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[Kieli]

I hope it's the PC version they demo-ed.

It's either that, or they chained all their employees to their chairs and forced them to complete a reveal-gameplay-build-that-will-never-see-the-light-of-day just to have something good-looking to present (but which is unreliable as a means of gauging the production of the actual game).

 

[Red Liquorice]

I saw what looked like an NPC invasion in one of VaatiVidya's videos. The name certainly seemed to be NPC style.

Cool, cool... cool, cool, cool.

That kind of makes my first playthrough interesting. If NPC invaders invade when you're hollow, I'm not sure if I see any point to going human since I'll be offline unless being human has other properties besides looking nicer and bumping you up the PvP queue.

 

[Shinjica]

It would be a strange thing to change unless they just couldn't manage to get the new lighting on old consoles without significant framerate issues. It seemed from interviews and other pre-release info that the new engine was kind of designed with the lighting changes in mind. Unless they found it really problematic I imagine we'll see it all in the PC version though.

I dont mind with the downgrade, my real complain is that they not achieve a 30fps constantly.

Cool, cool... cool, cool, cool.

That kind of makes my first playthrough interesting. If NPC invaders invade when you're hollow, I'm not sure if I see any point to going human since I'll be offline unless being human has other properties besides looking nicer and bumping you up the PvP queue.

I play online because i dont care about invasion. I hope for offline people that NPC invasion are really good and not simply a random guy who run into you and get killed easily

 

[Toxi]

Cool, cool... cool, cool, cool.

That kind of makes my first playthrough interesting. If NPC invaders invade when your hollow, I'm not sure if I see any point to going human since I'll be offline unless being human has other properties besides looking nicer and bumping you up the PvP queue.

Every time you die while hollowed, your max health bar goes down slightly, eventually stopping when it's cut in half. Think Demon's Souls soul form without the Cling Ring. Becoming human brings you health bar back to full.

 

[perorist]

Cool, cool... cool, cool, cool.

That kind of makes my first playthrough interesting. If NPC invaders invade when you're hollow, I'm not sure if I see any point to going human since I'll be offline unless being human has other properties besides looking nicer and bumping you up the PvP queue.

Every time you die in hollow form your max hp drops, down to 50% of your max health. Going human will reset your hp back to full and let you summon phantoms. But yeah you can experience all the phantom invasions in hollow form.

 

[Red Liquorice]

Every time you die while hollowed, your max health bar goes down slightly, eventually stopping when it's cut in half. Think Demon's Souls soul form without the Cling Ring.

Oh yeah, I knew that forgot to say - I was just thinking like "If I'm okay with the HP hit, so I don't need to waste human effigies early on just to see if there's an NPC invader in this area"

 

[Gator86]

Every time you die while hollowed, your max health bar goes down slightly, eventually stopping when it's cut in half. Think Demon's Souls soul form without the Cling Ring. Becoming human brings you health bar back to full.

What's the point of this? It seems almost entirely to grief Souls newbies who would have trouble anyway.

 

[JoeFenix]

My biggest issue with the visuals is not graphical fidelity, it's the fact that the game has no sense of place and atmosphere anymore.

Removing the lighting and making every room gray is just terrible. Souls games typically have some of the best atmosphere in the business, sometimes you can still see that shine through in DS2 but the majority of the areas are bland, unpolished and borderline unfinished looking.

The dragon mansion that was in the reveal trailer is completely butchered in the final version. The layout is the same but the feel is completely gone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_JFDPCtXFY&feature=player_detailpage#t=361

The difference is staggering, all those rooms are just gray now. The main setpiece with the bone dragon is a mere shadow of its former self. The painting hallway with the amazing lighting now reminds me of a pc game from the late 90's. The lighting really is THAT basic looking at times.

I really hope the PC and inevitable next-gen versions deliver on the original promise because I don't want to experience the game in this state. The gameplay might still be solid but I can't get past the horrible lack of polish and care put into these versions.

I don't get how they would have to cut it back THIS much, it's absurd. It's so inconsistent too, the game can push some great looking areas with nice lighting at times but it's like they didn't bother doing a lighting pass on more than half of the game.

 

[Mutombo]

I'm very disappointed with From if that lighting fuck-up is real. I don't play Dark Souls for the graphics and I don't even care much about the downgrade, but a last minute change without notice is basically lying to your loyal customers.

Wait, what? What happened?

 

[Shinjica]

What's the point of this? It seems almost entirely to grief Souls newbies who would have trouble anyway.

Push people to play in human form. Hollow in Dark Souls 1 was not intended like an easily way to dodge invasion.

 

[Toxi]

Oh yeah, I knew that forgot to say - I was just thinking like "If I'm okay with the HP hit, so I don't need to waste human effigies early on just to see if there's an NPC invader in this area"

Yeah, I see what you mean.

It's funny how From accidentally added a challenge mode with hollow form. And if that mention of Petrification is true, your health can be cut in half again. Add the Calamity Ring if it's in the game, and you now have 1/8 max health.

PREPARE TO DIE

 

[BigDug13]

What's the point of this? It seems almost entirely to grief Souls newbies who would have trouble anyway.

Souls newbies should be playing DS1. DS2 should be a continuation of the path laid forth by the original game, not an easier version of the original game. I say this as someone still progressing through his first DS1 playthrough.

 

[Kieli]

I don't get how they would have to cut it back THIS much, it's absurd. It's so inconsistent too, the game can push some great looking areas with nice lighting at times but it's like they didn't bother doing a lighting pass on more than half of the game.

This, my good sir, is potentially bull-shottage (or bullplay, as a certain Gaffer has named it in his/her thread).

It is the art of slave-driving your employees for 57 months to dedicate their SOULS to create an amazing 10 minute section of gameplay to sucker in some fools at E3/game reveal/console reveal, etc...

Then, reality hits and you realize making games is hard. So they spend the next 3 months making a piece of shit that can never live up to the prototype. Lulz.

I'm talking in general, by the way. Not Dark Souls in specific.

 

[takriel]

I still think the game will look great on an HDTV in motion. And seeing how I didn't really see anything from the game post E3, I don't think I'll be disappointed at all regarding its looks.

 

[Gator86]

Push people to play in human form. Hollow in Dark Souls 1 was not intended like an easily way to dodge invasion.

You can get invaded in any form now. Just seems pointless to me. If you're not having trouble, you don't need to worry about it. If you're new to the game or bad, they add an extra thing to frustrate you. Seems to be less about challenging core players and grieving newbies, as I mentioned earlier.

 

[Toxi]

This, my good sir, is potentially bull-shottage (or bullplay, as a certain Gaffer has named it in his/her thread).

It is the art of slave-driving your employees for 57 months to dedicate their SOULS to create an amazing 10 minute section of gameplay to sucker in some fools at E3/game reveal/console reveal, etc...

Then, reality hits and you realize making games is hard. So they spend the next 3 months making a piece of shit that can never live up to the prototype. Lulz.

I'm talking in general, by the way. Not Dark Souls in specific.

This isn't just the gameplay segment in the Dragon Mansion. The beta had better lighting too.

 

[Vesper73]

What the hell From?! The world looks completely flat now! I'll take the static light maps from Dark Souls over a turned off realtime lighting system any day! You can't design a game around a realtime system and then simply switch it off at the last second. You would have to completely rethink your static lighting. I'm shocked at how you ruined this from the beta!

I feel like I cant play this on the PS3 because the atmosphere is ruined. It'll spoil the experience! I'll wait on the PC version and pray that you didn't switch off the lighting there as well!

 

[JoeFenix]

This, my good sir, is potentially bull-shottage (or bullplay, as a certain Gaffer has named it in his/her thread).

It is the art of slave-driving your employees for 57 months to dedicate their SOULS to create an amazing 10 minute section of gameplay to sucker in some fools at E3/game reveal/console reveal, etc...

Then, reality hits and you realize making games is hard. So they spend the next 3 months making a piece of shit that can never live up to the prototype. Lulz.

I'm talking in general, by the way. Not Dark Souls in specific.

They should have reigned in the scope of the game then, cut the content in half but polish it to the max. What's the point of having 50 areas if only half of them look presentable?

The low points sour the rest of the game for me, I usually don't watch streams but some of the stuff I saw looked so rough that I had to keep watching to see if it was an exception or not. The game literally swings from gorgeous to plain horrendous looking, the sad thing is you can see so many amazing designs in there just waiting to be given some proper love and attention.

It's really frustrating. I wish I could say I was confident that the PC version will deliver on the original footage in terms of quality but I'm highly skeptical.

I was playing Demon's Souls today and for all its technical shortcomings it still manages to look fantastic imo. Art and atmosphere are absolutely top notch. DS2 straight up looks worse to me in its current state.

 

[Toxi]

They should have reigned in the scope of the game then, cut the content in half but polish it to the max. What's the point of having 50 areas if only half of them look presentable?

I don't like this lighting bullshit because From might have lied to us, but cutting content for pretty graphics is exactly the sort of poisonous thinking that creates the pretty but barren worlds of modern games. Atmosphere is more than lighting, it's level design, enemy design, sound, color, music, and gameplay variation. If From can't deliver on lighting, they can still deliver on those before they even think of cutting a single area.

 

[dark10x]

I hope it's the PC version they demo-ed.

It's either that, or they chained all their employees to their chairs and forced them to complete a reveal-gameplay-build-that-will-never-see-the-light-of-day just to have something good-looking to present (but which is unreliable as a means of gauging the production of the actual game).

What's interesting is the PS3 version that I played in August looked awesome. The lighting and shadow work was sublime and the game ran very consistently. I saw no reason for concern.

I'm still not sure what's going on here and I doubt the PC version will look substantially different. Anyone hoping otherwise is just fooling themselves.

Still, it seems like changing engines was a bad move. The first two games are still very attractive even on consoles.

 

[derwalde]

i have the feeling the DeSo/DaSo fanbase has been really kind and loyal to whatever fromsoft does. this last minute and untold lighting issue is huge slap in their (and as i consider myself part of it, in mine aswell) face. im disappointed about the lighting but much more about them not communicating it at all.

 

[dark10x]

i have the feeling the DeSo/DaSo fanbase has been really kind and loyal to whatever fromsoft does. this last minute and untold lighting issue is huge slap in their (and as i consider myself part of it, in mine aswell) face. im disappointed about the lighting but much more about them not communicating it at all.

Do we have any high quality footage of the final game in action? I'd like to see it myself.

I really hope the PC and inevitable next-gen versions deliver on the original promise because I don't want to experience the game in this state. The gameplay might still be solid but I can't get past the horrible lack of polish and care put into these versions.

The thing is, this kind of stuff WAS playable on PS3. I've seen the game running on real PS3 hardware with this kind of lighting. Something else is going on.

 

[Kieli]

Definitely agreed on the reigning in of scope. I'd be perfectly happy if they cut out the areas that are less fun and keep the better parts.

DkS1 was plenty long (taking me 90 hours or so). Even though I love the game to bits, other people didn't like it so much (e.g. Yoshichan) because some parts were very bad.

If they got rid of those parts of the game, I honestly don't think DkS1 would have been worse off for it.

 

[ZeroX03]

Do we have any high quality footage of the final game in action? I'd like to see it myself.


The thing is, this kind of stuff WAS playable on PS3. I've seen the game running on real PS3 hardware with this kind of lighting. Something else is going on.

I'm frantically trying to find my recorder to get direct feed T__T

 

[SargerusBR]

The thing is, this kind of stuff WAS playable on PS3. I've seen the game running on real PS3 hardware with this kind of lighting. Something else is going on.

Either 360 version is unpolished or they had to make some sacrifices to make sure the game would perform well on consoles

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

Do we have any high quality footage of the final game in action? I'd like to see it myself.


The thing is, this kind of stuff WAS playable on PS3. I've seen the game running on real PS3 hardware with this kind of lighting. Something else is going on.

I too have seen. The Mirror Knight demo was that exact location, it was in numerous expo's on PS3 and it ran fine.

 

[JoeFenix]

I don't like this lighting bullshit because From might have lied to us, but cutting content for pretty graphics is exactly the sort of poisonous thinking that creates the pretty but barren worlds of modern games. Atmosphere is more than lighting, it's level design, enemy design, sound, color, music, and gameplay variation. If From can't deliver on lighting, they can still deliver on those before they even think of cutting a single area.

I understand what you're saying but the game is rough in all those aspects. You can tell they were stretched super thin, this goes way beyond graphical whoring.

Some areas have really questionable enemy placements, stuff is reused or repurposed constantly without necessarily feeling like it fits thematically, music is reused, color.... well you'll see. Half of the game is gray, literally.

I'm a gameplay person, I don't want movie games and cutscenes galore but I do want a well thought out and consistent experience. Dark Souls 1 had some polish issues near the end of the game but Lost Izalith looks like a masterpiece compared to some of the stuff here.

Obviously different people have different tolerance levels for this kind of stuff, I'm not bashing the game and saying it's a total piece of shit or anything like that. It looks like there's a cool game in there and I'm sure even in this state it's going to be more fun than ALOT of other games on the market. But this is not up to the standard of quality that I associate with the series. It's really disappointing to me.

 

[Kieli]

Snipped for brevity.

Based on what you are saying, it sounds like there're really high highs and really low lows. I hope From knows that it's perfectly OK to make an amazing 30 hour game than a roller-coaster 60 hour game.

 

[Pooya]

Did the beta look like that?

 

[Zeliard]

Don't worry guys. When you're fast traveling around everywhere you'll barely notice the ugly environments.

 

[dark10x]

I too have seen. The Mirror Knight demo was that exact location, it was in numerous expo's on PS3 and it ran fine.

That's what just doesn't make sense to me.

It's not like they were running this stuff on devkits. They were using bog standard PS3 systems sitting right there on the table. So weird.

 

[Vesper73]

Don't worry guys. When you're fast traveling around everywhere you'll barely notice the ugly environments.

/drumhit. You're here all week? )

 

[Toxi]

I understand what you're saying but the game is rough in all those aspects. You can tell they were stretched super thin, this goes way beyond graphical whoring.

Some areas have really questionable enemy placements, stuff is reused or repurposed constantly without necessarily feeling like it fits thematically, music is reused, color.... well you'll see. Half of the game is gray, literally.

I'm a gameplay person, I don't want movie games and cutscenes galore but I do want a well thought out and consistent experience. Dark Souls 1 had some polish issues near the end of the game but Lost Izalith looks like a masterpiece compared to some of the stuff here.

Obviously different people have different tolerance levels for this kind of stuff, I'm not bashing the game and saying it's a total piece of shit or anything like that. It looks like there's a cool game in there and I'm sure even in this state it's going to be more fun than ALOT of other games on the market. But this is not up to the standard of quality that I associate with the series. It's really disappointing to me.

Thanks. I haven't played the game. I haven't even watched a stream because I don't want to be spoiled; I'm literally going off the thread images. I'm going to have to play the game to see what you're talking about. If From really repeated the mistakes of Lost Izalith, I'll be sorely disappointed.

However, none of those things should be cut because they don't have pretty lighting. All the lighting in the world won't make a bunch of grey corridors look less grey or make enemies more well-placed. Good game content should not be cut just to improve lighting, and if there's content that isn't good, From's first priority should be to fix that.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

The environment isn't the only thing that's rough. I hope everyone enjoyed blight town on consoles.

 

[Kieli]

That's what just doesn't make sense to me.

It's not like they were running this stuff on devkits. They were using bog standard PS3 systems sitting right there on the table. So weird.

I think the same question can be asked as to why the Gearbox demo did not ultimately feature in the final product. I mean, they spent all that effort on the demo, why not just incorporate the work into the actual thing (even if they don't spend any effort on the rest of the game?).

I'm not a dev (so I honestly don't know what I'm talking about), but I personally think it's that these demo builds are developed separately from the rest of the game and are therefore hard to integrate back into the actual thing. Otherwise, I don't see why they don't just straight up use it rather than re-making the demo stuff, but worse.

 

[JoeFenix]

Based on what you are saying, it sounds like there're really high highs and really low lows. I hope From knows that it's perfectly OK to make an amazing 30 hour game than a roller-coaster 60 hour game.

I've only seen a couple of hours of the game but I've caught glimpses of a ton of areas/enemies/bosses and yeah, that about sums it up.

I don't know if I saw anything that was cooler than the best of what the series previously offered to be honest but some of the stuff was definitely good/great.

The lows were incredibly low though, some of this stuff looks really questionable from both a design and a visual point of view.

At this point I'm just starting to accept the fact that many aspects of this game won't satisfy me but I'm still looking forward to playing it. It still looks like a fun game, just not something I can entirely feel good about. Bittersweet.

I'm sure some people will be very happy with the game though, I tend to be more critical and demanding when it comes to games.

That's what just doesn't make sense to me.

It's not like they were running this stuff on devkits. They were using bog standard PS3 systems sitting right there on the table. So weird.

here's a stream screen I took of that fight, it's entirely gray now with none of the atmosphere of the demo footage. Like they literally removed the color.

Spoiler

http://imgur.com/WEs2LOt

 

[luckyboyceo]

The environment isn't the only thing that's rough. I hope everyone enjoyed blight town on consoles.

Well, fuck. That brings back bad memories.

 

[gamerforever]

The environment isn't the only thing that's rough. I hope everyone enjoyed blight town on consoles.

Got past all of blight town and the framerate wasn't that bad on the ps3? Perhaps older consoles suffered like with gta5? Maybe my standards are low with me not being a pc gamer? I don't remember that section being unplayably bad, that's for sure!

 

[Thorgal]

I wouldn't bet on it. This exact thing happened to Oblivion if you remember, they pulled the realtime shadows out of the PC version as well because they didn't want to have to support two different code paths for lighting going forward.

Yes .but From software is not Bethesda .

 

[Vesper73]

The environment isn't the only thing that's rough. I hope everyone enjoyed blight town on consoles.

Well fuck...... Can you imagine dropping your pretty lighting and still having poor frame rates? "Double Prizes!!!!" -Sid

 

[Screaming Meat]

I've only seen a couple of hours of the game but I've caught glimpses of a ton of areas/enemies/bosses and yeah, that about sums it up.

From your posts I was under the impression you'd actually played it.

 

[Grinchy]

My biggest issue with the visuals is not graphical fidelity, it's the fact that the game has no sense of place and atmosphere anymore.

Removing the lighting and making every room gray is just terrible. Souls games typically have some of the best atmosphere in the business, sometimes you can still see that shine through in DS2 but the majority of the areas are bland, unpolished and borderline unfinished looking.

The dragon mansion that was in the reveal trailer is completely butchered in the final version. The layout is the same but the feel is completely gone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_JFDPCtXFY&feature=player_detailpage#t=361

The difference is staggering, all those rooms are just gray now. The main setpiece with the bone dragon is a mere shadow of its former self. The painting hallway with the amazing lighting now reminds me of a pc game from the late 90's. The lighting really is THAT basic looking at times.

I really hope the PC and inevitable next-gen versions deliver on the original promise because I don't want to experience the game in this state. The gameplay might still be solid but I can't get past the horrible lack of polish and care put into these versions.

I don't get how they would have to cut it back THIS much, it's absurd. It's so inconsistent too, the game can push some great looking areas with nice lighting at times but it's like they didn't bother doing a lighting pass on more than half of the game.

Oh god this is depressing to read. I only watched about 4 minutes of a stream and the area the guy was in did look very flat and boring. I just kinda assumed it was supposed to be that way, like the tunnels in Demon's Souls 2-2 or something.

I'm still pumped for the game but I'm going to stupidly hope that this is just some last minute bug that's being fixed on day 1.

Got past all of blight town and the framerate wasn't that bad on the ps3? Perhaps older consoles suffered like with gta5? Maybe my standards are low with me not being a pc gamer? I don't remember that section being unplayably bad, that's for sure!

I loved Blighttown, but if you didn't notice how incredibly bad the framerate was, then it really must just be that low framerates don't bother you. The framerate was so bad that very few developers would allow their game to run so poorly.

 

[luckyboyceo]

Got past all of blight town and the framerate wasn't that bad on the ps3? Perhaps older consoles suffered like with gta5? Maybe my standards are low with me not being a pc gamer? I don't remember that section being unplayably bad, that's for sure!

Did you play through it on launch? It was pretty bad. I think they eventually released a patch that fixed it up a touch, but initially I remember it being really rough.

 

[Seance]

Don't worry guys. When you're fast traveling around everywhere you'll barely notice the ugly environments.

DAAAAAAAAAAAAMN, you just went in huh?


PC version will look sick.

 

[Toxi]

Got past all of blight town and the framerate wasn't that bad on the ps3? Perhaps older consoles suffered like with gta5? Maybe my standards are low with me not being a pc gamer? I don't remember that section being unplayably bad, that's for sure!

Upper Blighttown has serious problems thanks to all the enemies and objects. Destroy a few wooden structures, kill some blighted, roll around near a fire, and watch the framerate just die.

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

Do we have any high quality footage of the final game in action? I'd like to see it myself.


The thing is, this kind of stuff WAS playable on PS3. I've seen the game running on real PS3 hardware with this kind of lighting. Something else is going on.

Exactly.

I understand what you're saying but the game is rough in all those aspects. You can tell they were stretched super thin, this goes way beyond graphical whoring.

Some areas have really questionable enemy placements, stuff is reused or repurposed constantly without necessarily feeling like it fits thematically, music is reused, color.... well you'll see. Half of the game is gray, literally.

I'm a gameplay person, I don't want movie games and cutscenes galore but I do want a well thought out and consistent experience. Dark Souls 1 had some polish issues near the end of the game but Lost Izalith looks like a masterpiece compared to some of the stuff here.

Obviously different people have different tolerance levels for this kind of stuff, I'm not bashing the game and saying it's a total piece of shit or anything like that. It looks like there's a cool game in there and I'm sure even in this state it's going to be more fun than ALOT of other games on the market. But this is not up to the standard of quality that I associate with the series. It's really disappointing to me.

I don't mind if its grey unless its just a boring level. I mean if it fits with the theme of the level for instance, Shrine of Storms is pretty much all grey but it had a really cool theme and the colour palette kind of went well with it.

Welp at your Lost Izalith remark.

Now I am really keen to see how much of FROM is actually working on this title and how many are helping Miyazaki on his title.

PC version will look sick.

Lighting will still be the same.

 

[Kieli]

I'm not a graphics person, so talk of poor graphics honestly doesn't really bother me (I was content with integrated Intel for about 5 years).

However, what I dislike are muddy textures. That just makes me nauseous (physiologically, not psychologically).

 

[Garcia]

here's a stream screen I took of that fight, it's entirely gray now with none of the atmosphere of the demo footage. Like they literally removed the color.

Spoiler

http://imgur.com/WEs2LOt

You weren't joking. . .It looks completely grey. Sounds pretty bad.

 

[Lost Fragment]

If this stuff is true, I bet it's the reason reviews are embargoed until launch day.

 

[Vesper73]

Yes .but From software is not Bethesda .

True, but Bethesda actually got realtime shadows working on consoles in Skyrim, and that was a few years ago.

The argument against two lighting engines is still valid even today. Can you imagine having to test/balance twice just so the PC version could provide better lighting?

I can't think of a single game where the console doesn't have realtime lighting but the PC version does. Course that could just be that I'm tired. Any takers?