The game has been massivly downgraded. Now White it dosn’t look so bad, but it’s miles away from the beta Version and what has been advertised. The forests have been cutted down heavily. In beta there was that amazing feel of realism. Those “real forests” have been adverticed fo years and have also been the most unique part of KCD. Never before there have been any forests as real as in the beta versin. and it was awesome. “Was” sadly. Such a pleasure and epic Feeling in the Woods, something totally missing in the release Version. Forests are just the typical standart you’ll see in any other game. And its a shame.
I think it has been a huge mistake by WH to cut everything down that drastically, even if Deep Silver forced them to do so (what is very likely). It has been a huge mistake. The reason is simple; Free Advertising for years. Everyone would have used it for benchmarking and stuff. It would have been the holy grail for gameing in general. People would even go and buy new Hardware to get more out of it. They game would have stayed in Gamers minds for the next 10 years or so. (Like crysis did once) It would frequently sell. and the Warhorse Devs would have been praised as god among men. Now with this Version, its nice but not special. Surly it will be forgotten a year.
And all this has nothing to do with elitism or anything, it would be fine, if the High Settings look like the do now, if the Ultra Settings would match up with the look of the beta. Its espacially a shame, since the Objects have allready been made and in the last year removed entirely.
I remeber WH words exactly “The PC Version will not be downgraded” But in the end it has been massivly downgraded. And we now got a sloppy port of the console Version of a game, which has been ported from PC to console first. What a shame
And again, Im not against console ports or low graphic Setting. Im against removing stuff!
Since most People seam to struggle with the difference between optimisation and downgrading, heres a quick sum up:
Optimisation:
Changing software to run better by optimizing source code with smarter (faster) algorithms.
Optimizing the AI and calculations of all sorts with better programming (Algorithms again). Fixing errors by rewriting code, aso. Optimization of textures to run faster in GPUs. Such as using a multiple of 4x4 in size, same dds formats.
Reworking 3d models by getting rid of unused Vertices (Theres a limit to what the human eye can see, you dont need 1 million verts per inch…)
Downgrading:
Removing objects
cutting content
Deleting Stuff in general
Removing shaders and
Removing lightning (of course replaced by an other)
In other words optimisation is hard, very hard work and modern engines like cryengine, unreal, aso. are allready pretty well optimised, so theres a limit. Downgrading, goes fast and is no hard work mostly. (In case of KCD it might was, since forests seam to be recreated with much less detail completely)
List of downgradse: (Theres more)
- Object density in forests
- No moere “real forests”
- Foliage objects with much less detail (Trees, Grass)
- Vergetation density
- Lighning (Voxel based GI removed)
- Texture quality
- LODs are in very low quality
- Weathersystem and dynamic wather removed.
- volumetric clouds removed (Sun shine during rain)
- Manny removed assets such as bushes, fern, rocks and more (Completely removed)
…
Now take a look at the screenshots and tell me there has not been a massive downgrade.
Some more Pictures by R4Z3R:
