I am definitely in the minority here, but I'm incredible unhappy with the new benchmark and much preferred the first version. (For the record, I had zero complaints with the first benchmark to begin with.)

The biggest and most glaring issue? How my characters, especially my dark-skinned characters, are washed out and ashy-looking.

No tweaks have been made to my characters; all benchmark images are based on their settings as imported from the main game.

FIRST BENCHMARK:

SECOND BENCHMARK:


My Highlander's skintone has lost the bronze-ish tan she had in the original benchmark, and her lipstick has also gone from a lovely true red to a much more muted tone.

FIRST BENCHMARK:

SECOND BENCHMARK:


My lalafell is the most noticeably egregrious; I didn't even remember she HAD the nose smudge, it's been so long since I created her and you can't really tell it's there in the current game, nor could you really see it in Benchmark 1.0. But here it blatantly stands out because her dark skintone suddenly looks much less saturated.

FIRST BENCHMARK:

SECOND BENCHMARK:


My Hellsguard is the most beautiful character I've ever created and I absolutely adore her ruddy skin and her blue eyes and I was taken aback by how washed out she looks in the benchmark. She looks sickly; her eyes and skin aren't anywhere near as vibrant, not even her hair.

FIRST BENCHMARK:

SECOND BENCHMARK:


And my poor, poor Xaela. Her skintone was the perfect cool-toned brown in the first benchmark, but now it looks like a brownish grey and her hair is noticeably less purple, too.

I was really excited by the first benchmark because FINALLY, my girls all looked as vibrant as I had always imagined them to be, with their skintones finally as close as possible to how I wanted them to be. And now they just...don't. It's really disheartening to see my lalafell and my au ra look so washed out, I adored how much their darker skins looked in the original benchmark. I'm really hoping that the benchmark cinematic lighting isn't indicative of the final product come Dawntrail, but just a stepping stone on the way to a full fix.