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[chadskin]

edit: ... of Watch_Dogs. Damn. Can a mod edit it in, please?

In an interview later that day, Guay told me that the titles are very similar across platforms, even, in some ways, across generations. When I asked Guay to explain the differences he said it was easier to start with what's the same.

"So it's the same storyline," he said. "It's done by the same team, so it's not a separate team in another continent that was (making one of the versions). So, same storyline, same gameplay, all the same mechanics, innovations. All the same missions, if you want, the same world.

"Obviously what's different, is that we're scaling the dynamism and the detail of the city and the gameplay. So it's stuff like the amount of civilians in the street, the amount of cars in the street, the detail in the animation, or how sophisticated some reactions are to some of your actions. So some of those things are scaled down. Obviously the graphics, but that one's obvious."

Guay said he's very happy with what the team has been able to do on the PS3 and Xbox 360, especially in the past six months.

"There were some of our features where it was a challenge to be sure that we had feature parity, especially some of the things that we're doing online," he said. "But at the end of the day we're able to hit that on all the core animations that we're doing in Watch Dogs."

In terms of PlayStation 4 versus Xbox One versions of the game, Guay says they're so similar that he sometimes has to check the controller or the UI to figure out which platform is running the game.

"It pretty much looks alike," he said. "You know, I get fooled. You can't really tell just from the image."

And the PC version scales based on the sort of computer you're running it on, though the team made the decision "not too scale down too much," Guay said.

"I mean you can always say we support a 10-year-old PC and then it's barely playable, but that's ugly," he said. "It's not really what people want to play. We didn't do that. We didn't go there. We said, ‘OK, we advertise that at the recommended setting it's going to be a good experience. It's going to look good, it's not going to look like a 10-year-old game.' So we're not going to support very old PCs. If you have very powerful PCs, then it'll scale up, and it scale up to even higher resolution, obviously, than you can have on PS4 or Xbox One. So you can have, in theory, a version that will look spectacular if you have that big screen, that high resolution capability. The game looks great on PC."

One of the reasons that's true is because development on Watch Dogs actually started for the PC first.

"When we started developing, the PS3 existed, the Xbox 360 existed, and we kind of suspected, maybe, there might be other platforms eventually," he said. "So, because we thought that would happen we chose the PC as our first target to have when we started developing Watch Dogs so that we have the flexibility to adapt to a different platform. So we were able to support 360 and PS3, but we could scale up with other platforms and to other video in the meantime, which we now know is the case. So PC has always been around for us. Sometimes it's a last-minute port of sorts. For us, it's been around since we started."

Development shifted to the next-gen consoles once the PS4 and Xbox One were announced, and then in the last eight months or so a dedicated team returned to the PC to hammer out the final details of that platform's version of the game, he said.

"So we end up having the best of both worlds basically," he said. "We're able to have good usability on PC and on console."

Polygon

 

[Pjsprojects]

So PC should be best but PS4 has the extra add on content.
which to buy???

 

[sjay1994]

So PC should be best but PS4 has the extra add on content.
which to buy???

I'd say PC if that option is available for you (then again, people complain about uplay on PC).

Even though I primarily play games on PS consoles now a days, and have played a lot of ubisoft games... I never really used the "bonus content"

 

[Pop]

If Ps4 and X1 look the same then Ubis doing it wrong.

 

[RulkezX]

In terms of PlayStation 4 versus Xbox One versions of the game, Guay says they're so similar that he sometimes has to check the controller or the UI to figure out which platform is running the game.

Odds on this comment biting him in the ass ?

 

[Impeccable]

Console parity achieved, awwww yesss.

 

[Pjsprojects]

If Ps4 and X1 look the same then Ubis doing it wrong.

"Pretty much looks alike" to Joe Bloggs I guess that's right for most games.

 

[TomShoe]

Odds on this comment biting him in the ass ?

Not sure what else he can say, unless he wants to discourage people from buying a certain versions.

 

[Chobel]

"It pretty much looks alike," he said. "You know, I get fooled. You can't really tell just from the image."

P A R I T Y

 

[RoboPlato]

Odds on this comment biting him in the ass ?

There's no way it won't show up in the DF Face Off, just like Shahid's 1080p/60fps quote every time a PS4 game is or isn't 1080/60

 

[shwimpy]

Guess I'll wait for the 1080p patch on PS4.

 

[Mikey Jr.]

Hmmm, not one single mention of WiiU.

They didn't show the boxart at the end of the trailer. And the game informer article said the WiiU version didn't have a date. Now this article doesn't even mention the Wii at all.

 

[TeRey09]

Wait parity is a bad thing? What am I missing?

 

[Leb]

In terms of PlayStation 4 versus Xbox One versions of the game, Guay says they're so similar that he sometimes has to check the controller or the UI to figure out which platform is running the game.

"It pretty much looks alike," he said. "You know, I get fooled. You can't really tell just from the image."

Well, he couched this in subjective terms, so no one can really say that he's wrong. However, knowing what we know about other Ubisoft multiplats and the performance delta between the two consoles, I think we can reasonably conclude that the PS4 version will feature some combination of higher resolution/framerate/effects.

Of course, I'll be getting this on the PC and hoping against hope that I'll be able to get the game to match the 2012 reveal trailer, cause it's pretty obvious that neither console is going to manage that...

 

[Phil4000]

I guess this explains why the latest trailer looks like ass, if the PS4 version is in graphical parity with the Xbox One version...

 

[EL CUCO]

Wait parity is a bad thing? What am I missing?

When one platform is more powerful than the other, it is.

 

[SneakyStephan]

So PC should be best but PS4 has the extra add on content.
which to buy???

it's a ubisoft port
I'd check if it supports refresh rates other than 60 hz, aspect ratios other than 16:9, rebinding keys etc before buying it at all if you have a 16:10 or 120hz monitor) , since outside of the AC series most ubisoft don't support any of these things

ubisoft is an instant red flag for potential shitty port

 

[AndrewDean84xX]

Deleted

 

[RadioactiveLobster]

So PC should be best but PS4 has the extra add on content.
which to buy???

One thing I've noticed over the past few years with Ubisoft and "extra content for console versions", that content is usually part of the PC version anyways.

All those exclusive PS3/PS4 missions for AC III and AC IV, they were part of the PC version day 1.

Chances are whatever content is exclusive to a console version of Watch_Dogs will be included in the PC version.


The real question is will it be a good PC version or more of the same.

 

[JaseC]

So PC should be best but PS4 has the extra add on content.
which to buy???

I'd be wary of anything Ubisoft touts regarding the PC version as AssCreed 3 and Black Flag are both rather horrible in the optimisation department (the former more so than the latter, to be fair). Regarding the PS-exclusive content, as with the aforementioned AssCreed games, it's actually also included in the PC DDE. From GMG's store page:

SONY EXCLUSIVE CONTENT:

• 60 min of additional gameplay – 4 exclusive missions

• A unique DedSec White Hat Hacker suit unlocked upon completion of the missions.

• Hacking Boost (Add 1 Battery Slot)

• A deeper knowledge of DedSec, an important faction in the Watch_Dogs universe.

I'm not very fond of Ubi overall but I do love how it gives the middle finger to console DLC exclusivity.

 

[Freedom = $1.05]

I'd be wary of anything Ubisoft touts regarding the PC version as AssCreed 3 and Black Flag are both rather horrible in the optimisation department (the former more so than the latter, to be fair). Regarding the PS-exclusive content, as with the aforementioned AssCreed games, it's actually also included in the PC DDE. From GMG's store page:



I'm not very fond of Ubi overall but I do love how it gives the middle finger to console DLC exclusivity.

AC3 runs silky smooth on my setup yet AC4 struggles right out of the gate. I have all settings max on AC3 and it runs at 1080p 60 fps on my 770 gtx yet AC4 tends to fluctuate quite a bit with its fps. You sure you dont mean that AC4 is the poorer performer?

 

[Portman]

Being a PC gamer at heart I'm really tempted to get this for the PC but I've heard so many bad things over the years about their PC releases that I pre ordered it for the PS4.

Still tempted to get it for the PC later once it is cheap for a second play through.

 

[StoopKid]

If Ps4 and X1 look the same then Ubis doing it wrong.

Major Nelson's check come in ?

 

[Durante]

AC3 runs silky smooth on my setup yet AC4 struggles right out of the gate. I have all settings max on AC3 and it runs at 1080p 60 fps on my 770 gtx yet AC4 tends to fluctuate quite a bit with its fps. You sure you dont mean that AC4 is the poorer performer?

AC4 also has much higher maximum settings than AC3 in some aspects.

I do think Ubisoft gets an undeserved bad rep for their PC performance simply because theirs are almost the only AAA titles left which really have entire PC-exclusive (that is, not even on current-gen consoles) rendering techniques in their ultra settings.

For example, AC4 has both shadowing and ambient occlusion "ultra" settings on PC which straight up do not exist on any other platform and are extremely demanding. Meanwhile, publishers who simply put their games on PC as a high-res console version are applauded for their "optimization".

As you may be able to tell, I'm not exactly happy about this

If they put a "PS4" or "XB1" preset in their options I'm sure some people would be surprised at how "optimized" the games suddenly are.

 

[Nzyme32]

Be extremely cautious.

I don't think I trust them that enough to believe that they haven't compromised the PC version. It should easily be capable of what is shown in the original trailers on capable systems, but how likely that they have kept that in there will have to be seen

 

[Pillville]

In an interview later that day, Guay told me that the titles are very similar across platforms, even, in some ways, across generations. When I asked Guay to explain the differences he said it was easier to start with what's the same.

"So it's the same storyline," he said. "It's done by the same team, so it's not a separate team in another continent that was (making one of the versions). So, same storyline, same gameplay, all the same mechanics, innovations. All the same missions, if you want, the same world.

"Obviously what's different, is that we're scaling the dynamism and the detail of the city and the gameplay. So it's stuff like the amount of civilians in the street, the amount of cars in the street, the detail in the animation, or how sophisticated some reactions are to some of your actions. So some of those things are scaled down. Obviously the graphics, but that one's obvious."

Guay said he's very happy with what the team has been able to do on the PS3 and Xbox 360, especially in the past six months.

"There were some of our features where it was a challenge to be sure that we had feature parity, especially some of the things that we're doing online," he said. "But at the end of the day we're able to hit that on all the core animations that we're doing in Watch Dogs."

In terms of PlayStation 4 versus Xbox One versions of the game, Guay says they're so similar that he sometimes has to check the controller or the UI to figure out which platform is running the game.

"It pretty much looks alike," he said. "You know, I get fooled. You can't really tell just from the image."

And the PC version scales based on the sort of computer you're running it on, though the team made the decision "not too scale down too much," Guay said.

"I mean you can always say we support a 10-year-old PC and then it's barely playable, but that's ugly," he said. "It's not really what people want to play. We didn't do that. We didn't go there. We said, ‘OK, we advertise that at the recommended setting it's going to be a good experience. It's going to look good, it's not going to look like a 10-year-old game.' So we're not going to support very old PCs. If you have very powerful PCs, then it'll scale up, and it scale up to even higher resolution, obviously, than you can have on PS4 or Xbox One. So you can have, in theory, a version that will look spectacular if you have that big screen, that high resolution capability. The game looks great on PC."

One of the reasons that's true is because development on Watch Dogs actually started for the PC first.

"When we started developing, the PS3 existed, the Xbox 360 existed, and we kind of suspected, maybe, there might be other platforms eventually," he said. "So, because we thought that would happen we chose the PC as our first target to have when we started developing Watch Dogs so that we have the flexibility to adapt to a different platform. So we were able to support 360 and PS3, but we could scale up with other platforms and to other video in the meantime, which we now know is the case. So PC has always been around for us. Sometimes it's a last-minute port of sorts. For us, it's been around since we started."

Development shifted to the next-gen consoles once the PS4 and Xbox One were announced, and then in the last eight months or so a dedicated team returned to the PC to hammer out the final details of that platform's version of the game, he said.

"So we end up having the best of both worlds basically," he said. "We're able to have good usability on PC and on console."

Mentions PC, PS3, PS4, 360, XB1......... no mention of WiiU

 

[liquidtmd]

Even if I owned an XB1 I'd feel insulted by all this pussyfooting around this subject matter

 

[Akahige]

So PC should be best but PS4 has the extra add on content.
which to buy???

The last few AC games have had the PlayStation exclusive content on pc.

 

[JaseC]

AC3 runs silky smooth on my setup yet AC4 struggles right out of the gate. I have all settings max on AC3 and it runs at 1080p 60 fps on my 770 gtx yet AC4 tends to fluctuate quite a bit with its fps. You sure you dont mean that AC4 is the poorer performer?

It's not; well, pre-PhysX, that is. AssCreed 3's Frontier in the winter can be particularly offensive to performance since the snow deformation makes heavy use of tessellation, and there are noticeable framerate drops in cities due to the game being CPU-limited. Don't get me wrong: even pre-PhysX, Black Flag's performance in general really wasn't better, but consistency was certainly higher, with even the likes of Havana not dipping below ~50fps for me throughout testing. AssCreed 3 versus Black Flag post-PhysX patch, though? There's definitely no doubt in my mind there that 3 comes out on top.

Edit: I have two overclocked 670s and a 4.6GHz 2600K, for the record.