The release of the PS4 and X1 have pushed gamer’s to be particularly concerned with the resolution and graphics of the AAA titles. Just yesterday we reported that Watch Dogs on the PS4 would be running at 1080P / 30FPS and the X1 would see a 960P / 30FPS native resolution. However, there have been a lot of accusations aimed at Ubisoft that the recently released trailer for Watch Dogs is a large visual downgrade to what was originally shown off way back in 2012.
There is currently much confusion on the topic – but starting out with Ubisoft’s side of the story, Tessa Vilyn, a PR and Event Manager at Ubisoft took to Twitter to defend the unreleased title. “There is a lot more coming up until May 27th for you guys to discover. So we will! :)” was her response when users demanded gameplay from the current build of the game versus the parts shown off in the 2012 demo.
Gamer’s still unsatisfied pushed further, asking specifically if there’d been a visualdowngrade of Watch Dogs since the September 13th demo. “Didn’t see my tweet an hour ago? Believe me the game is not downgraded, that would just be a bit ridiculous. :)” Tessa responded. adding, “Aiden’s face still had animation bone issues in 2012 >> just to be clear :)”
Additionally Ubisoft’s Jonothan Morin was asked if the PS4 version of Watch_Dogs would look the same as the E3 2013 gameplay shown off, to which he said that it would indeed look the same, and there’d been no graphical downgrade.
Ashan Rasheed, better known to many on the internet (particularly those on Neogaf) took to Twitter and said “Heard folks internally at Ubisoft are absolutely frightened because backlash against Watch Dogs was much stronger than anyone anticipated.” He responded to criticism level at himself and other console gamer’s that their expectations were set too high; ““Have you seen the Order? Ryse? Shadow Fall? Looks next gen to me. Oh and did I forget, Second Son”.
Above is the gif that started on Neogaf which started much of the controversy. There are certainly numerous differences that can be spotted, including the effect of lighting from the environment on the car, the rather strange fog effect in the game, changes in camera angle. The bridge flashing isn’t a graphical glitch, but an indication that the bridge has been hacked by the player.
The problem is that there’s confusion as to the versions being shown off, and Ubisoft seem adamant that we’ll not be seeing ‘bad graphics’ on our PS4 / Xbox One, In regards to the PC version, it’s difficult to know how it’ll fair if the game has indeed taken a graphical quality dive. We know that Unreal Engine 4 did indeed have various effects removed (such as SVOGI) due to the consoles inability to use it. It’s possible that what was shown off simply wasn’t attainable at good frame rates with the average hardware available.