One of the things I really loved about Red Dead Redemption was the spontaneous little narrative things in the world. I was in Mexico and there was a lady out hanging up wet clothes. Someone said something about a storm coming. Then a couple minutes later the wind started blowing and it got cloudy. Then it started to thunder and rain. Rain actually accumulated (really a good simulation of it) into puddles and all the foliage blew in the wind.
When I saw the trailer to this I was so excited for an entire new game based purely around that kind of stuff. Then came the disappointment.
the requirements of a press conference demo and a final release are enormously different. as a game's being iteratively developed, the team's making decisions about what to keep and what to cut based on the limited resources of the target systems.
the real tragedy of watch_dogs was that it was kind of a boring game with an asshole protag and a dumb story.
Watch Dogs Legion is especially galling because it's basically like "The surveillance state is a slippery slope to fascist control, which is why we're taking out the PMC in charge of England and putting the cops back in charge"
what to keep and what to cut based on the limited resources of the target systems.
If they added a "super-ultra setting" for people who're above the recommended specs and looked like the demo, it wouldn't quite as false.
The bullshot didn't begin here, I think it was with Killzone on the PS3 but this example sure was bad.
I remember people complaining about bullshots in the PS2 era. Madden has been guilty of doing them for at least that long.
2 NPCs vs 10+ NPCs? The lights are on? I really don't understand what people expected
Also the shadows are more accurate on the right, the left has no shadows
Watch Dogs is still an awesome game with good graphics. The reflections and stuff may not be jaw-dropping but the lighting in general looks really pretty and walking or driving around at night is amazing. I wish the game had a longer lifespan like GTA5. The gameplay feels weighty compared to Watch Dogs 2 and the over the shoulder camera was better. WD2 feels way to arcade-y and easy and the city feels less dense and interesting. The map in WD1 feels like it could be filled out with so much more stuff. I only played the game years after it came out. Still nice to just drive around in the game.
