Deus Ex: HR - Director's cut look so... Flat?

After I did the upgrade purchase from the original Human Revolution to the new and so called "improved" game, aswell as waiting for an update to fix the horrible framerate and performance issues plaguing its release (fixed With a game update and a driver update) I finally gave this Version a second chance and I have to say, it looks so... Strange. It definitely feels like the game I played years ago, but not really how it sees. The art style, the graphics, the textures and something else I cannot really put my finger on, looks bad... and flat? I remember this game looking great, so is it me? Is it my brain that does, getting used to lots of graphical settings, or is it a fact; This version looks bad and bland in comparison to the original? I definitely have everything on the Maximum settings at a 1920x1080 resolution, running on a computer that surpasses its requirements. It is almost as the game doesn't save my settings, though it does because it's set to the highest after I restart the game, also the Geforce Experience software reports all on high aswell.

I did some mental notes where the graphics stood out to me as really bad compared to what I played before:

• The hair on characters, except Megan's.
• The texture on beard and chin hair.
• non-tessellated Objects.
• Badly compressed videos, even in the tutorial videos.
• Washed out ambient occlusion (SSAO).

Granted, I played the PS3 version of the original version, but I don't think this game was ever especially good looking from a technical perspective. I specifically remember the pre-rendered stuff being poorly compressed, so that's probably the same.

Yes, the game is not fantastic in the technical aspect to begin with. The animations and facial Expressions are laughable, but I thought to remember that the game looked better than this. Those tutorial videos are so badly compressed you cannot even see what they're trying to tell you. If it weren't for the lady talking I would have a hard time understanding what I'm even looking at. Also what's the point of having an option for DirectX 11 and tessellation when there's absolutely no indication to roundness within any Object, nor smooth bump mapping? And the hair on characters are a batch of blocks put together, you can even see where they are trying to cut each block off. I am probably making it sound worse than it already is, but I could have sworn the original looked better. Maybe I should just enjoy the game as is and not think too hard about the graphics. But if someone could confirm what is going on, if it is indeed the game or not, then that would really help me out.

DC version was badly botched. They reintroduced bugs that were fixed in the original game's patches (meaning they worked on an unpatched version, which is mindblowing): http://steamcommunity.com/app/238010/discussions/0/810939350891608249/

Also bloom effect is overblown and some reflections are missing from the DC version: http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=140084&page=5

Yeah, I was able to play the game on my sub par laptop a few years ago.

Same (even down to the PS3 thing). I thought it had a great direction in terms of style (I still think the blank-and-gold thing is great) but even at the time it stuck out to me as a little underwhelming. I actually found it mildly surprising it was published by Square Enix as it looked a little sub-par for the performance of their games (although in all fairness it wasn't from the team known for making beautiful looking games, and it was prior to Square doing a big effort to spread work across teams to use their individual strengths for every game - such as the recent Tomb Raider which looked great last year).

@zerdune:

That's it, isn't it? It's the reflections that are missing, aswell as the the orange/yellow haze and the post-processing. That actually explains a lot why I think the game looks flat. Too bad they didn't find it a priority to fix it after they released it. Good to know.

Yikes. That's terrible! Glad I still have the original game on PC.

Man, it's like they did a rush port of the Wii U Director's Cut onto PC, so now the PC's Director's Cut doesn't support any of the visual effects that were turned off for the Wii U version. Which is terrible. And you can't even buy the original version on the Steam store because they've replaced it with the Director's Cut. Only way you can have the original version is if you bought it, but never upgraded to Director's Cut.

That seems like helluva misstep. I played the original on PS3 and it's certainly no technical masterpiece, but the art direction and design is fantastic. Some of my favourite costumes in video games.

In that link with all the comparisons, what seems to be the most damning evidence is broken. A shame.

Wow some of those screenshots are rough. I picked up the DC on sale cause I really liked it on 360 but maybe I'll just stick with those memories and leave it uninstalled.

Wow, I can't believe how badly they messed up the lighting. It doesn't even look finished.

Apparently, this is every version of the DC other than the Wii U. That one is supposed to look better. *apparently*

goddammit, and i was going to pick up the DC version too, but hearing this, fuck that then.

Eugh, that looks terrible. Good thing I never bought the DC.

It might have something to do with the fact that it was developed as a Wii U exclusive and the other versions didn't start development until later.