Original Watch_Dogs Graphics Files Found!

This is fucking bizarre.

@mb: Well it honestly hardly adds anything. Good on him for turning off some sliders that weren't there before but it's not a make-or-break mod really - not like what DSfix did for Dark Souls anyway.

PC Gaming seems to be slowly going back into the old rut of poor ports though. Wolfenstein New Order? Still only playable through a user mode executable for a lot of people. No patch since release day, not even news of an upcoming patch. It also had some abysmal toggles in the graphic options, grouping several completely unrelated things together under one on/off switch.

I'm really hoping Witcher 3 is optimized properly. CD Project Red has good pedigree with PC games so here's hoping they'll come through. As of now, it's about that time to invest in a next-gen console and give PC games a rest for a while.

This is completely insane.

It's not just that they removed graphics because they made the game run poorly-- they made the game run more poorly on purpose so that it would also look worse.

That sentence doesn't even make sense to read! And then they just left the files in there? What???

This is far more bizarre, sinister, and important as an "illicit hidden secret" than Hot Coffee ever was. Malice aforethought. What the fuck.

Fantastic, I was going to check this out, but apparently my save data is all gone. Seems like it was all deleted when it tried to synch with a cloud save. All this after being unable to play it at launch because of network issues. Thanks Ubisoft! Really glad I gave you money when pirating would have let me actually play the game properly.

BAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAA!!!!

i like how the game looks now better. ps4

@humanity: CD Projekt Red describe themselves as PC-first developers, so I wouldn't worry about them at all.

Stop trying to spin this as a pro console conspiracy. Ubisoft has, like they have done countless times in the past, put the PC at the bottom of the priority list for the usual reasons publishers often do that. The PC usually gets shafted in the first half of a console generation, this is nothing new. They had some effects they could run on PCs but didn't have time to optimize for consoles or test properly. They chose to focus on old consoles and new consoles before implementing those extra visual effects.

You can yell on internet forums all you like but publishers listen to 2 things when it comes to allocating ressources: revenue and metacritic scores. You can't talk with your wallet because they will interpret a dip in sales as a ''the platform is not worth the effort'' and a rise as a ''yes, we're allocating enough ressources''. Don't worry though, PC versions will be good in 4-5 years when they'll have to send those to reviewers instead of the PS4 version.

Business realities, don't try to change them, just make your purchasing decisions accordingly. Finally, look for all those cool visual flourishes in all versions of watch dogs 2, spring 2016.

He already updated it and the FoV is fine now.

Version 0.7 of the mod is now up which fixes the flickering lights and makes the DoF far less obnoxious.

This is hilarious. No way I could run the game on my computer, but I'm enjoying the ridiculousness of this.

Basically, (my guess, at least) Ubisoft concentrated on the console versions and then ported it to PC without much effort. Obviously no one on the team cared enough to either make a fuss about the PC version or for some higher-up to make sure they got it right. I wonder if the same general thing happened with Dark Souls 2.

This whole situation is goofy as fuck.

That's what he gets for looking at his phone all the damn time! Ruined his eyes!

Bloomy and rich lighting coupled with awesome DoF effects and more frequent rains is exactly what this game needs. If I could get a mod that sets the game clock to run from 7pm to 5am and then backwards, it would suit the game perfectly. It also runs way better than without the mod, and I've experienced way less stuttering than before on my 2GB gtx 770. What's even weirder is that if I tried before to turn on Ultra textures, the game would chug every time I changed the camera angle. Now, it stutters every five seconds, as more of the world loads in. Obviously, it's not ideal but it's way better than before.

I don't know if this guy is a wizard or if Ubi really fucked up the PC port because he managed to make the game look and run better at the same time.

Some people get so mad over video games haha...

I don't get it though, aren't things like the stuttering fix the modder's own work and not the E3 stuff? How much of it is actually just a switch in the game?

I was having to run the game on medium settings to make it playable. With this I am now running at Ultra and it looks absolutely gorgeous. Can't believe they would hold this, but who knows, there is probably a drawback. Or Sony/Microsoft payed them to get it the same.

The blur is still pretty intense even on the "Normal" setting.

At times it's even hard to drive since everything is a blur up ahead

Water continues to look pretty nice.

Indeed. I cannot fathom. .-.

According to Ubisoft, the game never got a visual downgrade.

They stand by that claim even today.

Are you saying that you prefer how it looks worse and plays worse, and that you own a ps4? Is that what you're saying at this moment?

Nvidia got involved.

Gotta sell that 3000 dollar graphics card somehow.

Fuck this game.

Best comment I've seen about this: "the game is about hacking... figures you have to hack the game to make it look better."

Definitely agree with your assessment. And the "nearsightedness" problem needs to be addressed.

@dystopiax: Nearsightedness was fixed, as was the flickering lights in the new version, 0.7.

interesting, man, the texture quality and lighting look amazing from some of those screenshots.

Stop buying Ubisoft games.

Wow, Ubisoft.

Woooooow.

Anyone know if using this mod violates any sort of ToS with Ubisoft? I'm kind of keen to try it out myself.
I'm very interested to hear what Ubisoft's response will be to this appearing. I just hope that the gaming community is mature enough to not start a witch-hunt, especially on the developers of Watch_Dogs. If these files are present in the PC release, chances are it was planned, probably late into development, that PC gamers are given these options, and someone higher up decided that parity with the consoles versions was more important.

So... Now what?

Lol no, it's fine.

That Depth of Field blur is still in the game, even on consoles. But it's only used as an effect when you pull out your phone.

And yea I'm sure a developer downgrades the PC version to be closer to the console version (which the PC user wouldn't have bought anyway) and then not deleting it from the game, but makes sure you can add them back when you simply altering a file.

@dussck said:

That Depth of Field blur is still in the game, even on consoles. But it's only used as an effect when you pull out your phone.

And yea I'm sure a developer downgrades the PC version to be closer to the console version (which the PC user wouldn't have bought anyway) and then not deleting it from the game, but makes sure you can add them back when you simply altering a file.

What are you even trying to say? That the files that are clearly there are fake or something?

@krullban: that they did not do this on purpose? They thought the game would be better off without the effects?

The PC version gimped to benefit the console versions? What, why? Do they make more money off a console copy then a PC copy? Then why even bother releasing a PC version anyway..

I installed version 0.7 and the nearsightedness is very much still there as is the flickering although both in smaller capacity. Flickering doesn't occur anymore if you just walk around slowly, but if you ride around in a car at night with any amount of speed the light sources from vehicles still begin to flicker - and since you spend a considerable amount of time evading someone at high speeds in cars thats not a good look.

I have a feeling that most of the people in this thread who are most outraged have a) not even played the game b) not played it with this mod.

I installed .7 and it is definitely still there.

Why are people saying the pc version was gimped because consoles are shitty? If these files are actually making the game perform better, then wouldn't that mean current gen hardware would actually be able to run this stuff? Honestly, this doesn't read as consoles being shitty, this reads as people overhyping a standard open world game, ubisoft rushing said open world game that originally started as a racing game on a racing engine, and shittily optimizing it. If the ps4 can run infamous SS with it's amazing graphics/crazy particle effects, it would be able to run this with a little optimization on ubisofts part.

@rongalaxy: Exactly what I was thinking, it looks more like a case of scrapping things because they were not properly optimized for all versions. But is it actually true Watch_Dogs started as a racing game? Because the racing part is the weakest part of the whole game to me :S

yup

Sure, now the engine is capable of much more than that and it's reductive to think its still a racing engine (it isn't, it's heavily modified), but I think that bit of info really speaks to the way this game came about. Everything about it just screams "messy development". Sometimes the stars align and the pieces fall perfectly into place to form something great. That didn't happen with watchdogs. It was rushed, people were cramming square shaped pegs into circle shaped slots, all to meet a deadline.

The game just has a bit more blur.

Video Game Illuminati, man. The whole idea of parity is to keep down the PC Master Race and prepare us for the coming of the Vril.

Holy shit the NeoGAF thread has 1.5 million views...

Here are some nice pictures...

@fattony12000: I'm not quite sure what they're toggling to make that ground be all crackled like that unless it's video card specific.

Paralax Occlusion Mapping probably, I believe it's one of the missing shader techniques they took out to get it running on the consoles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_occlusion_mapping

@korwin: Well sure I mean, I have the mod installed, everything set to Ultra and even the XML file modified and I still don't get super crisp textures like that which makes me wonder if it's a Nvidia specific thing like PhysX.

Edit: Oh I think those people are running the game at resolutions much higher than 1920x1080 and then downsampling the screenshots.

I can't wait until people stop talking about Watch Dogs. The only thing people have discussed since it was first shown at E3 is the graphical fidelity, which is possibly the most boring subject to talk about. We talked about the graphics when it was revealed, we talked about the graphics when it was delayed, we talked about the graphics in the buildup to release, we talked about the graphics when it came out and now here we are - weeks after it came out still talking about the fucking graphics.

Let it go. The game didn't set the world on fire, it is a slightly above average open world game with some cool ideas. That's it.

@shortbreadtom: It is apparently simultaneously the worst game in the world and also the spawn of Satan.

Yep, this feels like they didn't have time to optimize those effects and they got lost in the rush to release. Man is the internet stupid with console cabal conspiracy theories. As I said before, look for those effects in watch dogs 2 when they'll be able to implement them for platform they give a shit about and that will trickle down to the PC. This is the Ubisoft way, the PC gets shafted because they don't give a damn about the platform.