CD Projekt Red has been accused of downgrading the visuals of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Many astute viewers who watched the trailers for the game have noted that the game's graphics look less than good compared to the trailers of the title that were released in 2013. As such, the developer has been accused of downgrading the game to fit a multiplatform release.
This isn't the case, says a CDPR visual artist who was interviewed by YouTuber docm77. The artist, who was unnamed by the YouTuber, said that the graphics were not downgraded, "Because it's impossible to downgrade a game that didn't exist before or wasn't playable before."
He went on to explain how the game's initial "gameplay" presentation was nothing more than a vertical slice of the title and that it wasn't actually in any sort of playable form.
"It's very unfair to compare trailers and gameplay demos," he said, explaining that a trailer is a "prepared, you take one location, you put the perfect lights, and the perfect camera angle, and the perfect scene, and it looks absolutely beautiful. It’s captured in super high definition and then you postprocess it. It’s a trailer."
"But a gameplay demo, that’s when you see the real game. That’s when you see what the real game looks like."
He added that the Nvidia "gameplay" demo revealed in 2013 actually used an older shader system that's been replaced with a much better one in the final release of the game.
"If you look graphics in that demo we used an old shader system, it wasn't this physically based shader system. It was a little bit flatter. Some things were sharper, too sharp even. There was this sharpening filter that was too hard on the eyes. So we changed the whole shader system and put in this PBR system. And it just kept getting nicer and nicer."
Physically based rendering (PBR) shaders are all the rage these days, with engines like Unity 5 now sporting the technology. Even Wasteland 2 is being upgraded later this year to support the new system for prettier lighting.
It seems pretty clear now that CDPR or Nvidia used a lot of post-processing techniques to pretty up the 2013 "gameplay" trailer, kind of like how Ubisoft's Watch Dogs' vertical slice at E3 2012 looked somewhat better than the release version.
Gamers might feel deceived by the 2013 trailer, but it should be kept in mind that CD Projekt Red has, since then, released only real footage of the game that accurately portray how it looks in its release version.
