CD Projekt Explains Why Latest The Witcher III Trailer Isn’t As Impressive As The First One

You’ll probably remember the whole The Witcher III downgrade debate, on which we reported the reply of Community Manager Marcin Mormot. Despite the reassurances of CD Projekt, the debate is still ongoing; this probably led Studio Lead Adam Badowski decided to explain in an interview with GRYOnline why exactly the VGA trailer seems less impressive than the first one (credits for the translation to gregski, moderator of the official forums).

If someone watches this trailer they will notice that character models in the game look better, even Geralt is more perfect – he has better shaders for example. We added tons of details, improved the facial expressions and lip sync significantly. We have voiceovers in 7 languages so we’re not able to record the changes on actor’s faces in performance capture technology like in Call of Duty for example. It wouldn’t fit into 3 Blu-ray discs. So we used a dynamic system based on sounds, similarly to TW1 and TW2 where it came out poorly. In the Witcher 3 it’s incomparably better made, we raised the bar for the whole industry compared to games that have to use the same system(like Bioware games) and that also cannot be seen in that trailer.

What is subjective though is the quality of lighting and exposure in that trailer. We made a mistake that some of the scenes was rendered in dark and grey-ish colours. Such option was simply drawn by the engine. I think there will be places where the game will look stunning and noone will accuse us that it looks different than the first trailer. Unfortunately there will be also fragments where the game will look worse. It’s the same with GTA – when the squall comes and it’s all grey, especially in the forest, the game will come out as worse than the one from the living city illuminated by neons.

According to CD Projekt, then, it’s primarily a matter of setting. As The Witcher III features a dynamic day/night cycle, the lighting can vary wildly and therefore, some scenes may appear better or worse depending on the time of day. This explanation is certainly not without merit; just look at this GIF to show how different this scene looks with varying lighting conditions (please click to view it at the appropriate size).

However, it is also true that regardless of lighting, some textures seemed to have a lower resolution than others in the VGA trailer. This is probably something that’s still being tweaked by CD Projekt, so there’s no need to panic.

You can take a look at the latest 15 minutes gameplay footage released a couple of days ago, taken from a PC running with High graphics setting (Ultra is still being optimized).