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How the FUCK do devlopers keep getting away with visual downgrades? latest example, Forspoken

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
publishers used to use screenshots on game boxes from more powerful consoles way back in the day, its nothing new.

That was for pretty obvious reasons if you think about the resolution difference between screen and print back in the day. What looked good on an analogue SDTV would just look like a mess of chunky pixels in print form.
 

daveonezero

Banned
Most people probably never even saw the game before release let alone compared the difference.

It is nothing new that games change from previews to release.

It is just like pre-rendered cutscenes except now they fake everything.

Remember the Killzone 2 debacle? And they sort of did a good job with their work after releasing that crazy pretender trailer.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Developers can be careless, but you should recognize those are development photos, Ghosts of Tshuma was released in 2020 during a pandemic a few years ago and looks as good as any game today I think most would agree.
 
People are saying this is ps3 graphics.. like... really ?!
And the game focus is on magic effects. Looks better in motion.
Took some shots from the demo:
xecw7VM.jpg

lmao that looks horrible!!
Compared to what they showed before.
forspoken-ps5-playstation.large.jpg
 
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Lol 😂 there’s literally a disclaimer in the screenshot saying it’s subject to change. Meaning it can be downgraded or better so you can’t really say it’s illegal.
 

Brigandier

Member
Source: Trust me bro.

Besides, multiple frame rate targets have been a thing for like 5 years so the fact that you've been gaming for over 30 years means absolutely nothing.

Every post of his makes me think of this gif immediately, His constant opinion is fact spewing is obnoxious!!!

Mr Rogers Clown GIF
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Actually, PS3 graphics are more cohesive, appealing and impressive (for their age) than Forspoken's on PS5.

gta5_09.jpg

xecw7VM.jpg
I'm not saying this Oblivion pic is better than that Forspoken pic (Forspoken looks better), but does it looks dramatically better than 15 year old Oblivion when it comes to a big pic of the landscape? You'd think a game on PS5 in 2023 would look leagues better. Too lazy to check, but there are probably PC mods that can make Oblivion look as good as Forspoken (not sure).

oblivion%20First%20View%20Screen.jpg
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
why isn't this illegal?!!!!!!
how many times we gonna get fucked over like this before the sheep actually wake up?

hi
TJjdyci.jpg
s
I found this exact location in the demo. quality 40fps/120hz mode.
Wtf have you done to this poo screenshot? You really have to try hard to compress it this much.

This is how it looks on my end... even better in hdr in fact.
yeah this
R62Tqq5.png

is the same as this
e7DUNk3.jpg





+A screenshot that I thought looked nice right around the corner from that place above.
fWZm73I.jpg
 
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Perrott

Gold Member
I'm not saying this Oblivion pic is better than that Forspoken pic (Forspoken looks better), but does it looks dramatically better than 15 year old Oblivion when it comes to a big pic of the landscape? You'd think a game on PS5 in 2023 would look leagues better. Too lazy to check, but there are probably PC mods that can make Oblivion look as good as Forspoken (not sure).

oblivion%20First%20View%20Screen.jpg
Sure! The impression I get from looking at that Oblivion screenshot is that it is definitely a hugely ambitious visual delivery for a 2006 title (especially for an open-world, in fact, I don't recall any open-world looking as good as Oblivion until Crysis came out 2 years later), whereas the "designed for PS5" (and PC) Forspoken cannot even blast PS4's Red Dead Redemption 2 out of the water (for comparison's sake, last generation we had the next-gen only Assassin's Creed Unity or inFAMOUS Second Son entirely surpassing the visual fidelity of PS3's GTA V or Skyrim a year into the generation; or Killzone: Shadow Fall doing the same thing at launch when it comes to linear campaigns like BioShock Infinite, Battlefield 3 or Halo 4).
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I found this exact location in the demo. quality 40fps/120hz mode.
Wtf have you done to this poo screenshot? You really have to try hard to compress it this much.

This is how it looks on my end... even better in hdr in fact.
yeah this
R62Tqq5.png

is the same as this
e7DUNk3.jpg
Both those shots look the exact same except the bottom one is a bit more clear or a higher res screen grab. It looks better, but not by much. The top pic is zoomed in more. But the overall art direction and vegetation, cliffs and murky pond on the left are the same.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Both those shots look the exact same except the bottom one is a bit more clear or a higher res screen grab. It looks better, but not by much. The top pic is zoomed in more. But the overall art direction and vegetation, cliffs and murky pond on the left are the same.
You are nuts. This place looks fantastic in real gamepaly like I posted. The only thing that looks bad is the rock on the bottom left. Lacks shading.
This is a 10mb png screenshot.
Other shots I've posted ate 500-1mb hdr converted jpg screenshots. PS5 does weird stuff when you copy shots
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
A lot of the posts in this thread have convinced me that a lot of this games detractors simply have not bothered with the game to arrive at their own-experienced opinion. The games world design does not match - as someone said recently - HFW. Because they are two different games doing two different things. Action in HFW can be fast for sure, but at the end of the day, it is typically ALOY versus something else.

FORSPOKEN is FUCKING FAST with combat being FREY versus everyone. And not just that, but seemingly EVERY magic effect I have seen in the game (from the demo or previews) is a particles effect nightmare. So you combine a character that is moving very fast through fast changing geometry, with multiple NPC's on the screen at once who are all being pelted by abilities of the character with crazy effects work. . .that we have a relatively uninspired landscape that isn't taxing on the PS5 seems pretty reasonable no?

. . .like fine, lets critique the aesthetic artistic choice all day, as that is subjective as hell, but there are clear objective needs for FS's world to make the gameplay work at a decent frame rate.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
You are nuts. This place looks fantastic in real gamepaly like I posted. The only thing that looks bad is the rock on the bottom left. Lacks shading.
This is a 10mb png screenshot.
Other shots I've posted ate 500-1mb hdr converted jpg screenshots. PS5 does weird stuff when you copy shots
I have to say I disagree, it still looks terrible IMO. Where’s the shadows on any of the trees?
 
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rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I have to say I disagree, it still looks terrible IMO. Where’s the shadows on any of the trees?
It's not the best place for shots.
Trees have shadows in the middle and that's correct.
Don't have shadows on the left as the whole marsh area is in shade.
trees seem to not have shadows on the right? Not sure whats going on there.

I am not claiming it's an amazing looking shot. I am just saying that this thread is based on disingenuous, scummy, compressed, cropped screenshot taken probable from worst looking location in the demo.
 

Perrott

Gold Member
A lot of the posts in this thread have convinced me that a lot of this games detractors simply have not bothered with the game to arrive at their own-experienced opinion. The games world design does not match - as someone said recently - HFW. Because they are two different games doing two different things. Action in HFW can be fast for sure, but at the end of the day, it is typically ALOY versus something else.

FORSPOKEN is FUCKING FAST with combat being FREY versus everyone. And not just that, but seemingly EVERY magic effect I have seen in the game (from the demo or previews) is a particles effect nightmare. So you combine a character that is moving very fast through fast changing geometry, with multiple NPC's on the screen at once who are all being pelted by abilities of the character with crazy effects work. . .that we have a relatively uninspired landscape that isn't taxing on the PS5 seems pretty reasonable no?

. . .like fine, lets critique the aesthetic artistic choice all day, as that is subjective as hell, but there are clear objective needs for FS's world to make the gameplay work at a decent frame rate.
And? The developers should've made some smarter technical decisions then than to put all their rendering budget onto a VFX shitshow that turns any combat into an illegible mess at the expense of the environmental detail and the complexity of their lighting model (two aspects that were fucking stellar in the Project Athia reveal trailer), not to mention how the game is an embarrassment for the PS5 in terms of image quality and output resolution.
 

GhostOfTsu

Banned
I found this exact location in the demo. quality 40fps/120hz mode.
Wtf have you done to this poo screenshot? You really have to try hard to compress it this much.

This is how it looks on my end... even better in hdr in fact.
yeah this
R62Tqq5.png

is the same as this
e7DUNk3.jpg





+A screenshot that I thought looked nice right around the corner from that place above.
fWZm73I.jpg
Sure it doesn't look like Horizon but it doesn't look that bad. It's not worth getting so upset with all these threads. People obviously have an agenda with this particular game.

Plenty of (non-exclusive) games come out every month and they look much worse with no weird hate campaign about every facet of it.
 

Perrott

Gold Member
Sure it doesn't look like Horizon but it doesn't look that bad. It's not worth getting so upset with all these threads. People obviously have an agenda with this particular game.

Plenty of (non-exclusive) games come out every month and they look much worse with no weird hate campaign about every facet of it.
You've said it:
-Non platform-exclusive games
-Most of them not even exclusive to the current generation of consoles
-Without the funding from a console manufacturer
-Without a seven-year development cycle
-Without them being tentpole projects for their respective publishers
-And without them being crafted as showpieces of a (supposedly) state of the art in-house game engine

No one is going to complain about the looks of Dead Island 2 because that project has absolutely zero industry-defining ambitions in that regard, but Forspoken was positioned by both Sony and Square*** as the visual bar for real next generation titles with its initial Project Athia teaser video "running on PlayStation 5". Of course it didn't live up to the visuals in display during at said video, with the end result looking an entire generation behind it.

*** at a showcase that saw the reveals of Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Gran Turismo 7, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Demon's Souls and Horizon: Forbidden West, Sony choose Project Athia as the banner for all their social media following the event:

3pz9N4M.png
 

acm2000

Member
That was for pretty obvious reasons if you think about the resolution difference between screen and print back in the day. What looked good on an analogue SDTV would just look like a mess of chunky pixels in print form.
erm no mate, spectrum games would literally show c64 versions which are completely different
 

StueyDuck

Member
The moment this game became forspoken and showed its true colors it was pretty evident it was gonna be a dumpster fire... I mean Gary Whitta writing a square Enix game 🤣

When it was first shown as project athia was the only time this game had any sort of glimmer of hope..but then the protags went and started talking 🤣
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
The moment this game became forspoken and showed its true colors it was pretty evident it was gonna be a dumpster fire... I mean Gary Whitta writing a square Enix game 🤣

When it was first shown as project athia was the only time this game had any sort of glimmer of hope..but then the protags went and started talking 🤣
Didn't he do the Walking Dead telltale game? It had great story and writing.
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
I'd take visual downgrades (you can spot the downgrade in video reviews/previews) over that feature is definitely coming guys, it won't be at launch and here's our roadmap (this announced at launch) and then don't follow through. NMS deserved criticism but... deserve praise for actually following through when they could so easily have taken the cash.
 

OCASM

Banned
Both those shots look the exact same except the bottom one is a bit more clear or a higher res screen grab. It looks better, but not by much. The top pic is zoomed in more. But the overall art direction and vegetation, cliffs and murky pond on the left are the same.
 

Scotracer

Neo Member
The point is this is a self correcting process. The developer wants to show their game in the best light but what is reasonably possible to achieve when the game shits down the line. They're making educated guesses in what they have the resources (artistic and power) and time to deliver.

If they overstate so much that they underdeliver, then they'll piss people off who won't buy their product again.

So really it's better to be a discerning consumer and only buy stuff that is demonstrated quality. Don't preorder games. Read/watch reviews. Play demos.
 

Three

Member
What's interesting is that the 2021 trailer looks better than the 2022 trailer and the 2022 trailer looks way better the final game. They had 3 years to optimize the game and they ended up just downgrading it over and over again until it looks fucking disgusting.

September 2021


March 2022

I'm pretty sure most of it boils down to the fact that those are picked scenarios in the game for a trailer and will not be that different to the same scenario in the game. whereas the screenshots here are picked scenarios to show bad graphics. Even from the 2021-2022 trailers you can hand pick some truly ugly shots. Draw distance doesn't look that great here either

Screenshot-20230122-193951-You-Tube.jpg



When it was Project Athia though the detail was definitely higher.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
erm no mate, spectrum games would literally show c64 versions which are completely different

Actually in those days screenshots were typically simply photographs taken off of screens because 8-bit machines rather obviously had no facility to dump screens to file. And of course back in the 80's everything was much less corporate and sloppy, especially in the UK which given you're referencing speccy and c64 seems likely where publishing took place.

It also goes without saying that its hardly deceptive when c64 and speccy games had very distinct and defined looks!
 
That is only true before devs get their hands on console dev kits. I'm pretty sure console is the target dev platform for most multiplat games. They aren't downporting from PC for most games, but the other way around.
True in regards to well-established platforms, for sure. But the fact that games are visually downgraded throughout development as target & pre-alpha footage turns into real moment-to-moment gameplay and the game goes into beta and enters optimization, it’s just the way things go. And that’s regardless of platform they’re being developed on. Nothing ever looks like it did in pre-alpha, so the criticism being targeted at Forspoken is nothing more than cherry-picking. And that is my whole point.
 
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Curious to know where all the Gary Whitta hate is coming from. Guy co-wrote Rogue One, easily as good or better than any kind of star wars media and pretty much set the tone for Andor.

Anyways, yes downgrades suck. That said this game also has a demo, so cant really say its a bait and switch. From Software games have much bigger graphical downgrades and hardly anyone mentions it.
 
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I found this exact location in the demo. quality 40fps/120hz mode.
Wtf have you done to this poo screenshot? You really have to try hard to compress it this much.

This is how it looks on my end... even better in hdr in fact.
yeah this

is the same as this

+A screenshot that I thought looked nice right around the corner from that place above.
I can't believe you posted this thinking that looks good.
 

Three

Member
Actually in those days screenshots were typically simply photographs taken off of screens because 8-bit machines rather obviously had no facility to dump screens to file. And of course back in the 80's everything was much less corporate and sloppy, especially in the UK which given you're referencing speccy and c64 seems likely where publishing took place.

It also goes without saying that its hardly deceptive when c64 and speccy games had very distinct and defined looks!
In those days we had freezers. Super snapshot, final cartridge etc.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
In those days we had freezers. Super snapshot, final cartridge etc.

Honestly don't recall them having screen dump functionality, but then again the port was usually taken up by the interface to the cross assembler.

Either way the contents of a 320x240 frame-buffer isn't really suitable for print output with some sort of post-work. :D
 
I love how it’s phrased, too. “Keep getting away with”. Lmao. Like there’s a Visual Downgrade Earth Defense Force whose job it is so swoop in and shield all us gamers from the horrors of visual downgrades of videogames.

Oh, the horror of it all!
 
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Three

Member
Honestly don't recall them having screen dump functionality, but then again the port was usually taken up by the interface to the cross assembler.

Either way the contents of a 320x240 frame-buffer isn't really suitable for print output with some sort of post-work. :D
The Super Snapshot would screen dump using the Screen Copy menu feature. The screenshots on the boxes were usually tiny anyway.
 
These are horribly misrepresentative pictures of the game imo. The game looks better than this, at least to me it does. Also, I'm glad they prioritized the gameplay and capabilities of the main character over the graphics.

There's a whole ton of shit you wouldn't be able to do in this game if it was a more graphically intensive title.
 
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