Yep. I immediately noticed this when I logged into the ARR Alpha Test 1. I figured it was just because it was Alpha... boy, was I wrong. :(
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Umm, it's not his opinion, it is a fact. Use your eyes, FFS. You can easily tell how much more detailed ARR is in comparison, down to the bricks on the wall. The cracks between the wood panels are much more visible, the textures are less muddy, and the lighting is a lot better.
Seriously, if you can't see all that, you're completely blind. ARR's graphics are far superior.
The only place it's inferior is in the character models and armor.
Actually, they where. At least with lighting (specifically hard shadows), texture resolution, and amount of polys.
What you're pointing out Dr.B, is that they added more flags, lanterns, nicknacks to bring more balance to the environment, dynamic bloom on lit textures, and greater overall contrast for lighting.
The design is improved upon to make up for the very real loss of fidelity.
Sorry, but 1.0 was far, far superior in the armor model and texturing departments, and completely blows ARR away with it's weighty and motion captured animations. Just look at the armor and movement here:
http://youtu.be/gYKmJQoWJew?t=48s
God I miss it. ARR feels like lifeless in comparison
I'll be honest, the graphics in 1.# were better than now. So much so that my laptop couldn't go past 'Normal' settings without loss of framerate, and it's an Asus G53SX. One of the better gaming laptops of last year. March forward to 2.0 and same laptop is running the game on max settings like a boss. Things I noticed is more than just a reduction in graphical quality, they also reduced the size of everything (not data size, literal size). It was immediately obvious in the early Beta that every model was scaled down to fit a scaled down world (elezen got the worst in the scaling with their smaller-than-proportional heads, something they gladly fixed). And the user interface wasn't bad, I prefered it's style over the new style though I am so glad they didn't use the style from the early 2.0 promotional shots, but it was saved server side so sometimes your interface would have to be rebuilt if you made any changes.
Still, despite all that, I don't miss it one bit.
Texture detail had to be reduced to make the game fit on PS3. There was no way 1.0 ever had any hope of running on PS3, whereas ARR actually runs and is even not awful on PS3.
The dramatic improvement in ARR's lighting and shadowing system more than makes up for it IMO.
Wait till direct x 11
Also the graphic were cut back by a long shot. To be honest that not even up for debate check any of the past letters from the producers or any review of the game. Its one of the points they mentioned over and over again.