Jimquisition: Watch_Dogs: A Vertical Slice Of Steaming Bullshots

[Xman490]

You'd think that after around 7 years of 720p gaming, 1080p would be something that could be done, right? Knack and Killzone did it on PS4, and they were launch titles with no more than 1 year for development (considering the PS4 wasn't available for developers before 2013).

Then Watch Dogs gets delayed several months, and Titanfall is limited to 6-player teams. And yet neither are near 1080p! "Next-gen" my ass. Are we really going to be stuck with either bells and whistles on graphically superior games OR "radios" on graphically mediocre games? If it weren't for PlayStation Plus (which doesn't provide great value so far) and Kingdom Hearts 3 (which won't come out any time soon), I would give these allegedly "powerful" consoles the cold shoulder.

 

[sageoftruth]

The E3 footage 2 years ago was what they wanted for it, what we saw last week was what they had to settle for.

Except it takes YOU to say that, not Ubisoft. Who is not saying that.

And that is my problem.

If thats the problem then how did the majority of the video come out as ranting over the same subjects that were covered by pretty much everyone of note with the Colonial Marines hype crash?

Could you reword that a bit please? I didn't quite understand what you were saying there.

 

[medv4380]

Ubisoft and other could probably take a lesson from how politics is supposed to be played.

When you know you have a killer product that will blow the customers out of their seats you should keep expectations below where you believe they will end up. When you want to have expectations destroy your competition in the long term you want to build up their expectations and tap down your own.

For example. Lets say you are running in a Primary, and you believe you will win in NY with 60% of the vote. However, if the news, and your opponents, convince the public that you should win by 80% then even though you win it's reprieved that your opponent might be more viable, and that the Winner is actually viewed as less viable than you thought they were originally.

You also don't want expectations running too low because no one wants to vote on a clear loser. However if expectations are at 50/50 or slightly in favor, and you win by 60% it can result in a momentum effect that benefits in the long term.

This political example applies to everything that is marketed. After all, politics is nothing more than marketing politicians to the public.

This game is played in polotics, the stock market, movies, and just about every medium. The game industry seems to be playing the game in reverse.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I honestly never had much of a problem with the Killzone 2 reveal trailer, because I would think anyone with half a brain could see that was prerendered. Everything moved too smooth and floaty for it to represent accurate controls, and every smoke and fire effect looked off. More importantly there was no HUD. Bioshock: Infinite had a similar 'No really this is in-game' prerendered reveal trailer.

Though these trailers are still cheap ways to sucker in the "casual" audience.

With Watch Dogs however everything was presented as real-time, with on-stage demos and everything. It wasn't some quick prerendered eye candy to sell you on the concept, it was the game we were going to be playing once it got released. This was the next-gen poster boy, but now it hardly looks any better than Assassin's Creed 4 on the PS4.

 

[Piorn]

What was the reason they downgraded the graphics anyways?


And the last thing jim said, about the hype, what's with that? No other industry needs to hype things as hard as videogame publishers do.
Why is that? What do they hope to accomplish?

 

[Ishal]

I think one of the most glaring problems with the story trailer isn't even how poor the graphical quality was, but how poorly they seem to be using what graphics they do have. As you and Extra Credits have said, aesthetics can be great even when graphics aren't, but they don't even seem to have a decent aesthetic.

The other major issue I have with graphical downgrade is something that has been mentioned a few times, namely that graphics are the entire fucking point of a new console generation. If, as you say, it looks like a standard current gen game, then something is very fucking wrong.

Good stuff, Jim. The "Graphics don't matter!" shit needs to stop. Games are a visual medium and they should look good.

Agree, but at the end of the day I still want a solid framerate and unique aesthetic over graphical fidelity. With new consoles and new game engines, there is no reason we can't have both. Or, at least that's how it should be. I'm less likely to get irritated over a game that has too many sharp polygons, yet a runs smoothly, over a game that looks amazing but when shit hits the fan the frames drop.

The publishers are the problem, though. Even with my own stance of not being fussy with the graphics, shitty disingenuous advertising is garbage no matter what the topic is. But the blame doesn't go totally on the publishers, a big reason they do it is because you have these exact people frothing at the mouth over cutting edge visuals. The people shitting on everyone else because they "don't have standards" and "are console plebs." It's a multifaceted problem.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

So there's this. And then there's last October when Ubisoft was marketing the game like it had already gone gold and was shipping out to stores as they spoke, only to postpone the game indefinitely three weeks before launch. I can't wait until the horror stories of this game's development start "leaking" from "inside sources."

 

[Krantos]

TIL - I saved myself some outrage by not paying that much attention to graphics. Didn't know this was a thing until this video.

To be quite honest, I didn't notice any difference between the trailers until someone pointed it out. I Guess I fail as PC gamer. Don't notice textures. To be COMPLETELY honest, I still don't notice that much of a difference. Yeah, the new one looks a bit worse, but not so much that it seems something to get your panties in a twist over. Definitely not enough for Jim to do an "emergency" vid over.

 

[Korten12]

Honestly... While I do think the original Killzone 2's pre-rendered trailer had some improvements... Honestly a lot of it looks pretty terrible now, from the fire, to the horrible Helghast animations. When it came to textures and such the full game imo looks a lot better.

 

[ddrkreature]

I'm going to take an opportunity to vent a smidgen:

"This is why PCs kick console ass. All those kiddies will never know what gaming is until they get on our level. They are the reason gaming is going down hill. Developers conform to the console-tards and make 'games' that look like this garbage. PC Master Race!!!"

That is literally all I'm hearing in some places and it's ticking me off. First, let me say that, I have a good gaming PC and a hefty steam library and I have seen and experienced the difference. Yes it's staggering but put this into comparison.

1: Consoles cost 250-500 dollars per generation, or 6-8 years. About the same as a mid-mid high graphic card (high you're looking at about $550+) that lasts half that time and gets outdated in less than that. Add in the price of a case, motherboard, PSU, CPU, RAM, hard drive(s), monitor, OS, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc.

2: Set-up, drivers, software installation, back-ups...that takes hours of work. consoles are much simpler than that. Consoles are plug in, update, and go.

Graphical difference between E3 and trailer, sure, but E3 was/is probably PC footage. For a box that costs (at least) half the money and time of a PC and requires less add ons to get it to function the way it should, I can accept what I'm seeing. It does look good and still has a lot going on. As good? No, but not to the point of raging and calling it bad or canceling a pre-order. To the tone of dropping another ~$500 just to run it? Absolutely not. The PS4 is fine in my eyes. It's still a big step forward from the PS3.

 

[shrekfan246]

TIL - I saved myself some outrage by not paying that much attention to graphics. Didn't know this was a thing until this video.

To be quite honest, I didn't notice any difference between the trailers until someone pointed it out. I Guess I fail as PC gamer. Don't notice textures. To be COMPLETELY honest, I still don't notice that much of a difference. Yeah, the new one looks a bit worse, but not so much that it seems something to get your panties in a twist over. Definitely not enough for Jim to do an "emergency" vid over.

Yeah, pretty much this. This is the first time I've seen both trailers side-by-side, and... honestly, at least in the compression of the video due to the internet, I didn't realize the first clips he was showing in this episode were from the "downgraded" trailer. Looked almost exactly the same to me.

I mean, I agree with wanting publishers to stop pumping out mostly or completely fake footage to hype up their products. I didn't care about most of the games they showed at E3 because prerendered cutscenes were all over the place, and that's not enough to catch my interest. But I need to get a big PC upgrade nowadays anyway; I don't give a toss if the visuals for new games are being slightly "downgraded". Most of them are getting too big for my current hard drive anyway, because there are a bunch of older games I don't want to uninstall and now even the likes of Thief are over 20 GB.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Ubisoft is learning how much damage to gaming Aliens Colonial Marines truly did. It has made gamers paranoid about companies lying to them in trailers, and gamers are finally, FINALLY starting to get cautious about preordering.

Ubisoft showed the first trailer before the ACM debacle, and they probably wish they could go back in time and not have shown it now.

Why are people are up in arms over a trailer that was made using probably an alpha build. Nobody expected changes over the past 2 years?

People expect the game to get BETTER between Alpha and release, not worse.

 

[loa]

Doctoring with screenshots has been a practice going on for decades now so this isn't a recent development and I doubt it'll go away.
The way I deal with it is not paying attention to any marketing bullshit at all because if you assume it to be a lie, you'll be right most of the time.

Let the games speak for themselves and for gods sake, don't preorder or buy into hype.
That should be a lesson peter molineux should've taught us by now.

 

[Mr. Q]

There is no excuse for this kind of BS in the games industry. False advertising and acts of douche-baggery should NEVER be the norm of any company. No one should ever accept a piss-poor product that was over-hyped beyond expectations. Ubisoft should fucking know better. Hell, every game company should know better. This is not the 80s, people. Gordon Gekko's mantra of "Greed is good" shouldn't be the mantra of any company, let alone the games industry.

 

[blackrave]

snip

Jim, you could have release planned episode AND emergency one.
We wouldn't complain, you know.

Or are you trying not to spoil us?

Should have seen this one coming.

Spoiler

[HEADING=2]"Just because it is, doesn't mean it should be."[/HEADING]​

[small][sub]"There's nothing liiiiike Australiaaaaa..."[/sub][/small]

Those are some really powerful words

 

[orangeapples]

This is all strange since Assassin's Creed IV looks so good on all consoles whereas Watch_Dogs looked amazing in their reveal stuff, but the most recent trailer looks like a huge ball of fail.

When they postponed the game I had a theory that the network of computers they had the game on all failed and they lost everything. Right now that seems to be very likely since they it looks a lot like they had to rebuild the game.

 

[lord.jeff]

Between raising the price of a game, DLC, DRM, every other game being a military shooter, preorders, and the graphics race I've been hearing that the games industry has been hanging it self for the past decade so when is it gonna happen?

 

[Char-Nobyl]

Why are people are up in arms over a trailer that was made using probably an alpha build. Nobody expected changes over the past 2 years?

People usually expect changes in games from their original launch trailers...it's just that they usually expect those changes to be for the better.

The PS4 (which im told is the platform the new trailer footage came from) was most certainly far from having its specs confirmed at the time and it probably came out with less than Ubisoft were hoping for, so they compromised and the extreme graphical fidelity shown in the E3 trailer was the first thing to go.

The E3 footage 2 years ago was what they wanted for it, what we saw last week was what they had to settle for.

Alright, hypothetical scenario: a month before the release of the new X-Men movie, a new trailer is released. It looks like the same story and the same characters, but Patrick Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence, and Hugh Jackman have been replaced by a confused pensioner, an amateur underwear model, and Lorenzo Lamas (respectively, of course), and Ian McKellan will be a digital reconstruction using revolutionary Reboot-era technology. And when public outcry emerges, the producers shrug and say that everything's fine. The original trailer was just done with the actors they expected to get, but we shouldn't worry because it's got the same cinematographer, the same writers, and the same special effects budget, so it'll be just as good as we thought it would be.

That said, the outrage would be somewhat mitigated by the fact that moviegoers don't preorder their tickets before the movie is released.

 

[gigastar]

The PS4 (which im told is the platform the new trailer footage came from) was most certainly far from having its specs confirmed at the time and it probably came out with less than Ubisoft were hoping for, so they compromised and the extreme graphical fidelity shown in the E3 trailer was the first thing to go.

The E3 footage 2 years ago was what they wanted for it, what we saw last week was what they had to settle for.

Alright, hypothetical scenario: a month before the release of the new X-Men movie, a new trailer is released. It looks like the same story and the same characters, but Patrick Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence, and Hugh Jackman have been replaced by a confused pensioner, an amateur underwear model, and Lorenzo Lamas (respectively, of course), and Ian McKellan will be a digital reconstruction using revolutionary Reboot-era technology. And when public outcry emerges, the producers shrug and say that everything's fine. The original trailer was just done with the actors they expected to get, but we shouldn't worry because it's got the same cinematographer, the same writers, and the same special effects budget, so it'll be just as good as we thought it would be.

That said, the outrage would be somewhat mitigated by the fact that moviegoers don't preorder their tickets before the movie is released.

Thats got to be one of the worst analogies ive ever seen.

For one, it implies that the next X-Men movie will be any good.

And my point was that the console hardware was simply not capable of pulling off what was shown in a PC demo at E3 2 years ago. You came out with some random point about established acting talents having to be replaced last minute.