Jimquisition: Watch_Dogs: A Vertical Slice Of Steaming Bullshots

[GeneralBigG]

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.

All they needed to do was make a small announcement beforehand, saying something like "Bad news guys. Unfortunately, we've had to make a small sacrifice in graphical power in order to get the gameplay working as good we can. We're sorry about this, but it came to a choice, and we chose gameplay."

That would, in my eyes, have shut this down before it got anywhere. There would've been some grumblings, but not this outcry.


It's fine to have targets, but have the honesty to admit when they haven't been met.

 

[nitrium oxide]

Is there any chance that Watch Dogs will indeed look like the original E3 trailer on PC (which they were running it on)? Did they promise, at the time, that it would look like that on ALL platforms for which it was going to released (which I doubt, since they had no idea of the next-gen specs)? If not, then I don't really think they lied at all. If they have also downgraded the PC version... well, then we have an issue.

 

[erbkaiser]

Games change during development, sometimes better and sometimes worse. Just one example, I remember Super Mario 64 looking different in beta shots than it did when it was released. I guess I don't see the problem here.

A good comparison to the Watch Dogs "scandal", as the SM64 beta teasers were also done on different hardware. It was developed on something close to an SGI Onyx whereas the shipped N64 was much closer to the SGI Indy, a much weaker system.

 

[Grimh]

Lies! Lies!
They sit upon a Throne of Liiiiies!

It's a shame this happens but at least people have a chance to cancel their pre-orders if they want.
Oh, and it seems that Dark Souls 2 has reportedly had a bit of a downgrade [http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=781625] as well.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

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.

Amen.

I agree with all that you've said Jim - hell, I honestly can't imagine many people disagreeing with it, apart from maybe some senior execs from Ubisoft! - but I'll add this: when you said at the beginning of your video something along the lines of you "need to do an emergency Jimquisition because the Internet is angry with Ubisoft", I'm afraid I let out a very audible "guffaw". Yep, a guffaw. I have no other way to describe the noise that came out of my mouth.

The Internet being angry at Ubisoft? To paraphrase Raul Julia as M Bison: that's not news, that's Monday.

Still wish they'd release "Far Cry 3" without U-Play though.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I'm going to reiterate Jim's exasperation with gamers just accepting this crap. This habitualized reaction of just shrugging and saying "Well, companies lie, whatcha gonna do" is what's allowing this sort of thing to go on in the first place. When hyping what's basically a false front in order to get preorders- especially in the age of digital storefronts, where getting a refund is usually like trying to drag a whale out of your swimming pool- is considered inevitable, if not acceptable, then consumers lose hard.

 

[Twinmill5000]

I don't want to turn this into a PC > Console argument, but to expect the game, if it held up to graphical standards implied by the promo trailer, to run on anything less than 2 SLI'd Titans is... ludicrous. The game doesn't look bad, however, and hell, it looks like something my computer can run now.

I agree that the advertisement of the game was sleazy, but I do think that they had a superpowered machine running that demo, and they were projecting the graphics to match the tech specifications that would probably be standard by the time the game released. Unfortunately, at least on Nvidia platforms, Maxwell won't come out for at least another year, so that was a bad call.

I understand that this discussion should highlight the game's performance on consoles, which I still answer as ludicrous to expect the game to run on the hardware they offer, and that's also why I call it sleazy. You don't use a superpowered PC to show off a game you're using to push the console market, and you don't project the graphics to match what you think will be the standard on a PC when the game releases.

So it's sleazy, just, it's also misunderstood.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Though I'd love to bust out the pitchfork and join the mob, the fact is this feigned indignation happens for nearly every big budget game to come down the line, and by sales figures it certainly seems like a majority of these soap box ranters quietly line up on release day to put their cash on the barrel-head.

So yes, I'm upset about 'Bullshots' and no, I won't be pre-ordering Watch Dogs or any other games in the near future, I doubt the publishers will care either way.

 

[1337mokro]

I have a hard time believing the trailer is from the same game. Not because of the 2012-2014 comparison, but because of that one clip where a car drives over a bridge. That looks like GTA San Andreas!

The graphics cannot be that bad can they? Even later in the game they look better than that sequence.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I understand it's a misleading strategy and that the last E3 shows were probably designed to rake in as much pre-order money as possible - but the onus really is on the customer. No amount of clamoring for the devs to stop with the "bullshots" will work, if we don't join it with the fairly simple practice of waiting for the game's actual release before plunking some cash.

If the pre-order culture were a bit less pervasive, devs might be forced to double down on honesty.

I don't personally mind what's gone on with Watch_Dogs, largely because I chose to reserve my judgment until release day and the publishing of the first few official reviews. This is an ambitious project, and ambitious projects deserve to be respected.

The thing is, you don't respect ambition by blindly buying into it. You respect it by giving it the attention it deserve once you *do* have something to scrutinize. I've corrected enough entry-level Bachelor's degree fluff to learn to take a student's calls for THE BEST PAPER EVAH for what they realistically are - usually last-minute Wikipedia binges.

 

[RealRT]

And this is why I tend to never watch trailers, pre-release screenshots and all that fluff. Hell, I always said CGI trailers were always a waste of fucking time, but now you can't trust gameplay trailers either.

 

[shteev]

A lot of advertising is like this, isn't it? Magazines photoshop models to look inhumanly beautiful and pictures of Big Macs in McDonalds don't look much like Big Macs. What you buy, in any context, often looks very different from what the promotional material shows.

This topic is much larger than the gaming industry. Gamers accept this treatment because consumers generally accept this treatment. If there's a discussion to be had about truth in advertising it's probably worth broadening it's scope from gaming culture.

 

[Nurb]

Get 'em Jim!

This bullshit from big publishers just makes people care less about their complaints over piracy. Why should we care about it if they actively work to decieve customers in order to get their money?

It's only going to hurt them at E3 because no one will believe them enough to pre-order anything, but screw pre-orders in general.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

You know, I would get mad about something like this, except that I remember how Watch Dogs became a big deal in the first place:
A gaggle of game journalists saw the first E3 trailer and went into a sort of crazed feeding frenzy hyping it and talking at length about features, despite the fact that none of them had any way of knowing how any part of the game actually worked because the debut was accompanied by fuck-all information. It was always a cloud-castle sold on the prospect of features the game might theoretically have, and it was journalists, not publishers, who built it up.

 

[lukesparow]

According to sources Dark Souls 2 is apparently doing this as well.
Screenshots and gameplay videos have been released, showing there's a big difference in the lighting department.
While this wouldn't necesarilly be an issue, it seems to hurt the atmosphere quite a bit.

Dark Souls 2 isn't a next gen game nor has it ever been sold on its graphics. So there is a difference there.

I wouldn't say the game being next-gen or not has much to do with anything.
Also, whilst Dark Souls 2 isn't being sold on graphics, the atmosphere is a very large part of the appeal to this game.
Therefore I'd say a downgrade in graphics (somewhat decreasing the atmosphere from what I've seen) is a substantial issue.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Well that's one more 'next gen' game I've completely lost interest in. If inFamous Second Son is only an hour long, I'm ditching this shit now.

If they were honest and up front about it I wouldn't have cared, but if it's a selling point that you're lying about, then consider my vested interested wanned.

 

[EternallyBored]

Is there any chance that Watch Dogs will indeed look like the original E3 trailer on PC (which they were running it on)? Did they promise, at the time, that it would look like that on ALL platforms for which it was going to released (which I doubt, since they had no idea of the next-gen specs)? If not, then I don't really think they lied at all. If they have also downgraded the PC version... well, then we have an issue.

Very, very doubtful. While the PC edition will likely have some added features that the consoles don't (better anti-aliasing, higher FPS on powerful PCs), the trailer shown at E3 is likely a proof of concept video, if they were even using the actual game engine, they probably ran it through a crap ton of post processing special effects to make it look far better than it ever will even on the best PCS.

Ubisoft did the same thing with the Farcry 3 trailer, I have it on PC and can run it on max settings, the foliage is still nowhere near as dense or lush as the trailers, and the lighting effects are simpler, and the draw distance is noticeably inferior to what appeared in the E3 trailers.

So yeah, despite the fact that they were running the trailer on a PC, it is very unlikely that the PC version will look like that, they've done this same thing in the past, and the PC version is usually only a step or two up graphically from the console versions.

 

[Thanatos2k]

According to sources Dark Souls 2 is apparently doing this as well.
Screenshots and gameplay videos have been released, showing there's a big difference in the lighting department.
While this wouldn't necesarilly be an issue, it seems to hurt the atmosphere quite a bit.

Dark Souls 2 isn't a next gen game nor has it ever been sold on its graphics. So there is a difference there.

I wouldn't say the game being next-gen or not has much to do with anything.
Also, whilst Dark Souls 2 isn't being sold on graphics, the atmosphere is a very large part of the appeal to this game.
Therefore I'd say a downgrade in graphics (somewhat decreasing the atmosphere from what I've seen) is a substantial issue.

Being next gen has very much to do with it because it boils down to the question of why you'd make your game for a next gen console or not. At this point the only answer is graphics.

If Dark Souls 2 had worse graphics than Dark Souls or Demon's Souls that would be cause for concern. I don't see anything that indicates that will be the case. Did Dark Souls have atmosphere problems? No, it didn't.