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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Fallout 4 Pre-Release Screenshot vs Release

OdinHades said:
Ruler said:


Yeah but werent the fallout fans always saying, i much rather want to see a real representation than being latter dowgraded, dont worry about the graphics. Seems fallout 4 was still downgraded at the end

Don't know about other Fallout Fans, but I personally don't care about the graphics of that game at all. I would even have bought it if it had still Fallout 3 graphics, because it's just so damn good when it comes to gameplay. Oh, and all those folks screaming for a new engine for Bethesda? I strongly disagree! That would take at least 5 years for the next game to release! I don't want to wait that long, just use the old engine and give me more Elder Scrolls or Fallout! They can do a new engine after the next game, then it will be ready for Next-Gen. But building a new engine NOW so that it's probably done around the time this gen dies? Doesn't sound very promising to me.

Bethesda had more than enough time working on a new engine



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Ali_16x said:
DivinePaladin said:

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. 


Lol, Bethesda is 100% a PC developer, they always have and they even consider themselves that. They make PC their priority. Just because the sales are higher on consoles doesn't mean they've suddenly turned into console developers, not sure how you would even get to the thought. Nor does it mean if a game has higher PC sales than the console version, they're suddenly PC developers. That logic doesn't work. Actually you can tell that they're PC developers by how different the PC version and console versions are in terms of graphics, they put more time into the PC version.

You missed a word that seems to have completely skewed your response. They are not JUST a PC developer. Yes, they make PC the primary dev platform because of course they do, but they deliver very similar experiences between both PC and console every time. Fallout 3 looked like garbage the year after Crysis came out and that was a PC game first and foremost. They could have blown the console ports out of the water compared to PC with this game but they didn't. They developed with a bottleneck which means they're not "100% PC."  Hence "not just PC." No PC dev bottlenecks the PC game because of the console ports, they go all out and then dumb it down later, which is clearly not what they did here. They merely kept the bells and whistles on sliders for shading and antialiasing as options on PC and set it to Medium for the console ports. 



You should check out my YouTube channel, The Golden Bolt!  I review all types of video games, both classic and modern, and I also give short flyover reviews of the free games each month on PlayStation Plus to tell you if they're worth downloading.  After all, the games may be free, but your time is valuable!

Luke888 said:
OdinHades said:
Not this again...

Yes, ads look better than reality, it's nothing new. Go ahead and order a Big Mac. It won't look as good as in the TV spot. Just get over it already, goddamn!


Well that basically is the problem, they shouldn't be advertising it to be something different from what it actually is . It's funny that you explained it with the Big Mac example because I once saw this video of a guy going around at some Fastfoods and comparing their hamburgers to the ones they advertise for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrZFM2nvLXA

 

Seeing how helpful the employees showed to be when asked to make a better hamburger made me wonder if they know that maybe they can be sued or something for advertising a VERY different product from the one they give you...


After complaning like that, I'm not so sure if it's a good idea to eat the second try. When the taco lady says "it's just for you", I couldn't help to think that she did something nasty. I know a lot of people who would. 



I can't really see the difference. Not enough to care, anyway. To me Fallout looks bad but that screenshot is pretty nice.



Yeah, I think it's clear that this is a "bullshot," and to potentially make matters worse, the original was likely from a PC version running on high or max settings. The picture that the op used is an official press photo provided by Bethesda. I don't condone bullshots, and try to not use them in my articles. But I don't think this one is particularly egregious.
On top of that, I thought it was/is mostly thought that the gameplay footage they showed at the reveal was especially honest, which is commendable. I just don't know that anyone has any screen grabs from that footage. However that would be what you'd have to use to make a better comparison to prove false promises as many developers have been guilty of.



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OdinHades said:
Not this again...

Yes, ads look better than reality, it's nothing new. Go ahead and order a Big Mac. It won't look as good as in the TV spot. Just get over it already, goddamn!


It will if the little old lady that prepares them for the ad makes them haha. Big Mac per hour haha.



 

 

DivinePaladin said:

You missed a word that seems to have completely skewed your response. They are not JUST a PC developer. Yes, they make PC the primary dev platform because of course they do, but they deliver very similar experiences between both PC and console every time. Fallout 3 looked like garbage the year after Crysis came out and that was a PC game first and foremost. They could have blown the console ports out of the water compared to PC with this game but they didn't. They developed with a bottleneck which means they're not "100% PC."  Hence "not just PC." No PC dev bottlenecks the PC game because of the console ports, they go all out and then dumb it down later, which is clearly not what they did here. They merely kept the bells and whistles on sliders for shading and antialiasing as options on PC and set it to Medium for the console ports. 


And where did I say they we're just a PC developer? You called them mainly a console developer because of sales but that doesn't define the studio. Bethesda always been a PC developers, that's in their blood. If it isn't obvious how bad the framerate is on both PS4 & XBO for a game with a huge budget. 

Are you also going to call CD Project Red a console developer because of the sales on consoles? Lol, they're PC developers as PC developers can be, same with The Witcher 3, had pretty bad framerate on PS4, not as much on Xbox One. They also downgraded the PC version, and as I said before, these guys are huge PC developers.



"There is only one race, the pathetic begging race"

Ali_16x said:
DivinePaladin said:

You missed a word that seems to have completely skewed your response. They are not JUST a PC developer. Yes, they make PC the primary dev platform because of course they do, but they deliver very similar experiences between both PC and console every time. Fallout 3 looked like garbage the year after Crysis came out and that was a PC game first and foremost. They could have blown the console ports out of the water compared to PC with this game but they didn't. They developed with a bottleneck which means they're not "100% PC."  Hence "not just PC." No PC dev bottlenecks the PC game because of the console ports, they go all out and then dumb it down later, which is clearly not what they did here. They merely kept the bells and whistles on sliders for shading and antialiasing as options on PC and set it to Medium for the console ports. 


And where did I say they we're just a PC developer? You called them mainly a console developer because of sales but that doesn't define the studio. Bethesda always been a PC developers, that's in their blood. If it isn't obvious how bad the framerate is on both PS4 & XBO for a game with a huge budget. 

Are you also going to call CD Project Red a console developer because of the sales on consoles? Lol, they're PC developers as PC developers can be, same with The Witcher 3, had pretty bad framerate on PS4, not as much on Xbox One. They also downgraded the PC version, and as I said before, these guys are huge PC developers.

Again you misundertand. The first sentence in my comment beforehand was "Bethesda is not just a PC developer." This was a response to your final sentence stating that PC devs shouldn't have to downgrade seeing as they have so much power. Bethesda has had to downgrade for over a decade now, because they're developing with a bottleneck as a console developer. The current gen is still weak as hell compared to PCs, and Fallout shows that. The game is relatively well optimized for console and the frame rate still chugs fairly often. 

 

Bethesda clearly created this game with bottleneck in mind; they developed around the weaker platforms and adjusted UP to make the PC version simply run better. The Witcher was designed for PC players first and foremost, and adjusted down for consoles. (Not very much mind you because TW3 was very well optimized.) The sales breakdowns seem to show this, too, from what we can tell of Fallout's sales at this point. Developing for PC does not make you a PC dev even if you historically used to be. Bethesda at this point is if nothing else a hybrid developer that leans predominantly console Because they bottleneck themselves in order to make all three experiences the same with slightly more or less polish instead of far and away making the PC version the best and making the console versions less impressive but functionally identical. Publisher/developer hybrid studios focus on what sells most and what's most efficient for them. Look at the patch setup; Steam is the fastest way to get patches out of the three, so make beta patches for PC players used to Bethesda being broken and then fix them almost entirely by the time they reach the vast majority of players on console. Bethesda can afford this kind of development because they're predominantly a console studio now. If nothing else is going to make you see this, for God's sake they dumbed down the entire RPG mechanics of the game to make it more accessible. PC developers don't tend to do that because PC players aren't casual buyers. 

 

It's also worth noting, as an aside, that at this point you've stopped acknowledging every other comment pointing out the fact that this is the one instance of an unrepresentative press photo, and that the game is almost exactly as it was shown almost unedited for 15 or so minutes at E3. Because of this, to me it seems like you made this thread solely to create controversy out of something that's not controversial. 



You should check out my YouTube channel, The Golden Bolt!  I review all types of video games, both classic and modern, and I also give short flyover reviews of the free games each month on PlayStation Plus to tell you if they're worth downloading.  After all, the games may be free, but your time is valuable!

DivinePaladin said:

Again you misundertand. The first sentence in my comment beforehand was "Bethesda is not just a PC developer." This was a response to your final sentence stating that PC devs shouldn't have to downgrade seeing as they have so much power. Bethesda has had to downgrade for over a decade now, because they're developing with a bottleneck as a console developer. The current gen is still weak as hell compared to PCs, and Fallout shows that. The game is relatively well optimized for console and the frame rate still chugs fairly often. 

 

Bethesda clearly created this game with bottleneck in mind; they developed around the weaker platforms and adjusted UP to make the PC version simply run better. The Witcher was designed for PC players first and foremost, and adjusted down for consoles. (Not very much mind you because TW3 was very well optimized.) The sales breakdowns seem to show this, too, from what we can tell of Fallout's sales at this point. Developing for PC does not make you a PC dev even if you historically used to be. Bethesda at this point is if nothing else a hybrid developer that leans predominantly console Because they bottleneck themselves in order to make all three experiences the same with slightly more or less polish instead of far and away making the PC version the best and making the console versions less impressive but functionally identical. Publisher/developer hybrid studios focus on what sells most and what's most efficient for them. Look at the patch setup; Steam is the fastest way to get patches out of the three, so make beta patches for PC players used to Bethesda being broken and then fix them almost entirely by the time they reach the vast majority of players on console. Bethesda can afford this kind of development because they're predominantly a console studio now. If nothing else is going to make you see this, for God's sake they dumbed down the entire RPG mechanics of the game to make it more accessible. PC developers don't tend to do that because PC players aren't casual buyers. 

 

It's also worth noting, as an aside, that at this point you've stopped acknowledging every other comment pointing out the fact that this is the one instance of an unrepresentative press photo, and that the game is almost exactly as it was shown almost unedited for 15 or so minutes at E3. Because of this, to me it seems like you made this thread solely to create controversy out of something that's not controversial. 

What are you talking about? Where did I say they were just a PC developer? Please show me. You said "Bethesda is not just a PC developer". Did I ever say that they were? Please stop saying "you're misunderstanding" because you have no idea what you're talking about. You're the only one misunderstanding, because you don't even know what you said. You seem to be going in a circle here.

"The game is relatively well optimized for console and the frame rate still chugs fairly often" You seem to be contradicting yourself there, if it's well optimized then why is the frame rate chugging?

The game was done before the game was even announced, the time before the announcement and upto the release, they were fixing the bugs in the game. That means the graphics that were running at E3 were running on a game that was basically at the final state. 

And now you're saying that the Witcher 3 is different from Fallout 4, lol. Not going to bother replying to the rest, everything you've been saying is ridiculous. You can reply, I won't bother even looking at it.



"There is only one race, the pathetic begging race"

Ali_16x said:

What are you talking about? Where did I say they were just a PC developer? Please show me. You said "Bethesda is not just a PC developer". Did I ever say that they were? Please stop saying "you're misunderstanding" because you have no idea what you're talking about. You're the only one misunderstanding, because you don't even know what you said. You seem to be going in a circle here.

"The game is relatively well optimized for console and the frame rate still chugs fairly often" You seem to be contradicting yourself there, if it's well optimized then why is the frame rate chugging?

The game was done before the game was even announced, the time before the announcement and upto the release, they were fixing the bugs in the game. That means the graphics that were running at E3 were running on a game that was basically at the final state. 

And now you're saying that the Witcher 3 is different from Fallout 4, lol. Not going to bother replying to the rest, everything you've been saying is ridiculous. You can reply, I won't bother even looking at it.

If you're not gonna do the work don't bother to keep it up. You refuse to touch anything else in the thread at this point and have outright ignored every point I've made besides the one you deem the easiest to dispute, and you refuse to go back and reread the chain of comments when you don't understand the path to where we are now.

 

I reference mods as their failsafe if somebody tries to question the bullshot -> "We're not talking about mods" and then you go on to say  "There's no reason PC developers to downgrade their games since they have so much power." -> Bethesda isn't solely a PC developer and haven't been since Morrowind and to a larger extent Oblivion. 

 

I have not said that you claimed they're solely a PC dev, but you can't argue that they're a PC dev when they're cutting power/limiting themselves/what have you to make the development for all three platforms easier and uniform. I've not once heard of CDPR cutting back the quality of the PC version in order to make the console versions of TW3 more in line. They made the game and then got it to run on console. Bethesda clearly made the game for three platforms from the outset, and made them to be identical outside of the graphics sliders. They even put mod support on the XBO version (allegedly), further showing that the game from day one has been about giving the same experience to all platforms for better or worse. They chose this path instead of making the console ports inferior visually by a mile - not that this would make the game look good by today's standards on PC - showing, again, my point that if there was any "downgrade" they chose to design that way from day one. This falsifies that part of your comment twofold: They have a reason to downgrade from what they could've done because they're not a PC developer. They're a developer who develops equally for console and PC - and at that, one who uses the PC players as a way to beta test the patches and pretty much nothing more. 

 

Now that we're hopefully on the same page for the chain of events, I can continue. CDPR does not develop with a bottleneck. They develop for one platform first and port down. Bethesda develops uniformly to the standards of the lowest platform and ports up. One of these is a trait for PC devs and one is a trait for multiplatform console devs. 

 

As for my optimization comment, the word "relatively" exists there. It's RELATIVELY well optimized on console but it's a game that's very hardware intensive. I only have experienced chugs deep in Boston proper, and I understand why that is; there's a lot to render there on top of keeping much of the game's data (character  locations, quest lines, RNG Raider attacks, random events, random loot in containers, etc.) active at any one point. That's a consequence of the development choice they made overall. As such, the game is optimized for what it is on console, but still chugs because they chose a uniform development and accepted the outcome of that even if it meant sub-15fps in extreme cases. Apologies is that came if that came off as a contradiction.

 

Onto the next part: Yes, you're correct, the game looks as it did at E3. That's literally exactly what I said. The last paragraph of my last comment exists to point out to you, the OP, that you're complaining about the single instance of bullshotting that this game has, but ignoring everything others have pointed out about how that same reveal where we got that press photo also showed us a huge chunk of unedited gameplay. This game was not, say, Watch Dogs, where we saw one thing and got something much different; we all saw Fallout 4 upon reveal, expected Fallout 4 up until launch, and got Fallout 4. Again, that photo that inspired the OP was a press photo, not dissimilar to how they marketed New Vegas with that CG video that looked sort of like the game but not exactly like it. 

 

So, there, I think I made everything clear enough so that there's no misunderstandings in my comment or misunderstandings about my previous statements. If there's any need for further explanation I can't promise I'll be willing to do so because I've made myself as clear as can be. So in summary: You've made a thread to create controversy without acknowledging the context of the image you focused on. Said image has never been considered indicative of the game, and we literally got unfiltered gameplay at the same event where that image was released. Fans knew what to expect beforehand, rendering the bullshot irrelevant. Moreover, they have the means to argue that the image in question is taken from the game if they wanted to, by saying they used some mods that a developer made pre-release, because they explicitly promised full mod support at the very same reveal. You have since come to argue that Bethsoft shouldn't have had to make the game look worse than that image or downgrade from that image (despite your stated knowledge that the E3 build is and has always been the standard) because they are a PC dev. However, going by how they develop equally for three platforms, focusing on the weakest and porting upward, they are not a PC dev, but a multiplatform dev first and foremost. 

 

I think that's just about everything.  



You should check out my YouTube channel, The Golden Bolt!  I review all types of video games, both classic and modern, and I also give short flyover reviews of the free games each month on PlayStation Plus to tell you if they're worth downloading.  After all, the games may be free, but your time is valuable!