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The Witcher 3 - New screenshots

KingJolly

Banned
Seriously what's wrong with this gen, most of the big games: Titanfall, Watch Dogs, Destiny have all been disappointments and you make it sound like Witcher 3 will be the biggest clusterfuck of them all, you're vetted too so must be correct. =(

Curse of the overhyped game. Bunch of other low hyped games are shining and making pleasant surprises. See Shadow of Mordor.
 
Can I post something that may or maynot be true about this Insider that is being brought up in the official Witcher 3 forums?

They are talking about what's happening in this thread with the insider and some people who may or may not know him are saying things like:


http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/30509-Screenshot-amp-Artwork-collection-Part-II/page50

The truth is, the people who can be a confident leaker falls in very few possible groups, mostly people who works or worked in the game.

-If it's people who is working in the game... why would they throw stones in their own roof? It doesn't make sense to be them.

-If it's people who have worked in the game, but now they are ex-devs... you have to take what they say with a pinch of salt. They could be disgruntled ex-devs wanting to do some damage after being fired.

Other options would be testers and staff from the publishers, these ones could be a more confident source of information.
 

maneil99

Member
Given the news, do you think there is a problem with AAA games reaching their potential for the new generation of hardware?

Even the best studios in the world are struggling it seems. I mean if studios like Bungie and CDProjekt are struggling to put out a next gen game, who can we rely on?

Batman was delayed nearly a year, Drive Club a full year, The Order delayed, Destiny, Watch Dogs, Quantum Break pushed back to an unannounced date. Even games that come hell or high water have been delayed (AC Unity).

Seems like the transition to PS4 and Xbox One hasn't been kind to some of our favorite devs...

Since when was CD Projekt RED a high tier developer? Think about it. Witcher 1 was mediocre. Witcher 2 had awful animations and boring combat, with good story and locations. How can they be on the level of Bungie? They have never deserved the rep they were given. They were/are overhyped because like Crytek in 2007 they pushed PC's therefore PC fans put them on a pedestile to show off the ability to make AAA PC only games that weren't strategy related.
 

De_Legend

Banned
After playing 1 and 2 I think these games are overrated imo.

Still I keep buying em.

Cannot wait to see more of the new game they are working on though.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
The truth is, the people who can be a confident leaker falls in very few possible groups, mostly people who works or worked in the game.

-If it's people who is working in the game... why would they throw stones in their own roof? It doesn't make sense to be them.

-If it's people who have worked in the game, but now they are ex-devs... you have to take what they say with a pinch of salt. They could be disgruntled ex-devs wanting to do some damage after being fired.

Other options would be testers and staff from the publishers, these ones could be a more confident source of information.

I'm just being optimistic about the insider, who has been verified. It doesn't make sense to show a build of a game 2 months ago live on gamespot, ign of the pc version. And before that a xbox one stage demo, then show screenshots that look worse than what they showed previously.

Watchdogs scenario was they showed a stage demo on a high end PC in 2012. Then showed it again in 2013. Then showed it off recently a couple months before release actually running on console hardware looking way worse than what they showed.

The wticher 3 has been shown running well on a Xbox one at E3, it doesn't make sense that in 4 months it goes from that to what we see in these screens. Unless the gameplay slice was just a tailored slice and not the whole game loaded on a machine.

Which would explain the great performance if it was just that section loaded for press purposes.

I'm just trying to make sense.

Hopefully since CDPROJECTRED has been pretty open developer with the community, hopefully they might step in and clarify things before it get's much worse.
 
Man I must be lucky or something because I am really not understanding the backlash right now. I do not see an atrocious difference between those shots previously posted. Bullshots are bullshots, are they not? Isn't that standard operating procedure, to show off bullshots when promoting your game?

Maybe I'm missing something. I tried to read through as much of this thread as I could. So what if they are having a PR shit storm right now. I seem to remember a few other major companies having PR shit storms recently. What is the big deal?
 

Beefy

Member
Even insiders can be wrong, look at cboat. It's also 4 months until this game comes out, so I will just see how it goes.
 

Totobeni

An blind dancing ho
They never lied. That is what Dark Souls did look like for most of development. But they had to downgrade the visuals due to console limitations, and they did the same for the PC version. All trailers which show the "pre-downgrade" visuals of DS2, is what the game looked like at that point in development.

they didn't told the media about the downgrade tho, only few weeks before the release. even their steam screenshots was from the old version untill days from the relese then they changed it. so there was still misleadind going on with From and DS2.

But this isn't Dark Souls 2 or from FROM. If Witcher 2 (which still kicks my system's ass) is any indication, I have no doubt the screens will match the final product.

graphics downgrade might not be the issue here

PR is creating an overblown vision of a game that doesn't exist

this might turn to be Watch Dog/Fable/Colonial Marines situation all over again.
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
What we should really be comparing these shots to is the full gameplay reels. The E3 and VGX trailers were almost all from real time cut scenes which, like in a lot of AAA games, will probably look slightly but noticeably better than gameplay. Even those gameplay reels though aren't really optimized.
 

Kezen

Banned
Even though the graphical quality of the recent screens are nowhere near that of older screens...

Do we have similar areas for comparisons ? With a game of that scope it's a foregone conclusion that some areas will never be as polished as others, there is only so much that can be achieved with their budget.

They should have taken a better looking part of the world for sure but I don't think the game will be "downgraded".
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Someone can link me "downgraded" screens?

What? Just look at the one with the wolves, man. Nothing in that screen looks as good as people rightfully expect this game to look. Geralt looks bad, the wolves look bad, the environment looks bad. Honestly, that screen could very realistically be from a PS360 game, not counting image quality.
 

Nilaul

Member
I can't believe I laughed when I saw people screaming and yelling over how amazing Zelda U looked... but in hindsight... well, eh. My main comparison seems a bit unconvincing at best.

Vegetation/draw distances seems to be better in Zelda WiiU. But I suppose the art-style is well made to hide any potential issue in draw distances.
 

Denton

Member
The screens on first page are weird because there is something great looking in them and something bad, in each one.

The one with horse - the cloth and characters looks great. The horse doesn't.

The one with mountain - the landscape and lightning looks fantastic and impressive. The image quality and LoD doesn't.

The one with wolves - lightning and trees in background look great. But wolves have bad textures, no hairworks and Geralt looks somewhat strange.

The one with griffin looks ok for the most part.

If CDP comes out with info that these are preliminary console screens, I would be fine with that.
 

Kezen

Banned
Oh cool... so I guess these are xbone/ps4 shots?

Or PC without it because it's not yet 100% implemented.
No way around the fact that those shots look plain, I don't know what went through CDP's PR department.

But we should be reminded that The Witcher 3 has never been perfect graphics wise, even when the game was praised you could easily make out flaws in the character models or shading, textures, etc..

I dread to think what budget would be needed to have a game of that scope polished like a diamond.
Yes, there will be flaws, awful textures, bad looking NPCs, weak geometry here and here, glitches. Nothing new really, no game is perfect.
The Witcher 2 didn't have any AF on PC, and to this day I can't force it without causing weird texture bugs.
 

zonezeus

Member
What's the point in dropping a bomb like this and disappearing? Ok, so the guy is legit but we still know nothing, it might be anything from all around graphical downgrade, to performance issues on consoles, to... anything else really, since all we've been told so far is "don't trust PR!".

Well, duh.
 

Naminator

Banned
He is vetted by a mod. He knows the game is a clusterfuck but can't say too much about it cuz he under NDA.

Your problem if you wanna live in lalaland created by CDPR PR.

I was referring to the whole situation not on his claims.

After all what can I possibly comment on when he is a vague as vague gets.
 

PFD

Member
What's the point in dropping a bomb like this and disappearing? Ok, so the guy is legit but we still know nothing, it might be anything from all around graphical downgrade, to performance issues on consoles, to... anything else really, since all we've been told so far is "don't trust PR!".

Well, duh.

Yeah, the insider has been suspiciously absent ever since he got confirmed. Maybe CDPR ninjas got him?
 
Our chosen hobby is first and foremost an interactive medium.

Mate, by the sounds of it, I've been gaming for a lot longer than you and our hobby is not "first and foremost" a visual medium. It never was.

Donkey Kong and Pacman still shit it in in the gameplay department and that is all that matters.

First and foremost.

If you guys really think that games are not a visual medium then try playing them without the use of your own eyes, lets see how you do. runnin_blue, i dont care if you have been gaming longer then me or not, if you have good for you but i seriously doubt you have been playing longer than me.
 

Thorgal

Member
All i need to see to know that this game is gonna look great is this 35 minute demo

I fully and honestly believe that that is how the game is gonna look and IMO it looks absolutely amazing .

If it turns out it does not look like that i am prepared to eat crow to extinction .

But if our insider claims that this is all smoke and mirrors , i want him to say it and put his foot behind it and accept any punishment deemed necessary by the forum staff if it turns out he is lying or relaying old /false info .

If he can't because of NDA's then it is his word against CDProject and unless he can procure hard proof of his claims , his posts hold little weight to me verified insider or not .
 

Papacheeks

Banned
All i need to see to know that this game is gonna look great is this 35 minute demo

I fully and honestly believe that that is how the game is gonna look and IMO it looks absolutely amazing .

If it turns out it does not look like that i am prepared to eat crow to extinction .

But if our insider claims that this is all smoke and mirrors , i want him to say it and put his foot behind it and accept any punishment deemed necessary by the forum staff if it turns out he is lying or relaying old /false info .

If he can't because of NDA's then it is his word against CDProject and unless he can procure hard proof of his claims , his posts hold little weight to me verified insider or not .

Just FYI that 35 minute demo is of the PC version not the console. Which is mostly what people are worried about.
 

Sentenza

Member
Just FYI that 35 minute demo is of the PC version not the console. Which is mostly what people are worried about.

If that would be the core of the problem i could gladly say "Then I simply don't give a damn about these rumors". Mostly because egoistically speaking I simply don't give a damn about how the console versions are going to look and run, but also because that would imply that we are speaking just about technical limitations, not core design issues.

"A game that doesn't exist" seems to suggest far deeper problems than graphical features missing, though.
 
That wide shot looks like a nice last gen bullshot.

Nothing particularly mind-blowing.

But then I never saw the beauty in The Witcher 2 everyone else saw. Aside from running at a ridiculous resolution on PC, the god rays were ridiculously overpowering and everything else was pretty average.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
If that would be the core of the problem i could gladly say "Then I simply don't give a damn about these rumors". Mostly because egoistically speaking I simply don't give a damn about how the console versions are going to look and run, but also because that would imply that we are speaking just about technical limitations, not core design issues.

"A game that doesn't exist" seem to suggest far deeper problems that graphical features missing, though.

Just doesn't compute when you look at the 35 minutes demo that shows you how big one area is and how fast travel works, talking to NPC's, ETC.

It seems to be a somewhat open world RPG. If it's bigger than The witcher 2 even by a little still enjoy the crap out if it.

Even though it says work in progress, hard to see that at least on PC that we won't be getting what they are showing us.

If it's as good as the preview then I don't care who this "Insider" is I'm going to be in love with the lore, and world they are building.
 

Genio88

Member
Those images are pretty downgraded, even compared to the Xbox One version they've shown, i hope we won't see a Watch Dogs style downgrade
 

Sentenza

Member
That's why I want clarifications, Papacheeks.
if the issue turns out to be something like "They said it was going to be bigger than Skyrim but it's actually 30% smaller!!!" I would laugh at it.
If it's going to be something like "There are actually barely two hand-crafted quests and the rest is randomly generated boring crap" it would be a massive hype-killer, on the other hand.
 

TheTwelve

Member
All I'm looking for is more of what I got in Witcher 2, with better visuals and some cleaned up missions.

ANYthing more than that is gravy for me.

And it'll definitely be a lot more than that.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
That's why I want clarifications, Papacheeks.
if the issue turns out to be something like "They said it was going to be bigger than Skyrim but it's actually 30% smaller!!!" I would laugh at it.
If it's going to be something like "There are actually barely two hand-crafted quests and the rest is randomly generated boring crap" it would be a massive hype-killer, on the other hand.

Well as long as it's as good as The witcher 2 with better combat, I will love it.

And from what I'v seen it looks to be that.

I just would want to know more clarification along with you what corners were cut for Console.
 

Zarx

Member
For those claiming downgrade these are the older gameplay screens they released over the last couple years.
ibifHKEpWaJjTb.jpg
Look at the hair
Just look at this guy, textures are bad, hair is low poly, no SSAO.
Look at his hair it's pure white, so that isn't a new downgrade.
Low poly trees, poor distant detail
Look at the lower right
It's blurred because of the DoF but you can clearly see the distant terrain is low res and doesn't have grass.
Look at the awful trees in the distance. This is one of the early shots and shows how they have improved..
Low res fire effect, low quality fur on the monster.
Horse model is clearly not great, and the trees don't look very good.
Look at these wolf models, same as the new shot.

Other than the toned down DoF and sharpening filter these new shots are perfectly in line with what they showed before, if not better in some respects. There have always been low res textures everywhere and the distant lod has never been super amazing. CDP RED have been pretty honest about what it looks like and how it has evolved over time. Still looks great in motion and their cutscene models look fantastic. And they are still pre-alpha.
 

Ridesh

Banned
Just doesn't compute when you look at the 35 minutes demo that shows you how big one area is and how fast travel works, talking to NPC's, ETC.

It seems to be a somewhat open world RPG. If it's bigger than The witcher 2 even by a little still enjoy the crap out if it.

Even though it says work in progress, hard to see that at least on PC that we won't be getting what they are showing us.

If it's as good as the preview then I don't care who this "Insider" is I'm going to be in love with the lore, and world they are building.

When he talked about at "A game that doesn't exist" I think he was referring to the VGX and E3 trailers graphics quality, and that what we're seeing in the new pics are more in line with the game.

Also, I don't know if this is normal at this point of development, but the 35 minute gameplay framerate was all over the place, maybe the game is going through a lot of assets optimization and that's the cause of the 'downgrade'.
 
When he talked about at "A game that doesn't exist" I think he was referring to the VGX and E3 trailers graphics quality, and that what we're seeing in the new pics are more in line with the game.

Also, I don't know if this is normal at this point of development, but the 35 minute gameplay framerate was all over the place, maybe the game is going through a lot of assets optimization and that's the cause of the 'downgrade'.

Yeah all of the optimization for fancy effects and framerate happens over the last little stretch before release.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
When he talked about at "A game that doesn't exist" I think he was referring to the VGX and E3 trailers graphics quality, and that what we're seeing in the new pics are more in line with the game.

Also, I don't know if this is normal at this point of development, but the 35 minute gameplay framerate was all over the place, maybe the game is going through a lot of assets optimization and that's the cause of the 'downgrade'.

But on PC? Because that can be toned down more easily than having it run on consoles.

Frame rate can be managed if you can turn some things off like Blur effects and bloom.

Tone down textures a bit.
 

Arion

Member
I have been exited for this game since it was announced but I have kept all my expectations in line. Every time I saw "Tacticool Combat" in a trailer I knew it was bullshit since CDPR has a track record of terrible combat. Though I still respect CDPR its clear when a marketer is talking about a game and marketers are always going to exaggerated the quality of the game. don't fall for it

My advice keep calm and don't worry about the promotional content. Judge a game for what it is when it comes out and not what some schmuck who doesn't even make the game promises.
 
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