Anyone else not impressed with Witcher 3 graphics?

The game is great, don't get me wrong, but I keep seeing people talk about how incredible, amazing, gorgeous, earthshattering, beautiful, etc... these graphics are. I am just not seeing it. Once again....the gameplay and story are great so fanboys relax, chill, have a beer.

The foliage is the worst, it just looks horrible from the grass all the way up the trees. And the way it constantly sways is not believeable at all, very awkward and not natural looking. The only thing that really does look great are the characters. Don't get me wrong, that is important, but the world just does not impress me in the least. I am not really being given that "I gotta explore these lands" type of feel like I did with Skyrim (not comparing the two as games, just an open world game should make me want to explore it). Even GTA 5's environment immersion is incredible and made me want to see it all, whereas this environment makes me think "thank God the rest of the game is great".

I am running it only a mix of high/ultra settings at 1080, the same res I run all my games on, games which look much better.

We have like 5 topics on this already, lol.

To me the game looks great. I agree the swaying of the trees shouldn't always be on (it's like the land of never-ending wind), and the game could (should) have looked better but it does the job. For me it's more about immersion, story and characters, and it pulls that off very well.

Only complaint so far is that the quests leveling are not as streamlined as they should be. I picked up two quests in the same town, once is for recommended level 5 and the other 30.... WTF?

Looks downright fantastic to me.

It's an open world game, it's not a bunch of small rooms. It's why I don't compare the graphics of an mmorpg to a single player game, it makes no sense.

As for GTA 5 looking environment looking better, it doesn't.

Skyrim is a terrible game(I noted that you weren't comparing the games). It has a 6-7 hour main story with lousy production values. The NPCs stare off into space when you talk to them, and the engine craps itself with more than a few characters on screen. The dungeons are copy and pasted, and the physics engine breaks if you go above 120fps. I had that happen to me when I played the game, vsync on a 144hz monitor is higher than 120fps. I never once felt a need to explore Skyrim because the developers didn't develop anything in the unexplored spaces, except for an algorithm that puts copy and pasted dungeons.

@vfibsux and I never agree on anything...but we can at least agree that the Witcher 3 is rather unimpressive graphically.

I never really expected the game to look great- I commented on the pre-release screenshots and footage saying as much, but it just comes down to personal preference. I honestly think The Witcher 3 is an incredibly detailed game. But, just as I thought about the predecessors, there are some steep "lows" to the graphics that really bring down the aspects that shine.

Am I shallow? Sure. But once you spend enough money on your rig, it's hard to justify spending $40+ on a game that you don't think looks particularly good. If I was a huge fan of the Witcher series it'd be one thing - but honestly I often find myself bored with the games. They're not bad games, they just aren't demanding of my attention. It's hard for me to finish any lengthy RPGs these days.

I'm also still spoiled by Crysis. I'm not saying it looks better than The Witcher 3 or any other recent graphical powerhouses, but for its time - it was a stunner. We've yet to see a title come close to looking as good as that game did for the time it was released.

I'm not impressed, never was actually, graphics are great but nothing special.

It doesn't look impressive at all and for good reason, it was downgraded twice. Even a $20 budget indie game developed by a group of like 5 people looks better than a million dollar games created by a team of 50+. You can thank consoles.

Agreed (especially with the wind and trees made of rubber). The game doesn't look bad, but doesn't really impress either. It is serviceable.

Ethan Carter is the best looking game I've seen so far in my life.

Actually the downgrade is only in certain areas.

If you watch the original trailer you will see that they hid the background with a lot of blur and you can still make out the bad visuals in some areas which the release version did better.

With the newest patch I am pretty satisfied with the visuals and IMO it's the best looking open world to date by far.

@saintsatan said:

It doesn't look impressive at all and for good reason, it was downgraded twice. Even a $20 budget indie game developed by a group of like 5 people looks better than a million dollar games created by a team of 50+. You can thank consoles.

The game is UE4, the lighting in UE4 is great. However I think you are missing the point where that isn't an action game, there is next to nothing going on. You cannot compare the game graphically in a fair way.

It's the same argument of why comparing an mmorpg to a sp game makes no sense.

FWIW the art in the Witcher 3 is far better than Ethan Carter.

@JigglyWiggly_ said:

@saintsatan said:

It doesn't look impressive at all and for good reason, it was downgraded twice. Even a $20 budget indie game developed by a group of like 5 people looks better than a million dollar games created by a team of 50+. You can thank consoles.

The game is UE4, the lighting in UE4 is great. However I think you are missing the point where that isn't an action game, there is next to nothing going on. You cannot compare the game graphically in a fair way.

It's the same argument of why comparing an mmorpg to a sp game makes no sense.

FWIW the art in the Witcher 3 is far better than Ethan Carter.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is still using UE3.

The latest Witcher 3 1.03 patch and the new added sharpness has the game looking noticeably better and less blurry.

It's too yellow. The Witcher 1/2 had character, visuals here are very similar to Dragon Age Inquisition.

Funny, I did not see one topic that focused on the graphics being overrated. Thanks for adding your thoughts felipe, but this little swipe was not called for.

@RyviusARC said:

@saintsatan said:

It doesn't look impressive at all and for good reason, it was downgraded twice. Even a $20 budget indie game developed by a group of like 5 people looks better than a million dollar games created by a team of 50+. You can thank consoles.

Actually the downgrade is only in certain areas.

If you watch the original trailer you will see that they hid the background with a lot of blur and you can still make out the bad visuals in some areas which the release version did better.

With the newest patch I am pretty satisfied with the visuals and IMO it's the best looking open world to date by far.

What rez/settings are you running this at....because my game looks nothing like that.

@JigglyWiggly_: We can agree to disagree that GTA 5's environment does not look better. The game's realism is as immersive as it gets for me.

You know, it's true that it makes it less blurry, but I think it makes it much less realistic. I left my sharpness on "low" - things like faces and bark took on this unnatural "stylized" look when the sharpness was on high IMO. Yes - I saw more detail - but it was more "video game" detail and kind of made the synthetic nature of what I was looking at pop out more. I swear I could inspect Geralt's blackheads from 10 feet away ;-)

Eh, maybe just me

Sharpeness on high is only good if you downsample like me.

No I'm not impressed either. I still think games like the Vanishing of Ethan Carter look better than the Witcher. No one seems to mention the clunky gameplay movements or recycled animations though.

It's OK. I think people exaggerate when they say it's best looking open world or one of the bestest looking games. It looks great and uses better tech than Witcher 2, yet Witcher 2 is more pleasing to eyes, due to its aesthetics and strong vision. Witcher 3's vision was compromised.

Bargain bin purchase?

Not sure how this looks bad to anyone.

I think the game looks beautiful. The winds and the foliage are one of my favourite things in this game. And anyone who's been in a forest during strong winds knows that it's not unrealistic. The choice of colours is great also. Sometimes it seems like a painting. It's not very realistic, but it's a choice of art direction.

Maybe there are better looking games, I don't know. Anyway, technicalities apart, I do think the visuals on this game create the perfect mood for its world

@xantufrog: I hear what you are saying, but I love a nice clean and crisp image. I hate how most games these days use shader-based AA solutions. Makes everything look so blurry and dull. I hate FXAA, TXAA, SMAA, etc. The traditional MSAA is the only AA option I like to use. Even then, I rarely use it because games look great at 1440p.

Who knows. Finding flaws? Sure. It's synthetic, not a photo. But how it isn't beautiful artistry despite that? I dunno, man.

For the game world size and the TW3's download size (less than 23 Gb), I think it's fair to look the way it does.

GTA V's download size was 59.1 Gb and doesn't really look better plus its world looks smaller than TW3's.

I must be playing different games, GTA 5 looks so much more realistic and detailed than this game does to me.

@JigglyWiggly_: Sure they're not the same gameplay but there are still action scenes in Ethan Cater and it still looks far better than Witcher 3 and was made with 1/100th of the manpower and money. There's the house fire, the water monster, the space scene, the chase in the mines, ect...

I guess it can. Then again vast areas of GTA V are pretty barren in comparison to TW3.

I don't see how Ethan Carter is all that relevant - I you couldn't run The Witcher 3 as a game using that same engine and those graphics levels (not in the same hardware realm as TW3 at least). This comparison may be extreme, but it feels a bit like comparing Riven and the original Tomb Raider and saying TR "sux" in comparison - the game is engineered in a different way that allows for the eye candy. GTAV feels like a more fair comparison (and, notably, the visual difference is more ambiguous, if you notice)

It wasn't a swipe, lol..... just a funny comment that in less than one week heaps of people started talking about the graphics. Don't take it the wrong way :)

To me W3 looks pretty damn impressive if you consider the world size. The only aspects of the graphics that are disappointing is Geralts animations and occasional character pop in

Same here. Maybe it's just me. But, it looks like TW3's world can swallow up the world of both Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4 plus GTA V combined. Then again, maybe not. Being stuck with just a horse makes it seem far bigger.

Well, CD Projekt does like to re-release their games for cheaper, with all included DLC, and improved graphics in under a year from release.

Usually whenever that's the case, waiting seems like a no-brainer. But I guess it depends how much time you have to replay super-lengthy SP RPG's. I'm sure this game has great replayability, I just doubt I'd want to replay it anytime soon if I did play it now.

The poor foliage is there as reminder: You have work to do.

Don't want the whole world to end while you're busy looking at grass.

Clunky gameplay is very true and I am baffled that is has not been mentioned by GS in there sold out review. Recycled animations? Seriously? Which game does not recycle animations?

I haven't played a ton of The Witcher 3, so I can't comment on the animation recycling specifically in this case. But usually, for example, when fighting, games have a pool of different animations that it cycles through before it's playing the same animations. Think of Batman: Arkham City - you can play through a few fights before you noticed attack animations being re-used. Then think of The Witcher 2 when engaging in fist-fights. In that, you'll have blatantly recycled through the punching animation a few times before finishing a single fist fight.

It's like, the difference between a game that feels polished and rich, versus a game that feels cheap and lazily put together. I understand the scope of their goals is great, but when they have to make sacrifices to the point of where you can't get through a single fist-fight without it looking like a joke, it gets to the point where you wonder if those goals were worth achieving in the first place.

if you arent impressed by this:

then i just dunno what to say

This seems more like a combat issue than simply recycling animation. The combat from my hours of playing is pretty mediocre and sometimes terrible. I find it unusual and petty to complain about the recycled animations when its common in the vast majority of games of this type.

I think it looks great. Although I feel like I'm playing in a water colored painting sometimes, but I guess that was their vision.
Just noticed Patch 1.03 now has a off, low, and high sharpening option. What are others playing at? I thought I read that they said they toned down the sharpening because it made foliage look bad, yet now they re-enable this?

@goodkingmog: looks like a ps1 game.

I have it set on high. I find the game was blurry before with some built in FXAA or something. Now with 1.03 and sharpening on high, I think the graphics look much clearer.

I think you don't know what a PS1 game looks like so here a picture to help you with your problem.

@goodkingmog said:

if you arent impressed by this:

then i just dunno what to say

The screens look great, don't know what to tell you because the game does not look that great while playing it. Maybe it is the stupid animations where the grass and trees are constantly dancing?

how can it not look that great in game, when those are screenshots taken directly while playing? i do not understand....

Visually the game looks great... Is it the best looking game?... No, but it is one of the best looking open world games.

Once the whole graphics thing blows over and the games "hype" many will come to appreciate the game for what it is and with that said many who are on the other spectrum will also see some of its flaws.

I am really enjoying it but I am running into crashes and bugs more often than any game I have played in recent memory.

• Anyone else have trouble opening or lighting things unless you are in the absolute perfect spot? its like wrestling a elephant.
• Has anyone called the horse only for him to get stuck walking into a fence?
• Has anyone noticed that creatures have radius and even though they can see you they won't attack because your not in their radius?... Even worse is that you can attack them walk back a bunch of steps and they go from hostile back to their circling around routine.
• Has anyone ran into any cave's out side of the main story?... I am having trouble finding any variety when exploring all I run into is bandit camps consisting of 3-5 guys and a tent or nothing at all just group of bandits.

The game is great but man does it need patching.

So far in my 10 hours of play time I am enjoying and I have a lot more to see and do before I make a decision on the game but from a technical stand point its worse than a Bethesda game.

The reason I love Bethesda RPG's is that they reward you for exploring... The whole enemy level thing just takes that away from you, In a elder scrolls you can at level 1 just explore and the enemies accommodate your difficulty level and player level, where as in The Witcher enemies higher than 3-4 levels than you are impossible to kill and the ones on your level are push overs even on the hardest difficulty. Also the combat is just spam and roll nothing else is effective.

Seriously once the hype for this game dies out like every game and when people stop focusing on the graphics you guys will be left with a 8/10 game AT best in my opinion.

Its a great game. Not the worst and not the best and that goes for the graphics as well.

Had to get it off my chest.

I don't care much for the graphics I just wanted a open world RPG with variety and that wasn't buggy... I don't think I quite got that but I will see with if the bugs are fixed and if the game gives me more variety with more play time.

My biggest complaint is the NPCs seem kind of pointless. Very few of them have dialogue trees. In Elder Scrolls... people actually have lives and back-stories. It is fun just running into random people and learning about them and doing quests for them. Also, there are many people in Skyrim who have taken an arrow to the knee. I am yet to encounter anybody who has taken an arrow to the knee in TW3. hehe ;)

I looted everything around the merchant and sold it to him.

Well I'm not f'ing lying dude, those screens look better than anything I see in game. The grass/trees look horrible moving with the wind, that is my only theory here. Did you even take those screens or did you find them somewhere? If you took them what resolution are you playing at? Because I have everything on ultra right now and it doesn't look that good for me in game. I play at 1080p with a Geforce 770 4GB.

I'm actually constantly impressed with how great it looks. Sure it doesn't have the best textures, lighting, etc, but how it all comes together in a world that is so alive is phenomenal. I wasn't really expecting anything graphics wise, I bought this game because of the gameplay (which is fantastic too) but I'm really liking how good the game looks. I'm not maxing the game out (1440p , GTX 970, i7 4770k) and it still looks great. One thing I noticed is that the Nvidia hair option gives me a 10 FPS hit and that seems like a bit too much for what it does. Is that normal?