Why do people think Ep Duscae looked more detailed? It has less draw distance, lower texture res, less/no texture filtering, rocks were less detailed and looked different, and had a greasy vaseline bloom smear filter to hide the 900p res and TAA, the grass also looked way more patchy and the ground texture tile when seen from high up looked way worse than the final. Ep Duscae imo looked worse than the 2014 TGS trailer/Walkthrough vid Duscae, which is the Duscae most people talk about when talking about missing the old Duscae look, and compared to the final game Ep Duscae didn't look as detailed as that either. This was even apparent back when the game first came out.
The final game even added more vegetation to the area, the main difference in the environments look was it no longer had the vaseline bloom filter, but that's less about detail and more about the filters color grading, which is why Ep Duscae looked more dull and muted color wise compared to the final Duscae. Other than that the particle effects were changed but that's also less about detail and more of an aesthetic change. Like how Noctis's weapon summoning particles in 2014 compared to how it was in 2013, and changed again in 2014 to 2015, and again in 2016, but I highly doubt that was changed due to performance, otherwise... explain Ep Ignis v2 with full power of the ring loool.
They also removed the vignette filter around the edges that was in Ep Duscae which also helped in making the final image look more vibrant, I remember seeing a lot of people complain about the vignette in Ep Duscae.
It's pretty obvious that bloom vaseline filter on Ep Duscae was there for just that because if you break out of bounds in the Ep Duscae and go far enough that filter disables and you see the regular sky and color grading, so that filter was only applied to the playable area of Ep Duscae for the sake of the demo. I can see how some might prefer the more dull muted color grading of Ep Duscae over the more vibrant colors of the final, but to think it was more detailed than what's in the final? Nah fampaitachi
The final game even added more vegetation to the area, the main difference in the environments look was it no longer had the vaseline bloom filter, but that's less about detail and more about the filters color grading, which is why Ep Duscae looked more dull and muted color wise compared to the final Duscae. Other than that the particle effects were changed but that's also less about detail and more of an aesthetic change. Like how Noctis's weapon summoning particles in 2014 compared to how it was in 2013, and changed again in 2014 to 2015, and again in 2016, but I highly doubt that was changed due to performance, otherwise... explain Ep Ignis v2 with full power of the ring loool.
They also removed the vignette filter around the edges that was in Ep Duscae which also helped in making the final image look more vibrant, I remember seeing a lot of people complain about the vignette in Ep Duscae.
It's pretty obvious that bloom vaseline filter on Ep Duscae was there for just that because if you break out of bounds in the Ep Duscae and go far enough that filter disables and you see the regular sky and color grading, so that filter was only applied to the playable area of Ep Duscae for the sake of the demo. I can see how some might prefer the more dull muted color grading of Ep Duscae over the more vibrant colors of the final, but to think it was more detailed than what's in the final? Nah fampaitachi
the final game just look flat, very low contrast, washed out color, poor, tasteless colorgrading, weird skin shading/SSS, poor vegetation coloring in relation to the graphic spec they were bound to ( among other things )
they went banana and made all tree neon green but when you do that they look like shit from a distance no matter at what settings because they are bright and unshaded, if you have darker green vegetation you dont have that issue, especially in a game like this where ther's high view distance nearly everywhere, whoever was in charge of the direction in epd knew what he was doing contrary to vanilla
vanilla has no direction whatsoever, they didnt even try to give it anything to differentiate/elevate itself, it does look good, but ther's like a billion game that look good, epd had something to it, it had a coherent art direction that even translated to the level design too
about the level design and objects, not because ther's more mean better, epd had object scattered in a meaningful way, in vanilla they just kept adding shit that just ruin the view on a composition level, the 2014 build had the best level composition by far with a lot of negative space
also obviously when peoples say they prefer epd its for the art direction and not the 900p lol and the reason they are more attached to it is because they actually played it, got invested, we can all agree that 2014 build is a better epd technically but who played that ?
i could go on about how epd is far superior in many details ( they had that direction since years, and iterated it) that most dont even notice that are simply inexistant in vanilla wich is a rushed 6 months job at best
the reality is that epd had a distinct dark/gritty atmospheric direction, vanilla look like any ubisoft game, dull and flat
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