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Dark Souls 2 Lighting changes/Downgrade

Well, they've also been very flip-floppery on the idea that the game will be ported to new systems...

I think this downgrade really gives ammo that they might pull a "Definitive Edition" card with the game, which will be shitty. Either that, or really what they scrapped on last gen will be fully utilized for the PS4 title.

Conspiracy theories everywhere. The game could not run as it looked on current gen consoles and had to be stripped down until it could. Not sure why that is so hard to believe especially when the current game struggles to stay at 30 frames. It's almost like people thought they purposely made an ugly game to sell a better looking version later. If the day comes the the game gets a port to next gen consoles of course it's going to look better because the system has better hardware. It will probably be on par with whatever the PC version will be.

I'm all for the anger towards the misleading advertising towards the console release but any theories beyond that seem a bit ridiculous to me.
 

Piers

Member
I can't believe that people are really expecting the PC version to be a completely different build of the game. I don't think these downgrades happened at the last second like everyone thinks.

Not just this - even if the dynamic effects and assets are possible on the PC, I imagine the last thing FROM want to do is alienate their original console fans. In other words: if it had to be taken out on the consoles, they'll take it out on the PC as well to keep things 'fair'
Which sounds stupid, but unfortunately this is the sort of stupid I expect to happen.

And I still cannot get over the dragons flat-out missing.
 
Now this doesn't mean I'm boycotting From Software, if they release a PS4 version that looks as impressive as it did on the demos then I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Personally I wouldn't want next gen ports for atleast 18 months so it doesn't gimp the last gen / PC online communities.

Also I'd be very interested in what FROM are adding to those next gen ports and how it compares to the upcoming PC port. If the PC port was exactly the same as the PS360 originals with no lighting, then it would remove the possibility that the lighting engine was removed for practical reasons of slow last gen hardware since the PC has enough horsepower. It would be a blatant bait and switch of the highest degree, removing hyped features to sell their next gen ports, especially if the next gen ports didn't have any other fresh content like DS1 PC had.
 

Foffy

Banned
Conspiracy theories everywhere. The game could not run as it looked on current gen consoles and had to be stripped down until it could. Not sure why that is so hard to believe especially when the current game struggles to stay at 30 frames. It's almost like people thought they purposely made an ugly game to sell a better looking version later. If the day comes the the game gets a port to next gen consoles of course it's going to look better because the system has better hardware. It will probably be on par with whatever the PC version will be.

I'm all for the anger towards the misleading advertising towards the console release but any theories beyond that seem a bit ridiculous to me.

I am just entertaining ideas. No where am I saying any of this is true, outside of the PS4 Souls game being a thing, but that has been implied enough on GAF that it's not really conspiracy.
 

Garcia

Member
Well, that's not promising at all. Have you played the game?

I've been playing it for 8 hours and as I keep discovering new areas it's clear that Dark Souls 1 is the (aesthetically) superior game.

DS2 separates its locations with generic looking halls, corridors and tunnels. This is something that you will never find in the original; there was always an elegant and subtle transition between each area.
 
I've been playing it for 8 hours and as I keep discovering new areas it's clear that Dark Souls 1 is the (aesthetically) superior game.

DS2 separates its locations with generic looking halls, corridors and tunnels. This is something that you will never find in the original; there was always an elegant and subtle transition between each area.

That's something that's worried me ever since they said you can warp from the start. What's the point of designing interconnected areas with cool shortcuts if you can just teleport?
 

Curious_George

Neo Member
The problem is interiors mostly where they removed all fire sources from the more interior places and made the existing ones more subtle, resulting in areas looking almost like they are unlit.

You can enhance the contrast as much as you like, it won't make a dull unlit area look any better without a significant light source.

The other problem is that after they removed the fire sources they must have cranked up the gamma to compensate for the new lack of lighting rather than add other (maybe static) light sources to replace them. Even when the game looks good it looks really washed out to me except in very bright scenes.

It's crazy watching GB stream Demon's at the same as DS2 streams on twitch and seeing the huge difference between black levels in both games (or gray levels in DS2's case).
 

Wadiwasi

Banned
And I really do suspect it's a gameplay mechanic that wasn't really settling right. You had to give up a free hand, you were on a timer, you seemingly can not buy new torches... better to not make it THAT important because the supply was way too god damn tight for something that's supposed to be used throughout the whole game.


That is one thing that has always bugged me about games with torches. Realistically if you are in a place that dark you would need a torch, and if a huge monster was coming at you to kill you then you would also need both hands (shield etc;). I don't know about you guys but putting a flaming torch in my inventory wouldn't be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or millionth thought that came to me. I would love to see a game where you can toss it off to the side and the light effect moves with the torch and you can pick it back up when you are done. I would assume that would be a little too much for current gen to handle but would love to see a game do that in the future.
 
That is one thing that has always bugged me about games with torches. Realistically if you in a place that dark you would need a torch, and if a huge monster was coming at you to kill you then you would also need both hands (shield etc;). I don't know about you guys but putting a flaming torch in my inventory wouldn't be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or millionth thought that came to me. I would love to see a game where you can toss it off to the side and the light effect moves with the torch and you can pick it back up when you are done. I would assume that would be a little too much for current gen to handle but would love to see a game do that in the future.

Like this?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/10394
 
That's something that's worried me ever since they said you can warp from the start. What's the point of designing interconnected areas with cool shortcuts if you can just teleport?
Because you need to get to places first.

Teleporting also means sitting by the bonfire IE enemies respawn, you don't always want that.
 

Grief.exe

Member
Xbox @ 60fps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ8erB6IeHU&t=1m49s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKdiiN62GzY&t=1m10s

12zikzn.jpg
Now, to be fair, NG was a GORGEOUS game on release and looked practically 'next-gen' at the time. Hell, NG:B on Xbox360 still puts some exclusive 360 games to shame.

Man I wish this was on PC. One of the best games of all time. OF ALL TIME. Shame about that God awful story though.

Loved having it on Vita, even if it was at 30FPS.

Ninja Gaiden Black on PC would be phenomenal.
 

Manus

Member
This is exactly what many people out there keep completely (and selectively) forgetting when they say Dark Souls 2 looks better than the first game.

Dark Souls 2 lacks cohesion, visual coherence and it has terrible art direction.

How can you say this when your only 8 hours into the game? Coming from someone who is about 25 hours in DS2 has a way better art direction than the first. The atmosphere in some of the later parts are amazing. Are people forgetting the last 1/4 of Dark Souls was so drap and boring.

You guys forget how awesome looking Lost Izalith looked?? Yeah didn't think so.
 

Techies

Member
Dark Souls did have this light around the character that lit the area around that character. Which made it possible to see even in pure black areas, except for that horrible Giant's cave bit.
 

SargerusBR

I love Pokken!
I've been playing it for 8 hours and as I keep discovering new areas it's clear that Dark Souls 1 is the (aesthetically) superior game.

DS2 separates its locations with generic looking halls, corridors and tunnels. This is something that you will never find in the original; there was always an elegant and subtle transition between each area.

in 8 hours you only saw like 1/8 of the game. And besides Anor Londo, Duke's Archives, Ash Lake and the Painted World, Dark Souls has aesthetically boring areas.
 

III-V

Member
The initial brightness setting you do at the main screen doesn't help matters in the slightest. Everything is too flat. I'll have a look tomorrow to see if there is any way correcting the gamma.

Oddly it does say on the title screen just under the firmware version number, 'Calibrations' which is currently on 1.03 so perhaps they'll be looking to patch this at a later date.

Yes, I noticed this calibrations bit as well. Its clearly an incorrect calibration. Hopefully will be patched soon.
 

Stet

Banned
How can you say this when your only 8 hours into the game? Coming from someone who is about 25 hours in DS2 has a way better art direction than the first. The atmosphere in some of the later parts are amazing. Are people forgetting the last 1/4 of Dark Souls was so drap and boring.

You guys forget how awesome looking Lost Izalith looked?? Yeah didn't think so.

Lost Izalith was awful looking.
 

Zophar

Member
This is a big disappointment but I've always played the Souls games for the actual gameplay, and developed a real fondness for the art direction and aesthetic as a result. The art and atmosphere are still there, right? I think I can be happy with that.
 

Persona7

Banned
This is a big disappointment but I've always played the Souls games for the actual gameplay, and developed a real fondness for the art direction and aesthetic as a result. The art and atmosphere are still there, right? I think I can be happy with that.

So far, yes it looks amazing.
 
Game looks like dog shit without the lightning. I know that this is a Souls game and graphics are generally bad, but it pisses me off that they deceived us all this time..

False advertising at its best.
 

mollipen

Member
How can you say this when your only 8 hours into the game? Coming from someone who is about 25 hours in DS2 has a way better art direction than the first. The atmosphere in some of the later parts are amazing. Are people forgetting the last 1/4 of Dark Souls was so drap and boring.

This is totally a matter of opinion. I think the design of a huge chunk of DS2's locations aren't nearly as good as those in DS. To me, they often feel under-developed, or like there just wasn't the creativity put into them like before. They're definitely not terrible, but certainly not as good (to me).
 

Manus

Member
This is totally a matter of opinion. I think the design of a huge chunk of DS2's locations aren't nearly as good as those in DS. To me, they often feel under-developed, or like there just wasn't the creativity put into them like before. They're definitely not terrible, but certainly not as good (to me).

I just don't see it. Especially with the latter half of Dark Souls even started using previous bosses as normal enemies. Their's just so many parts of the last half of Dark Souls that you can tell it was slapped together. I'm not getting that vibe from DS2 at all. Granted I haven't finished it yet, but 25 hours in I haven't seen it yet.
 

BigDug13

Member
That is one thing that has always bugged me about games with torches. Realistically if you in a place that dark you would need a torch, and if a huge monster was coming at you to kill you then you would also need both hands (shield etc;). I don't know about you guys but putting a flaming torch in my inventory wouldn't be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or millionth thought that came to me. I would love to see a game where you can toss it off to the side and the light effect moves with the torch and you can pick it back up when you are done. I would assume that would be a little too much for current gen to handle but would love to see a game do that in the future.

There was an Oblivion mod that let you press a button to drop the torch. It would drop out of your hand still lit and would sit on the ground still burning, illuminating the room. That's what you would naturally do if confronted in a fight. Throw that shit down and get your shield/sword ready.
 
Does lighting torches hit the framerate as much on 360 as it does on PS3? In the Forest of Giants there's an area I really wish I could un-light because the framerate hits record lows every time I'm there.

Come and watch this newbie play Dark Souls 2 :D
ily Gaf!
www.twitch.tv/monkeydloufy

Dude, you've made posts that are just links to you stream like five times in various DS2 threads. This thread isn't even related.
 

Garcia

Member
in 8 hours you only saw like 1/8 of the game. And besides Anor Londo, Duke's Archives, Ash Lake and the Painted World, Dark Souls has aesthetically boring areas.

You're right in that I've seen just a fraction of the game, but the first impressions haven't been too encouraging. As I keep moving forward I'll see how this improves or stays the same.
 

TheGrue

Member
Areas of the game that look like shit (like the screenshots posted countless times) break my immersion, how about that?
Immersion is a big part of why i enjoy Dark Souls, so i'd say that's a pretty big factor.

Graphics and art direction are an integral part of gaming, i don't see why people are so dismissive about them.
I've not bought many games because it thought they had really bad art direction and visuals.

This game is just as ugly as Demons Souls and Dark Souls. I wouldn't have it any other way.
 
Should've make it without music if you think some company will nuke it because of that.

Well, I did Nier music in my last video, so I thought it would be alright. I shouldn't have done the DD theme anyway. I've had to add that song to my music playlist like 10 times because each one gets taken down.
 

doofy102

Member
This needs to be quoted more. Let me try and illustrate with crappy pictures.



See the first reveal and is quite different to the other three, the lighting is there plus all the other fancy features. By the time it got to TGS, the door frame was wood, not bricks, and has remained the same into the retail version. The position of the torch is the same in the TGS and PS3 Access videos, but since they added a door in the retail version they have moved it back.

TL;DR - Three versions?

1. Initial reveal (April 2013): Awesome lighting, awesome graphics.
2. TGS/PS3 Access (September 2013): Awesome lighting, downgraded graphics.
3. Retail (March 2014): Downgraded (absent?) lighting, downgraded graphics.

Pretty much :)

I think we were probably supposed to get version 2.
 
This is the main issue when looking at such drastic changes in builds purported to be from the same machine.

When art is done it is done in a semi lock step process. Models, collision, textures, lighting. You can't just take something and remodel it and call done. It has to go back through the process. After and during the process it needs to be tested by QA so you don't fall through the world or walk through a wall or see streaked UVs.

What I'm getting at is whatever happened to this version of the game happened a long time ago. At least 6-8 months ago. Also depending on the amount of this work across the game the timeline is likely far longer.

This is not a case of not being able to get 30fps so let's remodel, relight, re texture, redo the collision, and retest everything in the game in a couple months. With the staff From likely has that would be impossible.
 

Branduil

Member
This is the main issue when looking at such drastic changes in builds purported to be from the same machine.

When art is done it is done in a semi lock step process. Models, collision, textures, lighting. You can't just take something and remodel it and call done. It has to go back through the process. After and during the process it needs to be tested by QA so you don't fall through the world or walk through a wall or see streaked UVs.

What I'm getting at is whatever happened to this version of the game happened a long time ago. At least 6-8 months ago. Also depending on the amount of this work across the game the timeline is likely far longer.

This is not a case of not being able to get 30fps so let's remodel, relight, re texture, redo the collision, and retest everything in the game in a couple months. With the staff From likely has that would be impossible.

See this post. The models are the same as the PS3 Early Access test, but they basically just turned off the lighting system.
 
The video comparison I saw had drastic changes to the models.

The video you saw was comparing against the initial reveal. The early access build which was very recent, had scaled back the asset's considerably to be much closer to the retail build, it was the lighting system that primarily distinguished it from now.
 

doofy102

Member
The video comparison I saw had drastic changes to the models.

3 versions of the game dude.

edit: like other posters have been saying, it's obvious the more physical details of the visuals (walls and textures and whatnot) were downgraded long before the lighting was.

How fast do you think they could have downgraded just the lighting? Keep in mind what we have now does not suggest they did anything else after removing the lighting, dark areas are now seemingly, uniformly grey w/torches still outside them etc.
 
Ok, I just have to vent somewhere. I'm supremely disappointed with the performance of the game. Granted I haven't gotten that far yet, but the frame rate for me has been super choppy everywhere I've been so far (Hub Town, Forest of the Giants, the castle in the forest) Also, the camera feels super wonky to me, the acceleration feels really off. Even with the sensitivity turned all the way down, it goes from rotating too slow to rotating faster than I wanted, the sweet spot is really small it seems.

I started to think that maybe I was misremembering how Dark Souls actually played. It's been a while since I played it last. I know the frame rate wasn't great in Dark Souls. I know it dropped really bad in Blight Town and got kind of choppy in other areas of the game, but I didn't remember it being as bad as it is in DS2. I also didn't remember having the problems I'm having with the camera either.

So after playing DS2 for a couple of hours today I decide to put in DS to see how it compares. I played from the Undead Asylum until the gargoyle fight, and the frame rate was much better in DS than in DS2, plus I didn't have any of the problems with the camera either. It just felt so much better to me in terms of performance and controls. I put in Demons Souls and played through 1-1 and it was the same thing.

I've been looking forward to DS2 for months, I was so psyched to finally pick it up, but it feels like such a downgrade from DS. I don't mind the mechanics changes that they made to the game, but the frame rate and the camera is really getting in the way of me enjoying the game. I got the game digital on PS3, which is the same system I played DS on. Is anybody else having the same issues? Is the framerate a problem with the digital copy of the game?

I really want to like the game, but it performs even worse than DS! I may just have to wait until its out on PC =( I can't believe that even after the downgrades, the game runs like utter dogshit. It's much, much worse than DeS and DS, to the point where it affects my ability to enjoy the game.
 
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