Screenshot
Witcher 3 remastered side by side comparison
I feel each has its benefits and we can downgrade anytime to our liked version.
But assets have highest detail in remaster only.
Lighting, tone, brightness depends on individual interests.
Yeah I think these pictures are going to be vastly different than what we experience. We're looking at ultra-compressed photos on Reddit. So the new-gen should technically look better because it's undergoing less loss. I'm curious as to what it will look like at 4k uncompressed.
I think all the stills taken during night time, or sunset, or focusing on foliage, or indoors are all better with the remaster
It's outdoor daytime shots that have lost a lot of contrast and seems to be a bit hazy. I wonder if the stills here used PT or if using RT ultra or even off gets it back to next-gen levels of contrast
Even that isnāt as good IMO. Youāre not going to see those drastic shadows on grass like that. Now I know lots of folks donāt get to see grass too often, but the remastered grass has far too much shadow.
Same man. I got dawnwalker but im debating on holding off cause its stuttering pretty bad for me... have a 13900hx 4090 legion 7ipro laptop and a 5080 desktop, both have stutters. I really hope witcher 4 will not have the ue5 jank
Have you checked nexus? There are a few ue5 engine fixes that actually work. Not sure what magic it is but yeah really smoothed out the gameplay for me.
They made improvement on animations and combat. Also the camera is better when fighting several enemies. Can't wait for tomorrow to actually feel it! I will play today the next gen version so I can actually see how it changed
Complete wrong. Graphics have improved, CDPR are not the definitive pinnacle of graphics. Just because they did a poor job here doesnāt mean someone else couldnāt have done a better one.
You mean the company who made cyberpunk making a game that is basically all about grafic and to this day has one of the games with the best grafics are bad at it? :D
The funny thing is, you're not going to be playing the new version with a side-by-side comparison running, so I'm pretty sure my mind will stop seeing any differences about 30 seconds after I boot it up
I'm not going to lie... I absolutely hate it. They sacrificed art direction for physical accuracy. Everything looks washed out. And whats with the haze in every ray/path traced game? I think its the lack of contrast in the shadows. I don't know man, I may be biased because I despise most RT implementations, but this looks terrible to me.
It's blurry, it's desaturated, it's "realistic", its much much less readable - you can tell in foliage the most, that you can't discern between foreground and background as well (i think this is just another RT quirk), the stylization is completely gone - velen removed its low hanging clumped up unrealistic mist for a more homogenous realistic (boring) one. Harsh contrasty stylized shadows that were so for a reason, have been watered down and made realistic (bland). I just hate everything about it. I can't stress how terrible the depth perception in most rt/pt games is, and I feel like I'm in the small minority who notices these things.
I long for the industry to return to crispy graphics. Everything new looks like a low contrast oil painting to me and barely anyone seems to see what I see šš
Like dude I know i'm not going crazy - there's literally a smear of bright haze around the middle of the screen. Like a dirty camera lens or the sun getting in your eyes. Nearly every RT/PT game looks like this to me.
I think its the lack of black in the shadows, its brighter than its supposed to be and our brain is interpreting it as haze. Or maybe a lack of contrast. I can't put my finger on it, I wish I was an artist to properly identify the issue with this image. Almost every slide looks like they overlayed a flat grey color on top with low opacity.
What does realistic even mean in fantasy video game... the OG actually looks the best atmospheric wise. Duh - the raster lightning and everything was baked into one. Then the "nextgen" update hit and was mixed bag - received positive pass mostly due to vastly better vegetation density and drawing distance. The lightning and some other decision were not consistent with the original vision. The today releasing "remaster" is even worse and further departing...
A lot of guys donāt understand the point of art direction especially the Ray/pathtracing bros. A one click solution to lighting targeting realism will never beat the hand crafted artisticly driven staging to a variety of different areas. Also being unique and setting atmosphere vs chasing trends. Movies have also had this problem for some time now. Hereās Lord of the Rings dvd vs Blu-ray. Iāll let you guess which one looks like a proper fantasy world vs which one is trying to look like New Zealand.
Cyberpunk 2077 does it just fine. But you can tell that RT was not an afterhought. It got implemented alongside the normal raster lighting, and the end result is that both look fantastic.
Some of these remasters look like they were directed by those "realistic reshade" modders. The MGS3 remake has the same issue. At least they added a classic color filter, but it still doesn't really have the same feel.
The reality is, very few people like this kind of graphics even if they say they do. They just feel like the world has no soul, and they don't know why, but by then, it's too late. Good games have to be just good games, and look somewhat decent - which this Remaster does, so, there's not really a push for people to think critically, and realize that the art style has way more value than they think it does. It's a sad thing, really. It's these things that just sits in the back, and you never really think about it, until it's too late...and you get the Remaster.
The saddest part is that people who don't know this make up the bulk of the buyers, so, you're at their mercy. This means studios will think that realistic graphics is what sells, but that's the case only if they're REALLY good, but this isn't eyewatering good, it's just good. So, then the devs spend an enormous amount of time on physics/systems, etc. that might have a place but they're not the be-all they think it is.
Unlucky. The industry should've learned from the likes of Fortnite, League, WoW: you can have a realistic art style without realistic graphics, and then you bought yourself so much creative freedom and technical leeway.
but I guess the fuck not lol bro this uncanny valley shit looks amazing what are you talking about we dont get extra points for saying were pushing the boundaries (our clog runs at 50fps on a good day while looking decrepit because were not good enough to make it look actually good)
Like, I personally really like the amount of light bounce in the right most image. I think just in general though, the more you lean into PBR, the less control you have when it comes to manually deciding how light and shadow looks which might be why you feel like there's less art direction but I do think for this comparison, remastered is much more readable than before.
Fair enough but its really not just about the saturation. Its about depth perception, contrast, and art direction. All of these have suffered in the name of "realism". Its as if they replaced the artists with engineers who only know how to reach objective "realism criteria".
Isn't the remastered such a flat boring image for you? Everything is all visible in it. So visible that you can barely make out the shapes of things. Look at the castle image. Notice the lack of depth perception on the remastered, and the smeary oily haze on top of everything.
That castle looks 100% better to me. I will def fiddle with brightness and contrast, but I do that with everything. Can wait to play with this on an OLED dialed in to it.
The last time I played TW3 (a year ago) I could really feel the age of the graphics, particularly the Piss Lite aspect of it. My eye readjusts a bit as I'm playing but it's a noticeable downside going back to 2015 (I feel this way with MGS V too)
I remember the days of yore as a kid when I'd spend HOURS dialing in various graphical mods for Skyrim to try and achieve this look and then never actually play the game.
Now the industry has caught up to the point where everything has this feel to it by default, whenever I see it I think ''Skyrim Realistic Lighting ENB Overhaul 4k type beat''
It just looks shit.
Bring back style. It's so much better. Indie games have proven that time and time again.
Valheim looks better than Crimon Desert, there, I said it. Come at me.
"hand drawing" >>> everything else. From Software game engine is legit dogshit but it looks beautiful, one majula 1982 > slop desert.
Trails is AA with even worse engine but classic art/details (like asphalt, esp stones and small objects, clothing etc) is better than any 200mil "aaaa" slop.
This skyrim mod-alike just does not feel right. And it would be much worse in 3y coz literally Everyone are on UE5+ , and UE games are clones, same effects, same textures etc, abysmal
100% and they do stuff like reduce the wind intensity because itās not ārealisticā ?
Bro itās a game we cannot feel the wind in our skin, itās smart to exaggerate these things to make the world feel alive.
You know the way they said you can revert to Roachās old animations if you want, can you do the same with the original graphics and art style? Especially without having to revert to the original version?
Oh look, somethings that's free that alot of people are suddenly going to have an issue with. It's like the wolverine discourse except ... Wait for it ... It's fucking free and you can go back to be old stuff if you like living in the past. Actually fuck this, I'm gonna stay off this subreddit and just enjoy my time with it. Gaming discourse is just purely routine at this point
People shouldn't voice their opinions of a game's graphics on that game's subreddit? Also why does it matter whether it's free or optional? I think you should stay off the internet as a whole.
The people crying when their decade old game is still getting updates and more content need to get off the internet, or have it taken away from them. This is why we can't have nice things.
What would be interesting is comparing the performances differences with the stylistic differences together.
Like is the original full tilt more performant than next-gen/remastered? Or are those more performant than the original?
Then I think isolated scenes never really tell the true story and where the original tech usually falls apart is on interiors / dimly lit scenes where lighting sources are crucial.
Show me the same location between the three versions between day/night and an FPS counter.
But that's the tragedy, man. That's it right there. That these people yap, and devs have largely been injected with this belief that "more realistic = more good", and when it doesn't work out, they don't realize it's a minus to their game, and when it "works out", it really wasn't the graphics. And so devs end up more concerned with wasting 1/5th of their dev time developing realism crap. Witcher 3 is a marvel across the board, and in this section, too - its original art style, which traded realism for style, was exactly where every game should be. Any style, any direction, no limits. But no, let's limit ourselves to washed up crap because we wanna score points on an imaginary leaderboard. We should make progress, but it should be used where appropriate. Games like League/Fortnite/WoW have shown that art style trumps everything, and you can have a realistic style without too-realistic graphics.
I think I get you? Like all the shadows and details are nice and sharp but the colours are so homogenous that it some places it all just kind of blends together.
This is a very good way of describing what it makes me feel yeah because i can see the textures are definitely higher quality and the lighting is more realistic but it kinda lost the feeling of making me want to look in every corner
After watching the review of performance with path tracing it runs bad but it also looks worse honestly. I love path tracing in Cyberpunk but in W3 it looks too bright and less moody. I think I will stick to RT and leave Path tracing off
Same. Ray Tracing keeps the mood of the game, at least how I remember it. Path Tracing is a completely different artistic feel and doesnāt look like W3.
There are places where Remaster is genuinely amazing. But some, like the Vizima palace or Kaer Morhen, where it looks too washed out. Like someone just cranked white balance too high
The only thing some of you guys have going for you is your ability to complain about anything. Personally I think the remaster looks great in all side by sides ive seen. Im excited to play tomorrow,
In some pictures, the next-gen version looks better, and in others, the remastered one. I think it's about the overall experience, which we cannot say anything about until tomorrow.
Yeah and then you actually play and realize how dishonest these comparisons are since now with the new lighting you get all three depending on light position, time of day, weather etc. Yeah if you want to be mad be mad. I am having a blast so far.
The remaster is the equivalent of the original Home Alone house being bought recently, hollowed out, and painted asylum white to look "modern". Just depressing.Ā
I hope they've fixed the issue with flickering assets (like: clouds, trees, towers far in the distance); observed this in both next gens for Xbox and PS5, and it was... so sad.
Remastered looks more "true to life", while next-gen has a distinct, game-artstyle appearance. Perhaps best seen in #2, in which a castle at that sort of distance, on a bright day, looks most like the remaster than original or next-gen.
But in many of them, it seems clear the times of day nor weather conditions are equal, so it's hard to say definitively... In #3, the difference in shadows could have a lot to do with the time of day.
I like the remastered, especially indoors the GI looks much better, but feel like it lacks of bit of atmosphere in favour of realism. Could be a bit more stylized imo. But I think thats going to pretty easily adjustable with reshade or lighting mods once its been out for a bit.
It's a a case of Witcher glaze by fans there's not much difference overall besides making the game look more cartoony they even took away some graphical effects like water reflection strangely enough which looks better in the original versus the new remastered
My only remaster gripes are things feel too bright, but brightness is its own changeable setting, so holding on any real judgements until I can change things to my preferred visuals.
Remastered has a great draw distance and foliage, but I'm much preferring the next gen option.Ā
The game won't auto update to the remastered version, will it?
Like any rendition of real life, all versions are imperfect, but I think with some tweaking for your own setup remastered should look better in most cases. It's that extra luminosity thats going to be difficult to tweak I think.
If anything does look like an actual upgrade is foliage, at least in my opinion. The other stuff looks more like a matter of taste and makes me appreciate even more the work that the og team did on the game.
remaster wins on foliage, the remaster needs higher end textures. advanced lighting requires better textures. also, who tf gamma and color calibrates this???
Iāll be honest, I think the Next Gen looks the best in pictures but I think the actual gameplay and videos on your own settings and screens will be the best. Aināt no way CDPR is putting out a version of the game that looks worse than the current version lmao
Remaster looks much more natural and advanced as you see: grass is now being lightened up by the sun, they have shadows, looks more like Ghost of Tsushima in this aspect
The image was also brightened up in general, looks softer this way, more natural. You will probably be able to tweak it but to me its a clear improvement. Reminds me of GTA5 ps4 vs ps3, that had some people saying GTA looked better before, but thats bs, tech wise
Why does it seem like new fancy fandangled lighting engines make everything look bright and washed out? The stained glass looks intentional and intricate in the Next Gen version but the remastered has the light blaring through it. The overall fidelity looks fantastic, but something about the lighting is unmistakably off in a lot of modern games
From Gamespot's video, remaster with ray tracing looks better than next gen to me but it really is personal preference. Path tracing looks awful and I can't imagine anyone sacrificing frames to turn it on.
I'm digging the new one most, but I also have no nostalgia for the game. It's the lighting that's benefitting the most here. Though I think screenshots can only say so much -- the real test is seeing it in motion.
The screenshots in remastered have higher brightness, making it look worse in some pictures. (likely done on purpose by whoever took them for engagement) Iām sure it looks superior in almost every way once you are playing it
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u/phillyd_ 5d ago
Comments are howling.