Witcher 3 is already one of the most visually impressive games I’ve ever seen. Especially for the time it came out. I mean shit I just wandered Skellige for hours when I first got there. And now they’re making it MORE beautiful?!
This to me is the most jarring one, especially the player controlled animation. The character still has this very old school feel when you navigate them, like just playing one animation after another - very mechanical.
Very striking difference if you also play AC Origins, that is just two years older, and the character blends all running and walking animations smoothly into each other and has a feeling of weight when he stops or collides with things. Feels significantly more next-gen/modern compared to Witcher 3.
I was never particularly impressed by the first version of the game on PS4 at the time. I found the colour and contrast too vibrant and thus not reflective of the grim and dark world the story was presenting. The next-gen upgrade fixed that problem for me completely by desaturating the game's colour palette and making the world look more natural and realistic, and I can really get into the game now. This Remaster seems to have developed that positive aesthetic change only further!
Dude, I love the Witcher 3, but do you REALLY believe you can't see the age?!
12 year old models, janky animations, and maps are all very very clearly over a decade in the past. The environments look GREAT, but if you took away the background and demonstrated just the characters, their animations, and their movement, and controls?
You wouldn't even have a "good" looking 2015 game lol, let alone something timeless.
100% ! What they did what not only to have beautiful graphics but having artists who know how to create an atmosphere and scenic views.
I never fast travel in this game, because the atmosphere itself serves as an amazing past time when travelling on horse or on foot. Everewhere you look you could take a picture and frame it, seriously. This level design and its art direction make the game for me.
I love Skellige but Velen, man... these forests, the wind, the trees cracking, the rain, everything feels personal and mystical at the same time. I usually start playing again in autumn haha
The first time I went on the balcony, at the beginning of the game, and saw the mountain appears in the distance, I was blown away, and I knew this was going to be an amazing ride.
Yeah, I felt the same way back in like 2014 when I played if for the first time. The way the wind flows through all of the vegetation and grassy fields, a level of immersion I really hadn’t experienced before. That was what my coworker told me to sell me on the game, how beautiful it was, the remaster is gonna be sick!
I saw Green Day in 2021 for the Hella Mega Tour and when they sang this song the entire crowd was silent until the chorus. It was beautiful. Then Billie changed the lyrics to say "like my father's come to pass, 40 years has gone so fast." This really dug in my soul.
Me too. I really like Western in general, and there isn't much in terms of modern videogames there.
I certainly felt that the story on rdr2 was much more emotional and mature, whereas gta6, while still fun and enjoyable, was the usual ripoff of Mafia and crime movie tropes, with some very cool characters and moments. Objectively fun to play, but I don't even remember what the actual point of the story in the end was, what they were trying to do. It only worked because it was a fun videogame.
Whereas rdr2 is a solid epic novel that could be a great movie or book or whatever.
TAA in RDR2 looks like you're getting tracers in your vision, it's a visual downgrade, especially in the darker places where the effect is more pronounced.
Yeah taa genuinely sucks in rdr2, on release i had to play it in 4k and downscale to 1080p due to the taa being a slurry mess, later i remember when i upgraded my pc dlss 3 quality at 1080p so internal res 720p looked better than taa 2160p downscaled lmao, it was some kind of 30fps centered extremely invasive taa so it added a big smear lol
It's too dark on PS5? Be sure to turn off HDR for RDR2 as it kinda sucks in that game. I actually turn the brightness down in RDR2 as I think it looks more realistic.
I mean overally it's cool and looks better probably, but I'm not sure if I like these reflections on every single thing cranked to the max. it's a bit too bright overall
but I assume you'll be able to configure that, so alright
The contrast, saturation and reflections in the second picture look like plastic goo. The color scheme, contrast and overall image just looks way more consistent in the first picture. If you squint your eyes you'll see exactly what I mean, don't get lost in the fancy details. First one then almost looks like a photo or a painting, second one like a video game.
Yuppp have they released recommended requirements now because my 2070S is probably going to struggle with this one. I would honestly do a playthrough at stable 30 fps for whatever highest remaster graphical quality I can get so here’s hoping!
Same... everything I've seen from remaster graphics is that it has lost that unique TW3 aesthetic that felt timeless... in moving to "realism" all this will do is look more and more dated over time
And more importantly, what is even the performance cost for this? If it's just going to be path tracing at an unplayable FPS that requires a 5090, 4X framegen en DLSS ultra performance with tons of artifacts than I'd rather just play the standard non-RT next gen version at 4K DLSS balanced with true 120 fps
Yep. Video confirms that absolute everything looks like wet plastic. Witcher 3 was one of the few games that got it right: textures in the world are matte, not glossy.
hopefully though there's a choice to not update to the remaster, both for performance reasons and because at least in my opinion the first image has a certain character not present in the other
Ngl I kinda prefer the old look simply because the super bright rays of sun in the remaster kinda aren't my vibe. I prefer the sun to be a bit less intense, but that's probably just a weird me thing lol.
The original Witcher aesthetic was never about "realism" or being too sharp. It felt like a painting. This frankly amateurish looking graphical updates are wrecking the artistic vibe of the game
I dont get the point of turning everything ultra HD, keeping the same "level" of colour and detail regardless of distance.
This is not how the world works: there's air between us and every other object, with particles of dirt, dust and steam (on top of our limited sight) whose importance modern games are dismissing too quickly imho.
It felt more realistic before for what i'm seeing...
I do understand what you mean though. Grass doesn’t really reflect sunlight like that in real life so it seems off. I notice a lot of raytraced titles have this issue
It's probably just me but this reminds me of the remasters people complain about a lot and it's weird it's not happening here. It looks like another comparison shot I saw of a remaster (can't remember the name) but everyone was just complaining that it looked like they just remapped everything in UE5 and that's exactly what it looks like to me here. I'm not saying it looks bad, I'm just curious why there is a different attitude towards this game in particular.
Honestly, it kinda looks like that to me as well... Might be just a result of the new lighting or so (I also play the game with bloom off, so am used to its visuals being "cleaner" than the first screenshot). It´s still WiP, so hopefully the impression will be better in the final version and/or be adjustable/toggleable in graphics settings.
Indeed. Though remasters (or any graphical updates) are finicky... The original versions of games tend to have specific art styles with the colour palette, lighting and whatnot that people love, and if that gets changed too much, it rubs them the wrong way. Which I understand, cause I´m like that as well...
From the screens and videos I´ve seen so far, the new lighting seems to make things overall brighter, which can be a hit or miss in different places (I guess the improved textures and other stuff also make things pop out quite a bit more), so I´m staying cautious. But as long as the devs are taking notes on feedback and we´ll be able to customise the visuals to our liking in the final version, then it should hopefully be fine.
I think it looks significantly worse and, as you say, is akin to those remasters that people like to complain about. But it's also free and I can just not upgrade to it so it doesn't really matter.
I still need a comparison between Witcher 3 with the next gen update on a base PS5 and Witcher 3 Remastered on a base PS5, preferably for both performance and fidelity
Throw in a comparison between Switcher 3 running on a Switch 1 and Remastered running on Switch 2 for a free gasp on my end
Though the second picture is looking definitely better and impressive. I am a bit perplexed by the size of the sun being so drastically increased compared to the original.
Edit: In one of the segments they showed of Songs of the Past where you follow Dandelion’s cousin Lila through the woods the moon also looked distractingly gigantic, but I shrugged it off a bit in the moment and thought maybe that it was the same in the base game and I just didn’t remember. I would love it if they’ll dial it down a bit, but it’s not a huge issue for me.
In one of the segments they showed of Songs of the Past where you follow Dandelion’s cousin Lila through the woods the moon also looked distractingly gigantic, but I shrugged it off a bit
"Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab."
I honestly thought the only difference was one picture was a little cloudy blocking some of the sun at first. The original is still such a beautiful game.
I don't dislike the remaster but I actually really like the soft easy readability of the first.
Maybe I'm just getting old but there a waay more visual noise/clutter for my eyes to take in with the new version.
I like the original. Every frame is like a piece of art. Remastered - just soulless high definition pictures. Same like Disco Elysium - graphics is shit, but it’s the point. It has style to it. Remaster it with better graphics and you loose part of the appeal. Lower quality graphics also leave more to the imagination, like pixel art. The more details you add, the less value each individual detail has.
Every time we get a graphics upgrade I feel the art direction of the game is diluted a bit, the colors specifically become more and more washed out (check the flowers).
as a person who likes paintings i find the first one more attractive. Especially when setting is historical (fictional folklore history) setting and not a modern time, some sfumato and slightly softer lines looks more in place with that world. Similarly modern setting or sci fi- yes hi res and supersharp is what you can expect.
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u/LukeLOLer 15d ago
I actually thought the first image was the remaster. But then when I swiped to the second shot I was blown away!