I assumed a witches brew of undead bones, waiting for the hungry traveler. Or maybe it’s what the monsters do with adventurers like you
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Saddened by how little I feel looking at screenshots of DARK3
Actually it’s not even sadness, it’s like, “Well, that’s a game I played”
Last night I was perusing the concept art and man, it feels so much more atmospheric than the in-game analogs
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Well I mean, concept art is always like that.
I think DS3’s engine does a pretty great job, overall. The geometry complexity is a huge increase over previous games. and they did a good job of bringing back the hazy, dreamy visual style from Demon’s Souls.
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Not in my experience. Keeping within From’s catalogue, I find that a lot of Bloodborne’s locations are marked improvements over their illustrated sources.
I think what’s most disappointing to me about the conceptual/actual split for Dark3’s locales is how richly dark the former look. Maybe there was a concern about legibility, or it clashed with the devs wanting to set most of the game during daytime. It can be forgotten how dark Demon’s Souls’ darkest parts are, and it’s a big part of that game’s environmental drama. Dark3’s darkest parts by comparison are a sort of blue-gray, and while that can work to its advantage in some spots, like when you view the high wall from Irithyll and the lighting makes it appear unreal, I think it generally flattens the game and makes some areas simply dull and inappropriately bright, like Farron keep. I also think that Dark Souls made an intelligent decision by switching up its ambient lighting between areas (a dramatic example is seeing how the colors and depth of darks change once you enter Blighttown from the depths), and think Dark3 could’ve done the same to make the catacombs look darker than, uh, any terranean site.
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i generally like the way 3 looks so far, though agree the palette is rather monotonous.
i like how cluttered the areas are with strange little details, like the gravestones piling up into absurdity and spilling into impossibly tight corners in the opening area, or the abandoned, inaccessible houses in the settlement that cling to the cliffs like clusters of barnacles.
the Souls trick of signposting where you’ve been and where you’re going on the horizon (and letting you create a mental impression of your journey instead of giving you a map) is constantly at play, on the largest scale yet. It felt particularly good on the bridge where the calcified demon attacks, since i’d seen it from numerous angles, and could look back on all of them once i was there. It felt like placing a puzzle piece.
i guess it’s an obvious road to take, but i like the reverse progression from 1, beginning atop the high wall and descending into the land below, with the wall looming over you.
the impression i had going into 3 is that it is the most “empty calories” souls game and i have a hard time not agreeing with that, but also i like candy bars
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Throwing on a Reshade thing was such an obvious improvement it oughta be mandatory
Yeah, the black level is definitely too high. Correcting that alone, improves everything across the board. Including the few colors which are there.
Demon’s Souls is noteably darker than all 3 Dark Souls.
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I just attempted Dark Souls at 1080p60 and it’s so amazing I don’t know how wtf wow. Conversely, I just got it running at 180p60 on my laptop, and it’s the cutest Dark Souls…
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Dark Souls 1 looks great at higher resolutions. The texture assets scale in detail/resolution, as you increase the rendering resolution. Demon’s Souls is the same exact way (although the max detail is a lot lower), as found out by the RPCS3 devs. Another 6 months and I think it will be very playable.
I made a zip folder with screenshots comparing Dark Souls 3 normal Vs. Dark Souls 3 with my own custom Reshade settings. These will only be “spoilers” for those who have not played the game at all. I only took shots up to the area where you first meet the person who can increase your soul level.
*updated pics Jan 2018
I put my settings as a Reshade preset on the DS3 mod nexus:
For those who do not know, Reshade allows you to inject various post process effects into most games. Such as Anti-Aliasing, color tweaks, bloom, etc.
If you are really hurting for performance and/or need to squeeze every last frame per second, but would still like to fix the black level----skip Reshade all together. Just loading the injector, before utilizing any effects, knocks off a couple of frames per second. And cards older than 4 years can get saturated real quick. Instead, setup a custom color profile using your video driver or your TV/Monitor’s built in profiles, and fix the black level that way. My preset is subtle. Fixing the black level will get you 90% of the visual change.
For now, I tried to keep it faithful to the original vision of the game. Although I have several effects applied, the overall output is not extreme.
Note, black level/darkness of the image is set to my taste, according to a TV I am currently using, which has a decent, but not great panel, as far as blacks go. So A. my RGB range is set to limited wherease it should be set to “Full Range” for most computer monitors. B. depending upon the quality of your monitor panel, YMMV on how this looks (too dark, too light, about right). As an example, my laptop screen isn’t great, so there’s a lot of black crush in the not desired ways.
The DS3 mod nexus has several Reshade presets available. I decided to do my own, because I like the setup for the newest version of reshade and most presets on the nexus are for older versions of Reshade.
On the Nexus, I like Dark Souls 4.0 pretty well, if you disable the film grain effect. Give it a try, too. (His new screenshots aren’t the best at showing how his settings change the look. I.E. I wasn’t aware there is film grain, until I tried his presets).
I like how he did his bloom/HDR effects. The bloom is very pleasing and still maintains a lot of detail and contrast in highlights. Especially when looking at clouds/sky, you get really rich detail. Though, there is something a little off, for me, about how he adjusted the image brightness and/or black level. Which may be due to my aforementioned use of a TV. That could be fixed with some tweaking, however.
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I spent a bunch of time with a different approach to how I use the shaders and made a large update to my Reshade preset.
Here are the new screenshot comparisons (Now in 1080p!)
You can read all the details at the mod nexus. The main changes are way better colors, which are also quite nuanced. Much better detail in highlights, which means skies and lightly colored bricks/stone look much better. Added bloom effect which reminds me of Dark Souls 1.
I put my settings as a Reshade preset on the DS3 mod nexus:
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guys I finally finished dark souls 3
well, not really. still have archdragon and the ringed city left, but I saw credits what more do you want from me
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I’m still working on it! What kind of character did you play?
quality
dex highest stat most of the game
On Steam May 25th.
It’d be great if it was a free upgrade, but I doubt Namco would do that.
Curious if they’re going to much more then up the resolution and frame rate (even on PC lol). A lot of the game’s assets are already pretty high quality stuff.
Always a chance that they go full Scholar of the First Sin though which is exciting.
and i just bought the steam version a couple of weeks back at £20 as it hasn’t been on sale the entire time i’ve been back on pc
I’ve heard that Steam refunds are sometimes way more generous then they advertise so maybe the announcement of this new version could be enough of a reason to convince them? Worth a shot if you feel burned.
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I’d like them to make a new game with more resources instead!
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