Thread: can someone explain the whole 1.0 graphics > 2.0?

I'm with the OP on the comparison of 1.0 to 2.0.

To put it kurtly, too much bloom! Everything looks like it's glowing! How can I appreciate the detail when it looks so washed out?!

So, yeah, I much prefer the color palette and lighting of 2.0.

Hi Ezra,

As others have said, some things in 1.0 blow away what's in 2.0, but it's hard to see at first on some of these Youtube videos.

If you had your settings on PC at max in 1.0, you could really notice a lot of things better. Things like Armor / Textures (you could ZOOM all the way in on your character and see super-high-detailed textures for your Armor (like the details on a Haubergeon Body Piece) vs. in 2.0, zooming in, you can clearly see textures pixelate / can't hold up).

Character Models also had higher poly counts.

Animations were smoother and better (look at Dragoon's Chaos Thrust in 1.0 vs. 2.0's truncated version).

However, 2.0's Lighting Effects and VFX especially really blow away 1.0. The World Environments are leagues ahead as well (1.0's The Black Shroud full of Copy & Paste "tunnels" was an embarrassment). I love the world in 2.0 (too bad Yoshi P underutilizes it (there's no need to level out in the world / EXP Camp)).

In 1.0, anyone remember the Visual FX (or complete lack thereof) for Ancient Magic? LOLOL.

2.0 has better lighting effects and polish and VFX and a more colorful, vibrant color palette, (and far better UI Polish, Level 1 - 50 experience for a new player, etc.). So it's hard to look past that to see what you're missing from 1.0, but if you ever found HD Videos (w/ the user's settings set to Max) perhaps you could see some of the things people are talking about here.

Hopefully DX11 and 3.0 help bring back some more finer details / polish.

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.

Originally Posted by Ametrine

I'm with the OP on the comparison of 1.0 to 2.0.

To put it kurtly, too much bloom! Everything looks like it's glowing! How can I appreciate the detail when it looks so washed out?!

So, yeah, I much prefer the color palette and lighting of 2.0.

The good thing about a PC game is stuff like bloom is optional.

Originally Posted by Kule

The good thing about a PC game is stuff like bloom is optional.

Too bad it wasn't in 1.xx.

What the game looked like if you put it on the lowest possible settings:

Originally Posted by Velhart

What the game looked like if you put it on the lowest possible settings:

Reminds me of pre-2000 attempts at 3D games...