Throughout the short life-span of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, we have seen a number of “downgrade-gates,” the biggest being Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs, Dark Souls 2 and now The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. We have seen trailers for The Witcher 3 since February of 2013, well before the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One released.
The Witcher 3 was in development prior to the next-gen console release, on PC’s that were more than likely using middleware, in hope that their ambitions would fall in line with the technology that would soon come to be. Looking at the game’s trailers, it isn’t hard to see their ambitions – nor is it hard to see how far the game is from its initial reveal.
The Witcher 3 is simply not the game that was revealed in 2013.
In 2013 we were offered a look at a world that promised to bring video gaming to a new level – it was unreal how absolutely beautiful the game was. You could see the ambition that the developers at CD Projekt RED (CDPR) had, they had a vision of an absolutely immersive world.
In 2014 the very same scene as the image above was offered through gameplay, there were several changes made to the world. You could see a loss in textures, lighting, the environment — the game had been downgraded and it was noticeable. At this point, CDPR had all of the system specifications for the Xbox One and Playstation 4. They could take their ambitious efforts, that had so far been built on PC, and apply it to the console.
Unfortunately, optimizing their efforts for the consoles left the game with a little less.
Here we are in May of 2015 after two delays to the game’s release and the game is finally about to release with a drastic difference between the game we saw in 2013. At the beginning of this year, CDPR released a statement reaffirming previous a previous statement, saying that they were not downgrading the game, but were optimizing it “in a way that doesn’t affect visuals.” This optimization process was the reason they had delayed the game.
CDPR had built the game with high ambitions for the world, but when the game neared the end of development… something happened. It looks as though the world they had created could not work on the platforms it was releasing on.
What we were left with was this:
Okay, that’s an obvious downgrade. What have the developers said about it?
Falling in line with previous statements, CDPR maintains that haven’t downgraded The Witcher 3, but optimized it. A recent interview with a visual artist from CDPR revealed that the developers hadn’t changed their stance on the subject and even seemed agitated that something like that would even be suggested or argued (although, he does state that vegetation had to be downgraded because it simply was "too sharp"):
“It’s impossible to downgrade a game that didn't exist before or wasn’t playable before…There's two things people have to separate: Downgrade and optimization. Optimization is necessary to make the game run, but downgrade is if you deliberately make the game worse for whatever reason. That's totally not what happened.”
CDPR is not the only company that has cited optimization as the reason for their game changing over time – moving from one advertised graphics level to another.
If we were to hone in on the concept of ‘optimization to make the game run,’ we would see that this concept falls inline with statements from developers that felt the wrath of communities over downgrades. Unlike CDPR, a source at FromSoft (Dark Souls 2) came out to Forbes and painted an honest picture of why the game simply did not look like the images that they had shown off:
"I sincerely don't think they intended to deceive, but in the end they sacrificed a huge amount of graphical fidelity at the very end of development because they couldn't resolve the framerate in any other way."
Stepping out to speak on the subject openly, without talking in circles or calling it 'optimization' for the sake of performance is a decent approach, one that CDPR probably should take. A named source, at FromSoft programmer Takasuke Ando spoke with IGN in February stating:
“We always had in mind the next generation, such as DirectX11 and next generation hardware when creating our technology, and also challenged ourselves as programmers to simultaneously create for the new generation…The thing we prioritized when re-creating our engine was, as a concept, taking the graphics to a more photo-realistic look, and in order to fulfill this, we had decided to discard our old engine and create a new one.”
The comment on DirectX11 being a part of the future generation is an interesting note, an unverified source (who makes several points that are false) has suggested that The Witcher 3 had been developed with DirectX11 in mind, but had to be moved to DirectX9 in order to appease the tech specifications of consoles.
The other game that suffered downgrades throughout the development process was Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs. Ubisoft chose to speak on the subject, but their statements are essentially the same statements as CDPR’s; They did not actively downgrade the game, they optimized it to suit multiple platforms.
To be fair, CDPR has improved several qualities of the game: Character models, clothing, and interiors.
With the game out for review, sites have begun to stream gameplay of The Witcher 3, IGN being one of them. These streams give us a good idea of how the graphics will look on PC. The IGN stream was said be playing with Ultra settings and all options on, but it was revealed that there were certain effects turned off:
- Lightshafts
- HBAO+
- Hairworks
- AA
- Sharpening
With those options turned off, there's still a question on the final look of the game. We may never see the graphics from 2013 in this version of the game, but there are still new heights yet to be explored with the game.
Overall…
It seems as though CDPR’s ambitions for The Witcher 3 were unbridled. They excitedly showed off their work to the gaming community, work that was built using technology that was not suited for the technology available on platforms (mid to low-end PC’s, Xbox One and PS4). The perspective that CDPR has on the game’s “downgrade” is the so similar to Ubisoft’s view on the Watch Dogs downgrade that it’s almost silly. Both outright say they did not downgrade the game, they optimized it. In order for it to run at its best performance and most optimized state, they had to — as the FromSoft source puts it — sacrifice a huge amount of graphical fidelity.
Perhaps, in order to save the hearts of avid fans, developers should be weary of revealing their games in an early state. Originally, The Witcher 2 was not the best representation of what was possible for video games, so three months after release CDPR released an Enhanced Version. This version brought the game to higher standards throughout the entire game, it is likely that we will see this for The Witcher 3.
Regardless of the apparently graphical downgrades and the backlash from the community, everyone seems to be loving The Witcher 3. A patch is set to hit the game the day it releases, promising further optimization for the game.
[Images courtesy of NeoGaf]
