People are so quick to give Ubi devs absolute hell for "ugly graphics", "shit animations", etc. Is the game fun? Does it provide the intended experience that's written on the back of the box? Does it perform well?
I don't understand how we can demonize crunch, yet expect absolute perfection with all the bells and whistles running at incredible framerates for $70 USD... I'm not saying crunch is necessary to produce a good game, but as consoles continue to become more powerful, more work is necessary to ensure the software is doing everything possible to be "better" than the developers previous installment.
This negative speech towards leaked footage has to be an absolute kick in the pants for the devs that put their hearts and souls into this. It just makes me feel bad.
I think the problem is that Ubisoft uses their mainstream and uninspiring formula for years now and there's nothing groundbreaking to expect from a narrative and gameplay perspective so people expect, at least from a AAA publisher and dev like Ubisoft, a little bit more bells and whistles on the visual front to have this blockbuster look and feel, which is written all over the series. If anything else isn't already elevated beyond the usual popcorn "I've already seen this" stuff it should at least look fucking amazing. It's not like they had all those years developing it to reinvent the wheel with so many things (at least in the concept and drawing phase) they could have copied over. Now add the next gen on the horizon to that environment and people's expectations are fucking huge.
Personally, from what I've seen from the trailers, I'm okay with what I seen save the facial animations straight from 2015. It's nothing special but it looks good and fun and I do like the setting, especially from the first addon they've teasered.
However, and this is absolutely right, judging from leaked footage with heavy compression artefacts is rarely a good idea. Hell, even watching a 1080p directly captured video looks so bad these days on YouTube because these, what? 12mbit/s is way too low for all the details (and motion) most games have these day. Watching a 4k video vs 1080p on YouTube, even on a 1080p display, is a night and day difference in regards of compression quality.
