Watch Dogs

[Martini1991]

What you saw wasn't a game, it was a controlled demo that wasn't even running on console hardware.

The console part doesn't matter, but those assets are still what they'd have been using.

Unless they used completely different assets to what they had in the game (Which is illogical at the time)

Im confused, are you saying that 2012 Watchdogs existed and if released would have looked like that for the whole game?

ps3ud0

What I mean, if the game was completed in 2012, and they've just created that demo, if they launched it then and there, the chances are it'd look closer to the demo, the current suggestion is they made the game on completely different assets to the game, that makes no sense. (Obviously the game was far from completed at this point in time, so that watch dogs as a complete game never existed), as opposed to launching a demo with 2 years changing assets = We now get a different looking game (Which is the current real world scenario) obviously some of those assets have been influenced with game launches (The car, making it more GTA/SR)

 

[ps3ud0]

What I mean, if the game was completed in 2012, and they've just created that demo, if they launched it then and there, the chances are it'd look closer to the demo (Obviously the game was far from completed at this point in time), as opposed to launching a demo, 2 years changing assets = We now get a different looking game.

But that would have been the PC version right, the PS4/XO wouldnt have looked like that?

I dont disagree that assets might have been changed in the interim, for better/worse, but I think thats more to do with how unrealistic that original showcase was compared to the potential performance of a particular platform.

To me 2012 Watchdogs is basically Crysis, its pretty much an engine tech demo from Ubisoft - never possible to get that on a console, or even to bother pretending you can...

ps3ud0

 

[Martini1991]

But that would have been the PC version right, the PS4/XO wouldnt have looked like that?

I dont disagree that assets might have been changed in the interim, for better/worse, but I think thats more to do with how unrealistic that original showcase was compared to the potential performance of a particular platform.

To me 2012 Watchdogs is basically Crysis, its pretty much an engine tech demo from Ubisoft - never possible to get that on a console, or even to bother pretending you can...

ps3ud0

I can't imagine them looking a boatload different to be honest, perhaps less lighting effects, lower resolution textures etc,

The problem is, that the 2012 demo wouldn't be what the PC version looks like either (And I'll be getting this on PC, I don't own any next gen consoles currently, we have an Xbox one in the house but that's it)

 

[TheVoice]

I'm not saying that demo was the final game

You essentially are though:

but what we had then, if they'd launched it there, would be much closer to that demo, same as if they'd launched in 2013, the changes they've made to the assets now wouldn't exist.

The demo was the demo, the full game didn't even exist back then. I've no idea whether they created that demo solely as a proof-of-concept or as an over-ambitious attempt at what they wanted the final game to be prior to actually realising that it wasn't going to be possible. Either way, we were never getting the game that we saw in those demos, whether they'd released it a year ago or yesterday.

I do see what you're saying, but I feel you're getting it wrong because you're looking at the 'demo' build and the 'game' build as the same thing, whereas the reality is that the demo was built to represent the final game in an ideal world scenario. Just because the demo worked and looked amazingly shiny and great, doesn't mean the actual game did or would. Which is obviously very unfortunate.

Ultimately, the whole thing can be summed up by using the words you see at the bottom of most game trailers/TV adverts: Not representative of actual gameplay. I suggest we write that sentence on a post-it note and stick it to our screens whenever we watch game trailers/demos because that's pretty-much how it is now.

 

[ps3ud0]

I can't imagine them looking a boatload different to be honest, perhaps less lighting effects, lower resolution textures etc,

The problem is, that the 2012 demo wouldn't be what the PC version looks like either (And I'll be getting this on PC, I don't own any next gen consoles currently, we have an Xbox one in the house but that's it)

OK I get where you are coming from and why no one seems to agree with you, 2012 Watchdogs as a game never existed to my mind, it was built to show off in a presentation (it was literally a graphical demonstration rather than a demo of a game) and perhaps Ubisoft hoped to get near that fidelity (thats the politest/naivest thing I can say).

2013 Watchdogs was a vertical slice of what was realistically possible from the final product (it was running of a PS4 dev kit IIRC) and 2014 Watchdogs seems to be the unfinished game running on a real PS4 and why I think we are seeing all these wierd graphical glitches/bugs...

ps3ud0

 

[Martini1991]

I guess we'll never know anything really.

But there's no reason to change the car for fidelity/performance reasons etc (As it's the lighting effects/textures etc that'd affect the performance) to me it was done to match GTA/SR, not that it's relevant .

In 2012, the best GPU available was the 7970, the PS4's more than half that GPU performance (Ignoring optimising, and GCN back in 2012 was new to dev's), I really can't imagine the PS4 struggling to look better than what the 2014 footage is.

 

[ps3ud0]

Honestly Martini1991, its a massive stretch to come to your conclusions - consider what you saw as this generations CGI trailer. Its really that simple...

ps3ud0

 

[Martini1991]

What conclusion did I just make ? I didn't make one.
There's no reason to change the car for fidelity or performance (That's simple)
And back in 2012 (The trailer) the best GPU available was the 7970 (Factually/GTX680 perhaps, but they're nigh on the same, and now the 7970 is better) the PS4's GPU is GCN, like 7970, but in a console, no bloated API etc.

 

[Shamikebab]

Why is there no reason to change the car for fidelity and performance? That's exactly the reason to change it.

 

[ps3ud0]

What conclusion did I just make ? I didn't make one.
There's no reason to change the car for fidelity or performance (That's simple)
And back in 2012 (The trailer) the best GPU available was the 7970 (Factually/GTX680 perhaps, but they're nigh on the same, and now the 7970 is better) the PS4's GPU is GCN, like 7970, but in a console, no bloated API etc.

You seem to be inferring that what we saw in 2012 Watchdogs is representative of the final game - I dont think it was at all, but Ubisoft were happy to allow us to assume so...

You really think it was demoed on a single GPU in 2012?!?

ps3ud0

 

[Martini1991]

Why is there no reason to change the car for fidelity and performance? That's exactly the reason to change it.

No, you'd change the effects on the car, the lighting, the textures resolution, not the base model (Unless one was using a massive amount more polygons than another, but given it's quite a simple car, that won't be the case)

You lower graphics on a PC game, the models don't suddenly become different models.

You seem to be inferring that what we saw in 2012 Watchdogs is representative of the final game - I dont think it was at all, but Ubisoft were happy to allow us to assume so...

You really think it was demoed on a single GPU in 2012?!?

ps3ud0

At the time, yes, what we saw would have been representative of what was in the game at the time of development (The assets etc, when it comes to rendering it's a whole other ball game, like when I did 3DSMax, you take your model, give it a texture, but you could render it in 2 different lighting effects, given massively difference results, but it's still the same model, same texture, same position etc), that's what I'm saying, 2 years on (Or, I'm assuming, same as everyone's assuming differently), that's now changed.

I can't remember what the set ups were they were using in E3, but GPU performance hasn't changed much at all since 2012 (Lack of change from 28nm) we're only 40% faster (Not talking about overclocking) the only real difference has been price/performance, where 7850's launched at like 200 quid, you can get that performance at 130 and higher at 160ish (At a 7870, now called R9 270)

 

[XeNoN89]

Ubisoft games always get downgraded, but this is one of the bigger ones.

I just hope The Division isn't downgraded too badly/

 

[TheVoice]

This is getting silly. So basically, we could have all been playing the game they demonstrated, had they launched it two years ago on hardware that didn't even exist at the time? But instead, for reasons you can't seem to explain, they delayed it a few years so they could downgrade everything instead despite apparently having no legitimate reason to do so.

 

[Martini1991]

This is getting silly. So basically, we could have all been playing the game they demonstrated, had they launched it two years ago on hardware that didn't even exist at the time? But instead, for reasons you can't seem to explain, they delayed it a few years so they could downgrade everything instead despite apparently having no legitimate reason to do so.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all.

I've said one thing, people take that to mean something completely different.

I said that during the delay, part of what they will have been doing is changing the look of the game (The fact this has downgraded the IQ, is irrelevant) by changing assets (As is obvious by the car change) and they've changed the colour palette, so part of the "development" was making the game look as it currently is, that's what I've said.

And I've also said those assets existed. (How could they not) Major IQ changes can come from lighting effects etc, they could have a much more realistic lighting effect in the demo, but used a more conservative lighting in the retail = 2 different looking games, same assets etc.

And then I've said that I don't think the PS4's version needs to be quite as downgraded as it is (But that's an aside, they may have done that so instead of looking out and out better than the Xbox one, it runs at a higher resolution/frame rate, they could make the game have the same res/frame rate as the Xbox one, but being a step up IQ wise), given the GPU grunt it has available to it, in comparison to what was available in 2012.

 

[TheVoice]

No, that's not what I'm saying at all.

But in essence you did:

If they'd released it as close to that build as possible, it'd look closer to that build, how can it not?

I'm not saying that demo was the final game, but what we had then, if they'd launched it there, would be much closer to that demo, same as if they'd launched in 2013, the changes they've made to the assets now wouldn't exist.

What I mean, if the game was completed in 2012, and they've just created that demo, if they launched it then and there, the chances are it'd look closer to the demo

I appreciate you've obviously said "closer to the demo" but that simply can't be the case because the game didn't exist in a final form back then anyway. It'd be like comparing a 2010 concept car to the 2014 production model and saying "Well, if they'd released it in 2011 it'd look more like the concept car". Well perhaps, but it wouldn't actually work or anything because they'll have needed those additional years to actually build the car. Concepts are just that, they're designed to whet the appetite, get people excited and give people a teaser of what's to come. They're not representative of what the final thing will be in minute detail.

There's also a lot more to it than just GPU performance, an open-world game like Watch Dogs will have a staggering amount of processing happening behind the scenes for AI etc and all of that has a cost attached when it comes to performance. The demo worked perfectly because it was designed to work perfectly, the actual game would need a lot of power behind it in order to achieve the exact same thing. The reason the game we've seen this past week doesn't look the same as the demo is because it's far closer to the final game than the demo ever was, and that's all down to having it run on the hardware it needs to run on, be it a PS4, Xbox One or a PC.

 

[Martini1991]

I've said the game as a final form didn't exist back then.

We're going in circles here, and you're interpreting things to see them the way you want to see them, not as intended (Which is the fault of both of us)
And there's really no point continuing.

 

[ps3ud0]

I got the same impression, which is why I wanted to double check what you meant because I couldnt understand how you had got to that.

I think to further this discussion its best just to ignore 2012 Watchdogs as it just skews the comparison unfavourably when in reality something like 2013 Watchdogs is something we should expect Ubisoft to achieve on this-gen/PC. Ubisoft have made their life harder by doing what they did...

ps3ud0

 

[DAIR]

Back in September I voiced my concerns about this game. I still have the same concerns and have a feeling this game will be the flop of the year.

Ubisoft have spent so much time dishing out trailers and details. I've almost lost all interest in it.

 

[antijoke]

As long as the game is fun to play and the mechanics work and I can do what they show in the trailer and follow randoms about and hack into **** then it's all good.

 

[JamesG87]

The PS3 to PS4 version is going to be like Night and Day.