Will the graphics downgrade be in the game at launch?

[President Donald Trump]

Or was that just for the gameplay showcase? Will it be back to expected quality at release?

[[AAO] C-Wad]

There is no way anyone here except for a developer can know that for certain. We can speculate though.

The fact the older trailers show greater graphical fidelity, and the new one doesn't, likely has two possible explanations.

1. They are optimising the game before launch, optimisation is something often complained about by gamers, and the reality is, I think, is that optimising a game means rendering less in each frame, thus better frames, but less detail.

2. The older trailers were PC maxed out, and the newer one was the Xbox version. I believe they have also stated they are targeting 60fps on Xbox, once again, optimisation.

It's worth noting that the game is running in UE5, although UE5 can provide some stunning visuals, every single game I have played using UE5 has ran quite poorly, and I have a high end rig. So it would seem to me that the level of quality we saw in the early trailers is quite demanding for most systems, and likely won't be what to expect for the vast majority of gamers even if the game is capable of it.

Short version, keep your expectations to what you have seen in the latest trailer. And if that is disappointing, well, there will be mods.

[President Donald Trump]

Yea I was asking because I know the community manager pops in these forums thanks for the response boss

[[AAO] C-Wad]

Originally posted by deuceyd:

Yea I was asking because I know the community manager pops in these forums thanks for the response boss

Yeah they will be under an agreement on what they can and can't say about the game though. Unfortunately the topic of, will the graphics be like you showed? can be a bit loaded, so any response at all is not super likely. No worries man.

[Rush B]

to demostrate high/low setting differences in between two trailers

[Redrick]

imagine if all you cared about was graphics

[President Donald Trump]

Originally posted by Redrick:

imagine if all you cared about was graphics

Is that what you extracted from this?

[Hunter_02]

Originally posted by Cwad:

It's worth noting that the game is running in UE5, although UE5 can provide some stunning visuals, every single game I have played using UE5 has ran quite poorly, and I have a high end rig. So it would seem to me that the level of quality we saw in the early trailers is quite demanding for most systems, and likely won't be what to expect for the vast majority of gamers even if the game is capable of it.

"Every single game I have played using UE5"? Would you care to enlighten me how many AA and AAA titles came out on UE5 recently? I sure don't remember many.
I'm not debating that games using it might run poorly on your "high-end rig", I just can't remember a single game outside of Lords of the Fallen that's powered by the Unreal Engine 5 outside of maybe some obscure Indie games.

[deadscene]

as long as the game is not visually nerfed on pc imma gonna buy it , if pc gameplay is like the last gameplay trailer is gonna be a hard pass , cuz the downgrade is like 10/10 to 5.5/10 from the 1rst to the last trailer lol

[NaCly]

Originally posted by Hunter_02:

Originally posted by Cwad:

It's worth noting that the game is running in UE5, although UE5 can provide some stunning visuals, every single game I have played using UE5 has ran quite poorly, and I have a high end rig. So it would seem to me that the level of quality we saw in the early trailers is quite demanding for most systems, and likely won't be what to expect for the vast majority of gamers even if the game is capable of it.

"Every single game I have played using UE5"? Would you care to enlighten me how many AA and AAA titles came out on UE5 recently? I sure don't remember many.
I'm not debating that games using it might run poorly on your "high-end rig", I just can't remember a single game outside of Lords of the Fallen that's powered by the Unreal Engine 5 outside of maybe some obscure Indie games.

Ark: SA and Remnant 2 are the first two that come to mind from my library. Also The First Descendant is UE5 as well i believe

[[AAO] C-Wad]

Originally posted by Hunter_02:

"Every single game I have played using UE5"? Would you care to enlighten me how many AA and AAA titles came out on UE5 recently? I sure don't remember many.
I'm not debating that games using it might run poorly on your "high-end rig", I just can't remember a single game outside of Lords of the Fallen that's powered by the Unreal Engine 5 outside of maybe some obscure Indie games.

Unusual thing to warrant such a passive aggressive response. Granted "every single game" does imply more than a few. My bad, I guess.

Ark:SA, Fortnite and Cepheus Protocol are three UE5 games in my library. There are a couple others like the ones mentioned above, a quick google search will reveal the performance isn't fantastic.

Ark: SA is the best case study, it is AA, not AAA, but then again Stalker2 is AA as well really.

In Ark: SE (same game but UE4), I was easily capable at max settings locking the frame rate to 120 in 4k. Since they ported the game over to UE5, I have to play on mixed medium settings with DLSS on auto just to get around 60 fps, but often it drops down to 30 or 40, and frame gen just causes the game to crash. Specs are rtx4080 13700k 32gb DDR5 5600mhz memory, and of course I only use an SSD. You can argue optimisation, every game is different, ect, but in this case it is literally the exact, same, game. It does look better definitely, but the performance cost is drastic.

Of course this isn't to criticise UE5 or game devs, I think more just to be realistic about about what to expect. I think UE5 is demanding because of Lumen and well because it is the latest tech, but I'm not really an expert.

I think the thing is everyone expects games to constantly break barriers, and look "next gen" but it certainly appears that we are hitting a wall in terms of how good new games can look without needing a $5000 gaming rig. Most AAA games over the last couple years have had performance problems, specially on console where a lot of games haven't even got over the 30fps mark, let alone actual 4k gaming like they are constantly advertising, relying on res scaling to actually make it work at all.

[Deatheye]

Ark and Lords of the Fallen use UE5 and both run or ran like garbage.

Given that GSC are not state of the art devs like id software who can make run their games with 1000fps while looking pretty damn good at the same time, there is indeed a reason for people to be concerned about the performance.

[Hunter_02]

Originally posted by Cwad:

Unusual thing to warrant such a passive aggressive response. Granted "every single game" does imply more than a few. My bad, I guess.

Ark:SA, Fortnite and Cepheus Protocol are three UE5 games in my library. There are a couple others like the ones mentioned above, a quick google search will reveal the performance isn't fantastic.

Ark: SA is the best case study, it is AA, not AAA, but then again Stalker2 is AA as well really.

In Ark: SE (same game but UE4), I was easily capable at max settings locking the frame rate to 120 in 4k. Since they ported the game over to UE5, I have to play on mixed medium settings with DLSS on auto just to get around 60 fps, but often it drops down to 30 or 40, and frame gen just causes the game to crash. Specs are rtx4080 13700k 32gb DDR5 5600mhz memory, and of course I only use an SSD. You can argue optimisation, every game is different, ect, but in this case it is literally the exact, same, game. It does look better definitely, but the performance cost is drastic.

Of course this isn't to criticise UE5 or game devs, I think more just to be realistic about about what to expect. I think UE5 is demanding because of Lumen and well because it is the latest tech, but I'm not really an expert.

I think the thing is everyone expects games to constantly break barriers, and look "next gen" but it certainly appears that we are hitting a wall in terms of how good new games can look without needing a $5000 gaming rig. Most AAA games over the last couple years have had performance problems, specially on console where a lot of games haven't even got over the 30fps mark, let alone actual 4k gaming like they are constantly advertising, relying on res scaling to actually make it work at all.

Entirely your choice to see it as passive-aggressive. I was merely curious since you implied there are a lot of them, and I wasn't aware of all that many. Then again, I simply don't play RTS games like Cepheus Protocol, so I wouldn't know. Those are rather niche to me, but I know they have a solid fanbase, and I respect that.
Didn't know they ported Ark over to UE5, though. But again, that's a port...I'm sure it's a bit easier to develop a game from the ground up on one engine.
I'm just saying that it's difficult to say how stable and optimized UE5 runs from only a small handful of games, most of them being indies.

But I agree - it seems like it requires quite a battleship to run a game on UE5. One can only hope that they will make the lower graphical settings viable for those who don't have a good rig.
Especially considering how the main playerbase sits in Eastern Europe, an economically weaker region where such battleships are probably a rare sight.

At least us RTX 4k users won't have to worry about FPS, since a native implementation of DLSS means that they'll likely integrate DLSS 3.5 with its extremely powerful Frame Generation. Used it in Cyberpunk 2077 and it's beast mode, over 100 FPS on average with everything set to Psycho and Path Tracing (same GPU+RAM as yours on a Ryzen 5900X).

[MikeFoot47]

I hope the game runs with high/ultra settings without raytracing at my pc. 3440X1440

Currenty build
7800X3D
32GB Ram 5600mhz
TUF 7900XT
2TB 980 pro m2

[[AAO] C-Wad]

Originally posted by Hunter_02:

Entirely your choice to see it as passive-aggressive. I was merely curious since you implied there are a lot of them, and I wasn't aware of all that many. Then again, I simply don't play RTS games like Cepheus Protocol, so I wouldn't know. Those are rather niche to me, but I know they have a solid fanbase, and I respect that.
Didn't know they ported Ark over to UE5, though. But again, that's a port...I'm sure it's a bit easier to develop a game from the ground up on one engine.
I'm just saying that it's difficult to say how stable and optimized UE5 runs from only a small handful of games, most of them being indies.

But I agree - it seems like it requires quite a battleship to run a game on UE5. One can only hope that they will make the lower graphical settings viable for those who don't have a good rig.
Especially considering how the main playerbase sits in Eastern Europe, an economically weaker region where such battleships are probably a rare sight.

At least us RTX 4k users won't have to worry about FPS, since a native implementation of DLSS means that they'll likely integrate DLSS 3.5 with its extremely powerful Frame Generation. Used it in Cyberpunk 2077 and it's beast mode, over 100 FPS on average with everything set to Psycho and Path Tracing (same GPU+RAM as yours on a Ryzen 5900X).

Fair enough, it came across that way to me, but I can also understand that I may have came across as arrogant/making broad assumptions. I am merely speculating, as I stated to the OP. I would certainly like to hope that Stalker2 looks incredible and runs smoothly. I would love to see GSC knock it out of the park like CDprojectRED did with The Witcher3.

Yeah I agree, well if they are targeting 60fps on Xbox I think that's a really good sign, I can't remember the exact stats but the average steam user still has hardware slightly less powerful than current consoles. Understandable when new hardware requires a blood sacrifice to pay for it.

Cyberpunk really is the benchmark now, looks incredible and runs buttery smooth. I have similar performance in it, certainly is a nice feeling cranking it all to the max and still getting over 100fps. Wish I could say the same about more games right now, but like with Ark:SA I find myself accepting 60fps as good enough.

With Stalker 2 though I think people are worrying about the graphics too much, the latest trailer still looked fine for me. I am more interested in the story, style, atmosphere and gameplay, good graphics are nice but definitely don't make the game.

[[GSC]Super_PropheT]

Originally posted by Cwad:

Originally posted by Hunter_02:

Entirely your choice to see it as passive-aggressive. I was merely curious since you implied there are a lot of them, and I wasn't aware of all that many. Then again, I simply don't play RTS games like Cepheus Protocol, so I wouldn't know. Those are rather niche to me, but I know they have a solid fanbase, and I respect that.
Didn't know they ported Ark over to UE5, though. But again, that's a port...I'm sure it's a bit easier to develop a game from the ground up on one engine.
I'm just saying that it's difficult to say how stable and optimized UE5 runs from only a small handful of games, most of them being indies.

But I agree - it seems like it requires quite a battleship to run a game on UE5. One can only hope that they will make the lower graphical settings viable for those who don't have a good rig.
Especially considering how the main playerbase sits in Eastern Europe, an economically weaker region where such battleships are probably a rare sight.

At least us RTX 4k users won't have to worry about FPS, since a native implementation of DLSS means that they'll likely integrate DLSS 3.5 with its extremely powerful Frame Generation. Used it in Cyberpunk 2077 and it's beast mode, over 100 FPS on average with everything set to Psycho and Path Tracing (same GPU+RAM as yours on a Ryzen 5900X).

Fair enough, it came across that way to me, but I can also understand that I may have came across as arrogant/making broad assumptions. I am merely speculating, as I stated to the OP. I would certainly like to hope that Stalker2 looks incredible and runs smoothly. I would love to see GSC knock it out of the park like CDprojectRED did with The Witcher3.

Yeah I agree, well if they are targeting 60fps on Xbox I think that's a really good sign, I can't remember the exact stats but the average steam user still has hardware slightly less powerful than current consoles. Understandable when new hardware requires a blood sacrifice to pay for it.

Cyberpunk really is the benchmark now, looks incredible and runs buttery smooth. I have similar performance in it, certainly is a nice feeling cranking it all to the max and still getting over 100fps. Wish I could say the same about more games right now, but like with Ark:SA I find myself accepting 60fps as good enough.

With Stalker 2 though I think people are worrying about the graphics too much, the latest trailer still looked fine for me. I am more interested in the story, style, atmosphere and gameplay, good graphics are nice but definitely don't make the game.

We are looking to deliver the best quality possible. Bolts and Bullets trailer somehow looks worse than the actual demo it was recorded from. We noted this, and in future trailers there shouldn't be such a problem.

And of course we are optimizing the game for the both consoles and different preset settings on them, which is kinda obvious because we are launching in Xbox Series X/S. But I got your concern about the graphics. For somebody, the visual part of the game may be not so important as the story, but it's not about us. We want to have the best image quality we can possibly get.