The point is that CDPR lied to all of us PC users, whose support made CDPR the company that is today
They supported the marketing of the game through fake footage since 2013, 2014 and 2015, and they managed to make 1.5 million people to preorder the game (multiplied by 60 they got 90 million dollars only from preorders)
All the gaming press gave extremely high reviews, reviews based on early unfinished review copies, and no one actually talked about the downgrade or the great technical issues the game has - reviews that made me preorder the game
(Especially on PCs)
To come out now as a company and say (read the interview I posted), after they collected all the preorders money, that they chose parity because they did not have the money/resources to create the original vision of the game, with all the trailers since today to explicitly say that they are in-game real-time gameplay, is just crazy
And I have a great issue with CDPR taking the lies PR approach, because in my mind I believe that it is one of the most gamer friendly companies out there
And its not only the graphics downgrade that I have an issue with, but the crashes, the stuttering, the frame rate/frame pacing, the controls, the camera etc
And I play the game in a PC that costs 2000+ euro
In an interview that happened on 28/01/2015, on game pressure, Adam Badowski (Managing Director of CD Projekt RED) said that they made the characters better and blames the graphics downgrade to lightning in the VGAs trailer when compared with the gameplay trailer of 2013
We are talking 4 months before the official game release, so they had perfect knowledge on how the final product would looked like, and they still lied to their future customers
http://www.gamepressure.com/e.asp?ID=51
And I copy the part of the interview I am referring about:
Have you followed the comments under The Witcher 3 VGA trailer? Many people were complaining about the drop in graphics quality in comparison to the first video materials.
Yes, weve seen them
Arent you afraid that after its release the game will share the fate of Watch_Dogs, where the game was being compared to the first E3 gameplay?
If someone rewatches the trailer they will notice that the character models look better in the game; even Geralt is more polished for instance, he has better shaders. Weve added a bunch of details and weve significantly improved the facial expressions and the lip sync. We have 7 different dubbing versions, so were not able to record the changes on actors face with the performance capture technology, like it was done in, say, Call of Duty. That wouldnt fit on three blu-ray discs. Keeping that in mind, weve implemented a dynamic system based on vowels and consonants, similar to the one in the previous two installments, where it did rather poorly. WithThe Witcher 3, the difference is astounding we have set the bar really high for the entire industry as compared to other games that rely on this system (such as BioWare games authors note); thats another thing that wasnt visible in the trailer.
Meanwhile, the quality of the lightning in the trailer remains a matter of taste. Weve made a mistake choosing to render some shots in dark and greyish colors. To put it simply, that was the option picked by the engine. I think that there will be locations that will look jaw-dropping, and no one will claim that they differ from what was seen in the trailer. Unfortunately, there will also be fragments where the game will look worse. Its the same with GTA when the wind picks up and it gets grey, especially in the forest, the graphics seem certainly worse than in a neon-filled and lively city.
To finish it off here, I had enough as a gamer of companies that overpromise and under deliver
I expected this kind of behavior from all studios/publishers, except CDPR (and a few other studios that i trust), and I have to say that I am very sad that one studio that I supported through the years, and watched grow to the company that it is now, lied to my face, only to pocket the preorders money
I havent lost my faith in them and I believe that in time they will fix the Witcher 3 (maybe a future enhanced DX12 edition would be the best way to play the game), but my experience with the game so far was problematic
The gaming press, as a whole, - one more time - didnt warned me about the issues the game had and I paid 60 euro for a game that at the moment is unplayable for me
I will never preorder anything from any company in the future, no matter the hype, before I see actual gameplay from the final product
I bet all my money that the next AAA release, that we all expecting, Batman Arkham Knight will have the same downgrade issues, when comparing real time (or in engine) gameplay from trailers with actual gameplay
If I ever see on an announcement trailer E3 is in a month dont forget the words, In Engine Footage or Real Time Gameplay, I will just think piss off