Blackhawk wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 8:45 am
Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 8:17 pm
disarm wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 3:55 pm
I'm not all that impressed either, but I'm also not sure what I should have been expecting. Are the graphics clearer and a bit more detailed? Sure, but it's not an experience-altering difference. If anything, I think this helps to illustrate just how great these games looked when they were originally released.
At the very least, I'd be expecting higher resolution textures and possibly better character models, especially when it comes to the first game. The lighting I can understand needing an update, but I think there's been a longstanding discussion when it comes to remasters and lighting, and whether a lighting update can change the original intentions of a game. Good lighting can be critical to a game's mood in terms of tone and atmosphere. Unfortunately, the feel I get from this remaster is that they didn't really take the original vision into consideration. There are a lot of scenes in the first game which stand out partly because of the lighting itself, and I've seen the comparison trailers, and the remastered version of those scenes have all their details washed out in favour of lighting the whole scene evenly.
I generally agree with that. They're doing a lot of reimagining, which isn't always welcome in remasters. For some planets they've gone by the original concept art rather than the game and completely recolored and redcorated the environment. Oh, and they seem to have implemented that beloved feature from Andromeda: lens flare!
Mass Effect: JJ Abrams Edition.
Yeah, I noticed the lens flare. When in doubt, add lens flare! It's particularly noticeable in the shot from the first game when the Citadel is revealed in its full glory. In the original game, it looked dark and menacing. The same scene in the remastered version is brightly lit and full of lens flares. And that's the kind of change I'm talking about in general. It fundamentally changes the feel.
Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 12:56 pm
Rumpy wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 3:26 pm
Am I the only one who find that the lighting in the remaster from what we've seen, is a step down from the originals? Where's the nuance in the lighting? It seems everything needs to be well-lit these days, even something that was originally supposed to be in shadows for atmosphere. The eyes look dead in the remaster, whereas in the originals, they've conveyed emotion. I can't say I'm much of a fan of what I've seen so far.
Remember when colored lighting was first introduced into the gaming world? Can't remember if it was a DirectX function or a hardware thing (or both), but if you go back and look at games introduced around that time, you would think we lived in a world populated by continuous, visible rainbow lighting. They overused it (to put it lightly - ha!) because they COULD, not because that was the way the world looked. Basically a tech demo, and "look at the new tech we have in our engine!" or whatever.
Just because you have the tools to light worlds in tons of new ways in games, doesn't mean you SHOULD. Contrast matters, and it looks like they have removed most of it from the original. On the WHOLE, just based on that video, though, the new version does look a lot better, but I think it's mostly due to updated or higher res textures. I guess you always have the option of adjusting gamma in the new one to restore a bit of darkness, and deep blacks.
Oh yeah, great example. I mean, for some games, I think it's less critical, but this is largely a narrative set of games, where lighting was integral to the artistic intentions of a scene. And lighting everything evenly in this case would be akin to removing a director's selected color caste/ temperature from a movie's mastering process to instead present it in glaring white temp.
Yeah, the textures are improved, and they do the legwork in making it look better and mostly because it looks cleaner, but there's no nuance left in the scenes. If you look back at the previous comparison video, some of the scenes look pretty bad in comparison to the older ones. They're more brightly lit, but they lack the complexity of a more interesting scene, and the nuance is gone. I agree, that just because they have the tools, they that they should. It's certainly possible to remaster the lighting and still be mindful of the original intention, but it really feels like this wasn't the case. Likely has something to do with some on the team not being there when the original was being put together.
Gamma will only get you so far. American Truck Simulator recently had a lighting overhaul, from static lighting to dynamic lighting, and it looks terrible, especially on older hardware, as everything in daylight is too bright and washed out, and even if one lowers the brightness, it doesn't stop the fact that some functions like mirrors are still too bright to use normally.