Fallout 4 Pre-Release Screenshot vs Release

[DivinePaladin]

Ali_16x said:

DivinePaladin said:

There really wasn't a noteworthy difference other than in the one instance of lighting though. You're acting as if it's night and day, when it's marginal polish/optimization outside of the one aspect - one aspect that Bethsoft fans knew from day one was not truly showcased in-game. 

 

And again, mods. Bethesda explicitly stated mod support would be a thing immediately upon reveal. With all due respect, your argument is wholly irrelevant because of that, since they can just say "we used mods lol." They built in a failsafe from the beginning. Not that anybody was calling Fallout 4 good graphically, either. It's a poor looking game, which is to be expected because again, it's Bethsoft. Nobody is going into Fallout expecting Crysis, or even CoD. They're going in expecting an often glitchy experience with shitty graphics that they'll play for months because it's fun.

It seems pretty noteworthy to me, there is no such thing as one instance of lighting, if it's like that in one screenshot, it would have been like that throughout the game, which should be common sense. Even with that small picture, I can clearly see a difference in the lighting, textures and LoD.

And we're not talking about mods here, we're talking about the basic game. Even if it gets graphic mod support, it won't change this. There is no reason for PC developers to downgrade their games since they have so much power.

Bethesda is not just a PC developer. Going by their sales figures they're predominantly console by this point. So they put together a spiced up post-max settings shot and edited it in photoshop to make it pop, the same way every other company does with every other product, because it looks better on a poster than a screenshot at true settings. They (I'd assume they and not Obsidian because Obsidian has no reason to do a live cutscene when they're not the ones working to get sales) did the same thing with the "in-engine" New Vegas cinematic.

 

Difference is, they created a back door with mod support because they can say that screenshot quality is achievable with modding and that a team member put that together through his own mod. You don't seem to be following me there, but they covered their asses simply with the existence of mods. Not that they ever claimed that image was indicative of anything, though, so again it doesn't matter. It's the difference between graphically unimpressive and graphically unimpressive with a moment of "hey this might be 7th gen!"

 

I love the Fallout franchise but the games look like trash and anybody who at any point expected anything better than meh is clearly not familiar with Bethesda. That image never seemed to be something indicative of the final product either, especially since slightly before/after that image was shown they showed hard gameplay footage. It's not dissimilar to throwing a filter over a screenshot and using that as a main promotional image. It's not like Watch Dogs or Colonial Marines where there's promotional gameplay footage shown that's nothing close to the final product.