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Watch Dogs

7K views 23 replies 9 participants last post by  blackwizard92 
#1 ·
With better performance, it would be a solid game visually. It's not groundbreaking, but the city has a nice design with plenty of details and life in it. Some scenes make me go "huh, that's pretty good looking" while a few makes me wonder why they decided to make the lighting so damn bright during the day - it washes out the decor/npcs.

Screens were not all taken at the same settings: some were with everything at ultra, some were a mix of high and ultra.
Temporal MSAA for anti-aliasing.

I also dislike the interface - too cluttered. It's not so bad in those screens, but during gameplay the game throws a bunch of useless info at you every 5 minutes.

 
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#3 ·
I see you don't like walking around with your cellphone out
 
#5 ·
I just heard Clara say "Tabarnaque" and "Caliss".
10/10 GOTY.

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A little more seriously: I'm enjoying the game more as I get farther in the story, but sadly the game lacks side-activities.
It has such a gorgeous city, possibly one of the more detailed and unique world of the genre, yet the game offers very little freedom.
Most of the side-activities are random "repeat this mission you've done plenty of times before to get some points you don't actually care about". And they're kinda fun, but repetitive. They mostly end the same way. With you using the same hacks you always do to win.

I really wish "GTA-like" games focused more on how to interact with the city, making us explore more of it, make us feel like a bigger part of it. Buy property, get involved in the districts, make lasting changes to some areas through missions. Defend those areas, keep control, relate to the world.

As it is, this amazing city is criminally underused, let down by a lack of ambition. Those games are about freedom, and here the player is very restricted.

Anyway, this is about pretty screenshots.

Hell no. I already dislike how much space the interface takes as it is. Too many prompts, an annoying minimap that I feel could be smaller and have a better placement.
I'm not gonna add more windows to the screen by taking out the cellphone; the novelty of spying on people get old pretty quickly.
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I installed the new AMD driver and used the "registry fix" to help with the stutters. I didn't actually get stutters before, but I heard people say it helped make the game smoother.
I dunno if it's because of the drivers (which offer a good boost) or the "fix" but my game is, indeed, smoother now.
I still seem limited by my CPU (or at least I think I'm limited by my cpu... both my CPU and GPU only show 75% usage yet I'm not reaching 60fps...) so I increased various graphic settings and decided to just enjoy the game at about 45fps.

Most of the screenshots (later ones) I'm about to post are with 4xMSAA instead of the Temporal SMAA I previously used.
Other settings: 1920x1080 - Textures: Ultra - Level of Detail: High - Shadows: Some High, some Ultra, trying it out - Ambien Occlusion: MHBAO (not the highest) - Blur and DOF: off - Water: ultra - Shader: high (highest).

Random spots of the city, watching the people:










 
#4 · (Edited)
I seen the videos of the guy walking around profiling the streets for all gays/furries/anime fans and killing them.
LOL

The graphics on PS4 are crap btw, no AF and I swear there's no AA at all but the framerate is solid and the game can be pretty immersive. The incar view really needs the Drive soundtrack...
 
#7 ·
Actually its a shame its becoming more and more of a habit to cheat us out, its colonial marines all over again just not to same extent, i don't care about graphics, but for them not giving what they promised is a bit of a let down and seems to be happening more and more.
 
#9 ·
It really bugs me that all the clothing is identical, basically just a colour and sometimes texture swap. That's so damn cheap of them.
 
#11 ·
Thank goodness the AA doesn't blow up your graphics card like Sleeping Dogs. Unfortunately, the shadows do that for this game xD
I like that the heat on the gpu doesnt go past 91c on my laptop. I play on ultra except for shadows. Too bad I can't say the same for RE6 or SD. Have to keep fps to 60 for those to be played with a decent temp.
 
#12 · (Edited)
Ultra preset: http://i.imgur.com/6MyhRdT.jpg
Modified: http://i.imgur.com/moT0Yop.jpg

Ultra preset: http://i.imgur.com/VWh0nuu.jpg
Modified: http://i.imgur.com/64xEw3f.jpg

Ultra preset: http://i.imgur.com/ziPKVTf.jpg
Modified: http://i.imgur.com/PGu3oBR.jpg

Without modification: the city is much brighter. If you look at the trees on every screenshots, or at the building in every screenshots, you'll see that everything is illuminated regardless of any light source nearby.
Screens in the middle: look at the walls farther way from the light source. All dark. But the light in the modified XML screen reaches a little higher.
Screens at the top: the whole building is much darker, but the pink/purple light reaches farther.
Then there's the screenshot with the cars, which I believe shows the biggest difference. Less light sources, much darker city.
No apparent performance hit.

I like the darker look overall, but moving forward I'll pay more attention to the light posts. It seems they have no reach with the modified XML, not entirely sure.
Edit: it looks like this is a result of the XMl file messing with the Shader setting. The effect with the lights is similar/the same as using a lower Shader setting. This is why light posts don't work.
 
#13 ·
It's not the night that needs better lighting, it's the day.
 
#17 ·
#15 ·
I've been playing with his mod, but as far as I can tell the screens he takes must also be using Sweetfx because they're not representative of the actual result.
There is an improvement with his mod tho, so it's still worth trying out.
 
#19 · (Edited)
The DOF is incredibly aggressive and it was originally worse. I believe it,s one of the first thing the author was asked to modify.
I took some screenshots, but they were from an older version.

Second edit: I forgot to say that the DOF can obviously be disabled ingame. He modified the game's original DOF, so it's simple to get rid of it.
With that said, even tho I personally dislike DOF, I'm wary of modifying the graphic settings. His mod relies on the presets (specifically High and Ultra) and playing around with custom settings too much seems (SEEMS, I'm not sure of it) to screw around with this mod/patch.

Edit: I might consider going back to the locations of some of my original screenshots from this thread, especially with a future version of his mod.
 
#22 ·
#20 ·
I gave a very quick test to version 0.7+fix. Ultra preset, Temporal SMAA, High textures (not Ultra, I'll try them once more tomorrow most likely).

Note: The DOF used to be RIGHT IN YOUR FACE unless you were careful about where you were aiming. It was also quite sensitive (tho slow to change).
Now, the DOF feels somewhat static, staying in the background and never coming too close to the character. Better this way, less distracting.

I was also playing with the "far" camera version of the fix.
 
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