100% well said
2.0 lacks life/heart from the first place its really sad , yet 1.0 my only problem was the clunky annoying UI for crafting ;).
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I'm not going to argue which one had the better graphics, as such things are subjective and IMO each one did some things better and some things worse than the other.
However, no matter which you prefer, 2.0 is what we have now and they are trying to improve the graphics without tanking the performance, we'll just have to wait for the dx11 client to see how much of an improvement is made.
One thing that I definitely agree on is the camera work for the cutscenes. It was more more dynamic, with better framing and movement that added to the energy or feel of the scene. While I don't expect them to go as far as some of the 1.0 examples shown, I feel that they could definitely make some improvements that wouldn't really require more development time, such as camera work. The Hildi team does a good job though.
I don't like it to be honest. It's too overly-shaded, everywhere and it's too dark.
The bard looks alright here but I hate the fact everyone is praying up for a spell.
:/ Looks so lame...glad we are ACTUALLY using our weapons here, I like bards animations for attacks though.
The environment lighting was my biggest beef with the 1.0 graphics. During the day, the game was beautiful beyond measure; everything stood out sharply and brightly, so vibrant. The miasma weather in Mor Dhona was breathtaking. But when it got overcast, then it just got dull and samey. And at night it was impossible to see without driving up the gamma so far the daytime became an eye-murdering level of contrast and washed out colors.
And the trees! My first reaction to the 2.0 screenshot of the PLD in the Shroud was, "Holy crap! That looks like an actual forest!" The Shroud of 1.0 was less a forest and more roots growing over endless tracts of shrubbery and moss-covered rocks. It seemed like there was one (giant) tree per square malm, and the overhead canopy was just those few trees' branches spreading through each others' branches.
1.0 had a lot more technical bells and whistles. If you honestly never played the game much in 1.0 - you would never truly understand.
For example, in 1.0, the belt slot had graphics associated with it. Changing the belt item would visually change on your character as well. Now, the belt graphic is baked into whatever you have equipped on your torso slot.
Cloth and other "soft" armors would naturally deform depending on other armors worn. There was a video where it showed an artist pulling a gauntlet overtop a cloth sleeve and as the gauntlet went further up the arm, the folds in the sleeve would adjust accordingly. If I understand correctly, the deformations were done dynamically through the rendering engine - where today, they are baked into the graphics data. This would explain some of the clipping you get with certain combinations of gear.
Animations were just all in all more immersive. Little things like when you were running and stopped, your character would naturally slow down as opposed to just stopping. When changing direction, there was a subtle animation that naturally mimicked what you'd see in real-life. I would also guess that each animation simply had more frames associated as well. In 2.0, some animations can appear choppy or jerky - especially compared to those in 1.0.
I believe models typically featured more geometry and textures higher res.
However.... with all that said, while I do miss some of those bells and whistles, 1.0 cannot compare to the performance of 2.0. The dev team made some very hard choices in this area, but overall, I think they made the right ones. Even without those bells and whistles, 2.0 is still a very beautiful game.