Wow, this thread has really taken off!
I think it's wrong to show us these graphically superior trailers to hype the game and obtain preorders, only to do the "bait and switch" at release, sighting "we had to downgrade to put the game out".
I fell into this trap with Watch Dogs big time. I admit I bought into the hype. Turns out the game was a turd and not only did the graphics not live up to the hype, but the game was boring and linear.
I no longer preorder games because of this and while I did buy Witcher 3 yesterday, I never knew about the graphics downgrade until this morning.
That said, I read reviews before buying and since Witcher 3 is getting pretty good reviews and fellow SSF members seem to like it, I caved and bought it (the publisher can thank whomever compared this game to skyrim and red dead redemption - that sold me).
Nice - "Bait and switch" is a fairly accurate terminology for what's going on
. Honesty goes a long way, and I think it would've been better, if developers lowered expectations for their games in progress, and made improvements along the way. But, they obviously need the hype train to carry them through pre-orders. I'm done with pre-ordering games, myself, unless there's some cool, limited extras that I'd be willing to make an exception on.
All things considered, Witcher 3 is still a damn good game. But, CDPR wasn't exactly forthcoming with the "downgrade, and it took them a few weeks to finally acknowledge it. And they only did it, because there was so much outcry against them. I haven't played The Witcher series for very long (I only recently got into the series last year). But, I'm aware that PC gamers have hailed CDPR as being a shining beacon of integrity. This reputation has certainly seemed to have taken a dive recently.
It's to be expected that the game won't look exactly like the trailers, they might make choices that change the look that are unrelated to performance, like with Bioshock infinite.
However--there is a point where it gets to false advertising, it's not clear what that point is, but it's reasonable that that can be the case--trailers are advertising, people want to buy the product based off them. If the end product is significantly different than what was advertised, then that's not OK.
I'm not sure in the case of Witcher 3 if the difference is big enough though. While I am disappointed that it doesn't look as good as it possibly could, I'm not looking for a refund or anything, and it likely won't affect how I play the game. If a game is coming out on consoles and PC, you should assume that the footage is on PC unless specifically said otherwise, so console players should pretty much expect the game to look worse. But in this case, it wasn't until very recently that people could see the changes.
What I do have a problem with, is that the explanation for the difference---they didn't want separate builds of the game, so they consolidated it and lowered graphical features so that development would be easier since they had to develop for consoles. I don't think that's OK given their past history with PC gaming, that was kind of a middle finger to their fans.
Excellent points. I think a game trailer can be considered false-advertising if it ends up looking worse than the actual game, or, most importantly, if promised features were cut during development without notice. It also depends on how pro-active developers are in communicating with their fans to notify them of any changes.
I'm not sure what kind of budget CDPR had to work with, but it's indeed sad (like you said), that they consolidated their development and attempted a single build for both PC and the consoles. PC gamers were the ones who made CDPR into the successful company that it is, so does seem like a major slap in the face to their long-time supporters.
This is nothing new, you just learn to live with the fact that commercials always make the product look 200% better then it really is. Just walk into any Mcdonalds and the images of their Big Macs and Fries always look so much more appealing then what they actually serve you.
Thats why its always better to trust word of mouth from friends and family then what the people who are trying to sell to you are saying. I think most of us do this for other products already (cars, food, appliances, electronics, clothes, toys etc etc.) Video games should be no different.
Great analogies
. I can certainly say that's the case with McD's. A lot of the times, the burgers I've bought from them were squished, and unappetizing. False advertising permeates our daily lives and we've all learned to live with it, more or less.
Personally, I place more emphasis on user reviews before purchasing games. I just don't trust a lot of professional reviewers, who're possibly bought out by the publishers.
