Ubisoft went for more or less platform parity (the vanilla PC build did have some better effects and textures) but they did not spend many millions of dollars making the PC version look amazing and then not include that work in the final build because they wanted platform parity they simply never did the work in the first place. I guess I wasn't very clear but that's what I meant, those assets only existed for that section they showed and when they started actual production they did not use any of that stuff. I can easily believe that they did not do the work to make the PC version better than the console versions but if they had done the work they would have left it in like the did with Far Cry 3 which looked and played much better on PC.
I don't want to beat up on them Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed Unity are real games that will look very close to they way they showed at E3 2014 and this years surprise game Rainbow Six Siege was playable and the playable build looks like the stage demo.īut they should have made clear that what they were showing with Watch Dogs was a vision of what next gen could do and not a what a final product would necessarily look like.Īs for what this mod does (which in my opinion does not look even close to how good E3 2014 looked) I really do not believe that Ubisoft would make a game look worse on PC than it could have just to have platform parity when they had already done the work. Ubisoft showed a tech demo without making it clear that is what they were showing did not exist in any real way as a game. If you watch a side by side of the original reveal and the PC version on Ultra the E3 demo had fuller trees that dramatically bent in the wind, much more geometry on the street and in the nightclub scene, dust that blew down the street and smoke that filled the lobby of the nightclub, cobbled streets that either had more geometry or were heavily tessellated to give them a look of real depth, pedestrians who behaved differently than they do in the final game, and even some gameplay mechanics that were changed in the final game. The game is never going to look like the E3 2012 reveal unless Ubisoft put a ton of artists to work changing the geometry and adding in the effects that the final game just does not have.
Shacknews has contacted Ubisoft, and will update as more information becomes available.
One piece of the code even purportedly indicates that the settings were turned on for the E3 2012 demo. Fans have been speculating on why Ubi might have done that, and explanations range from stability to parity with its console brethren. The community is split on whether this can properly even be called a "mod." Whatever it might be, though, the effect is impressive, and implies that Ubisoft hobbled certain effects in the PC version. It's worth noting that this modifies game values, but doesn't actually add anything that isn't existing in the game code.
Specifically, it mentions bloom effects, headlight shadows, NPC density, and better rain effects. Modder "TheWorse" on Guru3D (via PC Gamer) has created an "E3 Bloom" effect, bringing back many of the visual flourishes from its first demo. By exploring the game files and changing the values of certain values, a modder says he was able to bring back some of the effects missing from the final product. Watch Dogs appeared to suffer a visual downgrade from its initial showing to the final release, but some clever PC tinkerers seem to have found a way around that.