't make much difference to me either way as long as the gameplay hasn't been changed too much from previous souls games, as they were the best experiences I had last gen.
My concern is that they'll strip the improved lighting from the PC port to keep the console versions from looking like garbage in comparison, only to bring it back for the inevitable PS4/XBone ports.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Wasn't the original lighting model also present in the multi-player test build?
GamingIsDead
Member
The white light emitted from yourself does not cast and shadows and specular effects are very much in the game but really depends on how the light hits your armor. The ssao does a good job of creating the shadows from other light sources for the most part anyways instead of designating more recourses to dynamic lights because clearly the console cannot handle them.
I also don't get the current outrage, wasn't almost all of the footage released of the game they said they were running on pc. If the pc doesn't look like the old released footage then i will understand.
That is a valid concern.
Optimist in me says, one reason we haven't really seen the PC port yet is due to the missing features resurfacing in that version.
Reportedly had some performance issues I believe.
Why you's hating on the inevitable DEFINITIVE VERSION, bro?
Seriously, I doubt that will happen (missing lighting effects on PC version).
Moral Panic
Member
No they said it was PS3, people played PS3 at events, Playstation Access made videos of them playing it on PS3 etc.
UnrealEck
Member
I doubt I could contain my rage if that were to become reality.
Wolfe
Member
Yeah, I bet you'd literally explode.