Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director's Cut

[Curratum]

This is really rather awful. They did improve performance A LOT, and I mean like A LOT.

Sadly, this was done by castrating the graphics to the point where max settings now looks like a Unity game and not like a semi-decent UE4 one.

Here's the same area in the original game (above) and the director's cut (below).

VS

Absolutely disgusting. The somewhat fancy visuals in dungeons and some outdoor areas were half the reason I was enjoying the original game, but this shit looks horrible now.

The same amount of uglifying of every area is present everywhere.

 

[Infinitron]

Take a few more comparison screenshots and post them on the inXile forums or Steam forums and let's see what they have to say.

 

[Curratum]

Take a few more comparison screenshots and post them on the inXile forums or Steam forums and let's see what they have to say.

I already did post them in the bug report topic and the post was deleted because it was in the "wrong thread"...

I just re-posted it in a separate topic. This shit's insulting.

 

[Renevent]

*edit*

No, it does look worse lol

 

[Infinitron]

If this isn't a bug they deserve to be review bombed to hell and back. WTF.

 

[Curratum]

If this isn't a bug they deserve to be review bombed to hell and back. WTF.

As I said, I first posted about this in the bug report topic and my post was promptly deleted because "bugs only, please!"...

 

[Carls Barkley]

I'm going to post some comparison images because my game looks nothing like that

 

[Renevent]

It really is missing a TON of color depth and effect...man...what a bummer.

 

[Renevent]

I'm going to post some comparison images because my game looks nothing like that

I really hope it is a bug, but I have my game running on ultra on a GTX 2080. The only thing I have disabled is motion blur and depth of field, both of which are shit effects.

 

[Curratum]

I'm going to post some comparison images because my game looks nothing like that

I really hope it is a bug, but I have my game running on ultra on a GTX 2080. The only thing I have disabled is motion blur and depth of field, both of which are shit effects.

For what it's worth, I also have DoF and motion blur disabled. AMD RX 570 4GB, drivers are a month or so old.

 

[anvi]

Looks like they just just removed 95% of reflections. I guess that's one way to fix performance instead of doing some actual work. I still wanna play it though, even the original graphics didn't look that good to me. So a slightly worse version is meh.

 

[Gord]

DC just finished downloading, decided to quickly check it out due to curiosity (will probably not play until a couple of patches down the line).
At first glance, performance seemed great, much better than before (although I hadn't played after the latest patches of vanilla).
But then I noticed that the graphics (at least currently and in Skara Brae?) are definitely downgraded - e.g. there are static shadows from scenery, but no shadows by any NPCs or such, and ambient occlusion might be gone, too (not sure on that), lighting is just flat, etc...
Hope that's indeed just a bug.

Btw., anvi : reflections are one thing that's working fine for me.

Edit: might post a few comparison shots later, but old version refused to start for some reason. GOG is re-downloading a couple GB of files now after a file check.

 

[Darth Canoli]

This is really rather awful. They did improve performance A LOT, and I mean like A LOT.

Sadly, this was done by castrating the graphics to the point where max settings now looks like a Unity game and not like a semi-decent UE4 one.

Here's the same area in the original game (above) and the director's cut (below).

Spoiler

VS

Absolutely disgusting. The somewhat fancy visuals in dungeons and some outdoor areas were half the reason I was enjoying the original game, but this shit looks horrible now.

The same amount of uglifying of every area is present everywhere.

They both look like shit, i'd take M&M III graphics over that garbage any day and of course, the performances that goes with it ...

 

[Carls Barkley]

Spoiler

Original:

The Directors Cut:

 

[Infinitron]

Carls Barkley Post the same areas Curratum did

 

[anvi]

For starters character models

Spoiler

Which is the new one? Bottom one is massively better.

 

[Carls Barkley]

Spoiler

Original:

Directors Cut:

 

[Lady_Error]

The only difference I see is less grey and more bloom colors. Though considering how ugly the town in the beginning looked, this may not be a bad thing.

 

[Curratum]

Original:

Directors Cut:

I love how the upper shot is cropped because it's probably a still image from a trailer. Doesn't use the patched in sharpness slider as well.

Also note how the house with the overhanging roof in the original, on the left, is replaced, wall too. Too many polygons for consoles to handle, gotta keep them in check.

 

[Cross]

So they managed to take a PC-exclusive game and somehow rerelease it as a bad console port while advertising it as an enhanced 'director's cut'.

Fargo's snakeoilmanship truly knowns no bounds.

 

[Curratum]

So they managed to take a PC-exclusive game and somehow rerelease it as a bad console port while advertising it as an enhanced 'director's cut'.

Fargo's snakeoilmanship truly knowns no bounds.

That's literally what happened. They added flat but strong lighting in a lot of areas, that makes some of the texture colors pop a bit more, and they are literally pushing a MASSIVE visual downgrade as an upgrade.

 

[Modron]

So they managed to take a PC-exclusive game and somehow rerelease it as a bad console port while advertising it as an enhanced 'director's cut'.

Hey if Deus Ex Human Revolution can port a switch version to PC and call it a director's edition while replacing the ability to purchase the original in stores why can't fargo pull a slightly lesser evil?

 

[Neerasrc]

Original:

Directors Cut:

The original image does not look clear. The problem is here. I think the originals are better. The new game engine looks like cardboard. It's like the difference between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3.

 

[Metro]

Is this shit in a bundle yet?

 

[Butter]

Looks like I get to save my money again. Who knew abstaining from inXile releases would be such a value play!