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The Witcher 3 – Fans Claim ‘Downgrade-ation’ Is In Full Effect After Latest Trailer

Fans decided to share their opinions and questions on the game’s official YouTube channel and forum. Some of them questioned whether this latest trailer was from the console or the PC version, while others provided some shots showing the low-resolution textures that were quite noticeable.

“The downgrade is real. I refused to believe it at first, but it’s pretty obvious now. Still a good trailer though, and I’m sure the game will be amazing nonetheless.” wrote ‘JohnReese’ and that comment – alongside all the negativity surrounding this latest trailer – made CD Projekt RED’s ‘Marcin Momot’ respond and say:

“I believe some explanation is required here. Unfortunately this time we’ve encountered some horrible YouTube compression problems. At this very moment we are working on fixing this and will upload another version of the trailer as soon as we can. It will present much higher quality. I want to assure you that there will be no downgrade – I see this game every day – it looks stunning.”

Gamersryde has shared a proper 1080p version of the trailer that can be downloaded from here.

And here are some screen-grabs, showing the inconsistent visuals found in this latest trailer (taken from the Gamersryde version of the trailer).

npjb.jpg

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-w...ull-effect-after-latest-trailer-devs-comment/
 

Seanspeed

Banned
Couple other threads about this trailer already. Is this one purely dedicated to controversy?

Will be interesting to see if this gets more posts than the normal trailer thread.
 
This is exactly why doing ANY sort of definitive "graphical comparisons" on YouTube is pointless, the compression is absolutely TERRIBLE.
 

UrbanRats

Member
What a weird article to write, about "some random folks on the internet think the game is downgraded".

Also, CDP's response is sort of a cop out, i don't think the downgrade people see, has much to do with video compression.
 

Plywood

NeoGAF's smiling token!
Eh, side comment but the villagers always looked like they needed more polys to me.

That youtube compression excuse is hilarious tho.
 

HowZatOZ

Banned
Developers, just give us CGI trailers until a few months before release. It seems people only want that these days.
 

Adry9

Member
Just watched the 3Gb trailer, either that's footage from XONE/PS4 or the downgrade is real. Yeah, it still looks good but that doesn't mean there is no downgrade.
 

deeptech

Member
It's certainly not going to look as good as the early screens they showed , but rarely we see anything does. Also i don't believe we're going to see difference between PC and Console like one with Witcher 2 , but still i think final maxed out PC version will look decent.Since its console/PC release i don't expect anything mindblowing like Witcher 2 was.
 

CheesecakeRecipe

Stormy Grey
There's been a very obvious dip in model quality in many places, texturework has taken a nosedive in several areas as well. Youtube compression is not even close to the trailer's real problems, and CDPRed's insistence on that being the 'issue' further cements their ability to understand what they get wrong.

I think the model changes were disappointing as hell, too. The original Wild Hunt model looked like a brutal piece of European Gothic art/architecture. Now he looks like a slightly more threatening mook.
 

Jomjom

Banned
Anyone who by now doesn't just assume every game will get a downgrade from the initial reveal is incredibly naive.

They are trying to hype people up with the first impression so naturally you get bullshots, CG claimed as real-time and false statements about frame rate. It's just the times we live in now.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Either console footage or not highest settings on pc, definitely expecting this game to look great on consoles but ridiculously gorgeous on pc, like the witcher 2 did at the time of release.
 
There are a lot of moments in VG tech where stuff comes together to form impeccable images.

For example, from that one trailer awhile back, when Geralt goes into the cave mouth opening with the torch lit. It looks fantastic.

Other scenes less so.
 

Momentary

Banned
I wish a studio would just come out and say, "Look PC gamers. We're showing console footage of the game because we don't want to misrepresent the product to the "baseline" consumer who's not going to be able to run it with all the bells and whistles we'll be providing."

I guarantee you that there will be an NVIDIA graphical showcase trailer closer to release clearly stating what PC graphics will look like. Do you want a ton of XB1 and PS4 fans yelling at the tops of their lungs that they've been had due to things not looking like they did in the trailers. I wouldn't want to deal with that bullshit as a developer.
 

Altairre

Member
After the problems Dragon Age Inquisition and most other open world games have with lack of focus I'm way more concerned about the narrative structure and quest quality. The game looks really good and I'm extremely excited to see where they take the story and the character of Ciri.

The game is not that far away and at this point I'll just wait until I can judge the graphics for myself. Downgrade or not CD Projekt have earned a huge amount of respect and trust with their customer friendly attitude and their incredible support for the previous two games. If anyone deserves the benefit of the doubt it's these guys.
 

erawsd

Member
I think there are some really obvious texture loading issues going on. There is no way that bottom pic is what that thing looks like that when the same game is rocking character models that also look like these:

 
Honest question: Does having a slightly worse texture on an NPC's sleeve have any real, discernable effect on how you guys play the game?

I just don't understand why people care about nitpicky stuff like this. If it looked like a previous gen game I could see the controversy, but a current gen game going from spectacular to slightly-less spectacular makes absolutely no difference to me.

More power to you if you'd rather focus on minor crap like this, I will be playing the game and nitpicking things like mission design, gameplay and narrative.
 

Ascenion

Member
Just watched the 3Gb trailer, either that's footage from XONE/PS4 or the downgrade is real. Yeah, it still looks good but that doesn't mean there is no downgrade.

Same here. The textures look bad on some stuff, the witch king guy his hair looks hella bad. The game still overall looks amazing but that hair or whatever it was that may haunt my dreams. Something tells me it was XONE footage though, given their marketing agreement.
 

JaggedSac

Member
Developers, just give us CGI trailers until a few months before release. It seems people only want that these days.

Yep, we might start seeing less and less gameplay footage before release if this crap continues. Of course things will change in development, especially if performance targets aren't met during the optimization stage.
 

Surface of Me

I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
I wish a studio would just come out and say, "Look PC gamers. We're showing console footage of the game because we don't want to misrepresent the product to the "baseline" consumer who's not going to be able to run it with all the bells and whistles we'll be providing."

I guarantee you that there will be an NVIDIA graphical showcase trailer closer to release clearly stating what PC graphics will look like. Do you want a ton of XB1 and PS4 fans yelling at the tops of their lungs that they've been had due to things not looking like they did in the trailers. I wouldn't want to deal with that bullshit as a developer.

Same here. The textures look bad on some stuff, the witch king guy his hair looks hella bad. The game still overall looks amazing but that hair or whatever it was that may haunt my dreams. Something tells me it was XONE footage though, given their marketing agreement.

Either console footage or not highest settings on pc, definitely expecting this game to look great on consoles but ridiculously gorgeous on pc, like the witcher 2 did at the time of release.

Just watched the 3Gb trailer, either that's footage from XONE/PS4 or the downgrade is real. Yeah, it still looks good but that doesn't mean there is no downgrade.





X1 footage has been out since E3. This is a downgrade from that.
 

Momentary

Banned
Honest question: Does having a slightly worse texture on an NPC's sleeve have any real, discernable effect on how you guys play the game?

I just don't understand why people care about nitpicky stuff like this. If it looked like a previous gen game I could see the controversy, but a current gen game going from spectacular to slightly-less spectacular makes absolutely no difference to me.

More power to you if you'd rather focus on minor crap like this, I will be playing the game and nitpicking things like mission design, gameplay and narrative.

I guarantee half the people hollering about the "downgrade" don't even have the hardware to run it at the level of fidelity that they were hoping to see in previous trailers. But like I said. I don't think there is a downgrade. Just graphical options turned down or off.
 

Dysun

Member
RIP The Witcher 3 graphics

Yeah, I'm not sure it's going to live up to that anymore. The first worrying signs were the snow/wolf shots that came out earlier this year, mixed with the bish verified insider claiming a rocky development.
 

Gurthang

Banned
I guarantee half the people hollering about the "downgrade" don't even have the hardware to run it at the level of fidelity that they were hoping to see in previous trailers. But like I said. I don't think there is a downgrade. Just graphical options turned down or off.

But they could always upgrade their PCs later on and then enjoy the game in its ultra graphics settings?
 
Those captures look like shit, but they seem to be of some kind of texture loading bug. I doubt the final game looks anything like that.
 

Vizzeh

Banned
Lets just wait for this new uncompressed, full-quality trailer until full judgement is passed. Hit the brakes :)
 

Seanspeed

Banned
Did we really need a whole thread dedicated to this? We already have one for the trailer.
Other thread? 85 responses in 3 hours.

This one? 40 responses in 15 minutes.

Has downgrade in the title.

Lets just wait for this new uncompressed, full-quality trailer until full judgement is passed. Hit the brakes :)
We've got it already. Entire thread created for it. :)
 
Maybe cdprojekt got scared after what happened with Unity and poor performance amirite? Will be legit surprised if PC version doesn't at least have an optional hd texture pack for download the week of release. For them to downgrade it this much across all skus seems very un-cdprojekt, though maybe they were having massive perf issues and are scrambling for release /shrugs. Gonna have to wait till February probably to see what's what.
 
This downgrade shit has become some of the most insufferable parts of discussing games. It's not that it doesn't matter, but the extent to which it dominates discussions of new games is just annoying.
 
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