• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

You had one job, Ubisoft...

calico said:
11370966-pirates-gold-dos-duelling-the-spanish-captain.png


>

0000000678.1920x1080.jpg
Click to expand...
 
I've notice the bad lighting and commented multiple times about it. I didn't see anyone else say anything so I thought maybe o was just crazy. 😵‍💫
 
modern engines with their seni-automated way to light everything and to add reflecions via SSR with a simple mouse click made game artists complacent and worse.

there's a reason people think Arkham Knight looks better than most modern games. the amount of tricks Rocksteady had to apply, and the amount of UE3 engine tweaks they did to get the results you see in Arkham Knight far outnumber the work anyone at Ubisoft did in this remake.
 
Gaiff said:
What kind of counter-argument is this? This isn't a freakin' anime.
Click to expand...
Your repsonse was ridiculous, so I gave one equal.

That being said, it fits perfectly within the logic of your statement.

You were directly relating vibrancy of colors to a mediums theme of violence. Nothing to do with art style.
 
diffusionx said:
This is a big problem across all of media. A lot of people pointed this out comparing shots of Devil Wears Prada and the sequel. The sequel looks like a made for TV movie from the 1990s, just everything lit very flat and evenly, no contrast, no staging, no use of shadows to emphasize different parts of the scene, just light that shit up. Apparently this cancer has infested games.
Click to expand...
This.
I've been complaining about this for ages.
A film or TV show from the 90's/00's in HD looks absolutely amazing on modern TV's when it 4K It's striking.
The lighting, blacks, skin tones etc.
Everything is everything just pops, and I don't mean vivid or anything like that, it's reaching the right values you expect it to look like.
Shit I was surprised by warm sunlight beams shattered dynamically across actors as they moved, it looked like they was in a real place.
But nope, a set
Then we get this modern wash out crap.
And it's intentional too, because apparently how it looks on their iPhones is realistic.
 
Last edited:
That's not to say that I think all modern film and TV looks terrible. Rewatching Better Call Saul atm and I think it looks great, and I don't really watch superhero movies and stuff so I can't speak to that.

Could you point me to a couple examples if you can think of anything off the top of your head of really bad lighting in modern films/tv, so I can get a look at what you mean? TGO TGO
 
R6Rider said:
Your repsonse was ridiculous, so I gave one equal.

That being said, it fits perfectly within the logic of your statement.

You were directly relating vibrancy of colors to a mediums theme of violence. Nothing to do with art style.
Click to expand...
No, I was saying it's a gritty pirate game where vibrant rainbow colors make no sense without contrasting with the darker tones. The original nailed this perfectly. Bright and sunny but still somber. This one looks like a damn carnival.
 
uncreativename said:
That's not to say that I think all modern film and TV looks terrible. Rewatching Better Call Saul atm and I think it looks great, and I don't really watch superhero movies and stuff so I can't speak to that.

Could you point me to a couple examples if you can think of anything off the top of your head of really bad lighting in modern films/tv, so I can get a look at what you mean? TGO TGO
Click to expand...
It's everywhere, there's a few that's okay but
Here this video explains it pretty good.
 
The Cockatrice said:
>Jarvis I need more gaf karma points.
>Whats it going to be Today master? Something woke? Xbox did something stupid?
>Nah, lets go with hating Ubisoft
>Alright, here you go:
>But, Jarvis, that's how realistic lighting and shadowing works, theyre in the Caribbean, ofc the sun is fucking hot and powerful
>Nah dont worry, gaf loves to hate Ubisoft for the dumbest reasons.
>Alright gotcha, Imma post this topic!, hopefully that Cockatrice guy doesnt come here with common sense or else I'll just use his tag to show him!!!!
Click to expand...
Yes you really are
 
uncreativename said:
lmao, I was especially never going to watch Wicked, because I even hate the books, so thanks TGO TGO
Click to expand...
i'd recommend the author's first book, confessions of an ugly stepsister, which's very good. the rest are just subpar iterations of that book's premise...

edit: i'm wrong! wicked was published before stepsister. but i still think it's stepsister that gets it right...
 
Last edited:
Seems like I'm in the minority, but I mostly like how it looks and the lighting changes considering the setting. It also seems to look much better in motion and during gameplay than screenshots from cutscenes. In the end that's the great things about remakes, the original is always there so you can try and do things a little differently including the mood instead of just trying to recapture exactly what the original did.
 
What people dont know here apparently is that Resynced now has real time lighting during cutscenes, that means you can do most main missions at any time of the day. So the footage in OP could be from a moment in the day where the lighting isn't as appealing as the original which just had one particular time of the day with fixed lighting

So this is important to keep in mind as well but I do agree that the game lacks some shading at times. On pc this will be fixed very quick with RenoDx lol but hopefully Ubisoft does somethings about it

Gaiff Gaiff I think this information I just wrote might change your mind btw
 
Last edited:
Gaiff said:
No contrast, everything is just overly bright and colorful to the point of looking like a damn Disney movie. Where's the grime, where's the soot and the dirt? They messed with the color grading when no one asked them to and the end result is the lighting is completely devoid of style or direction. They just slapped on RT without worrying about scene composition or how inaccurate shadows can still add some much needed flair and atmosphere to a scene.
Click to expand...
See you in September with your identical Halo Campaign Evolved thread. Since everyone and their mothers are replaying Uncharted 4 for its 10th anniversary yesterday I indulged myself too. And after a few chapters of 2016 tech this is my very warm-room-temperature take:
FUCK RAYTRACING. The moment you see the cristal clear-32 bit era trick of a planar reflection you realise how devs have been fools spending most part of this generation with their blurry "let's try RT on something other than a 4080" approach on their games. I get that not everyone have the budget of Naughty Dog, but still RT is a waste of sand. Came two generations too early and we're all going to pay for it in the next generation games as well.
 
John Bilbo said:
Heh. I used to own the physical copy. It was a fun game. I don't remember finishing it. Was there an end goal or did the game go on forever?
Click to expand...
I don't think you actually ever die of old age, but eventually you get so old that you lose sword fights basically instantly, and also you get a higher score depending on your retirement age, number of goals accomplished and amount of money.
 
kevboard said:
how much you wanna bet that all the reflections there are SSR in the remake? meanwhile the original had planar reflecions, meaning even if you move the camera down nothing disappears.
Click to expand...
Even if they are they look better. The planar reflections in the original looked crap and you've got a floating island on the left in the original.
 
In the Caribbean Sea, in direct sun, there should absolutely be harsh shadows and "contrast".

They probably trying to do the whole Horizon "hero lighting" which takes away from the originals visuals.

The character models at least look decent
 
uncreativename said:
This does look a lot nicer than those cutscene shots :pie_thinking:
Click to expand...

I think the cutscenes in the orginal probably used a specific lighting setup to simulate bounce lighting and with the introduction of RTGI they never adjusted the values of or removed the additional unneeded fake bounce lights and so the cutscens are literally drowning in light.

It could also be the issue seen in alot of games with retrofitted rtgi where they dont rebalance the camera's exsposure. Hmmmmm.....
 
Last edited:
I've seen a cool meme (in the woke slop thread?) about the lighting and shadows in modern remakes/remasters, but can't find it now. Batman Arkham remasters were pretty big examples of that and this is looking like another one.

Or maybe that's on purpose and following current trends since new movies or shows from giants like Netflix suffer from similar issues. ;)
 
kevboard said:
how much you wanna bet that all the reflections there are SSR in the remake? meanwhile the original had planar reflecions, meaning even if you move the camera down nothing disappears.
Click to expand...
Screenshot-2026-05-25-102150.png


This is by far the worst instance I've seen in hours of footage, though.
The game does use RT reflections.. we'll see at launch.
 
KyoZz said:
Looking at the footage of Edward slowly walking around, I'm completely unmoved. I'm not gonna pretend it looks terrible or something but I'm just bored to death by it's visuals. The water looks the same as AC Shadows which is fine in itself but I expected more, way more. Same animation (and issues), same physics bugs, same overall look as every other Assassin's Creed since Origins. Just with better shaders and textures, with RT slapped on top of it.

I'm going to play it because I think AC Shadows is one of the best looking game on PC, so I'm sure this one will be a looker too and as opposed to Shadows, the story is actually interesting.
But I do hope though that they'll change their overall art direction and animation blending for the next few entries in the series. They really need to.

The Big Lebowski Reaction GIF



aqTFQux2yY0yT7QI.png


I kid of course, I only have love for you <3
Click to expand...
The water actually has worse physics than origins...

The frontal ripples when he swim are absent in bf.

No idea how a pirate game in 2026 doesnt make water tech their first absolute priority, their water get absolutely raped by rdr2, hfw and crimson in pretty much all the aspects.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Ubisoft ‘ends game development’ at Tom Clancy studio, Red Storm, resulting in 105 job losses
2
55
526
IbizaPocholo replied
Ubisoft Now Seeking Gen AI Experience In Almost Every Job Posting In New Hiring Wave
Business Game Dev 
13
303
Dutchy replied
Games From 2025 You Wish You Had Played
2
57
995
Insanemaelstrom replied
Game you couldn't play... because you compared to a better one
Opinion  2
63
312
MrRibeye replied
What games had the worst loading times?
2
86
87
cash_longfellow replied
Top Bottom