Players of Ubisoft's hit game Watch Dogs have been scratching their heads about its high-definition graphics.
When the game was first unveiled at E3 2012, it was hailed as one of the first titles made with next-generation consoles in mind, and as such the earliest footage showed off advanced graphics and effects. When Watch Dogs finally arrived in May 2014, gamers were a little surprised to find that the game's visual quality, while impressive, didn't quite match up to those earliest promotional videos. Aidan, the game's protagonist, was also shown to take certain actions in the E3 demos that never made it into the game.
Evidence that the game had been visually downgraded surfaced weeks before its release, when a NeoGAF user compared early footage of the game with more recent trailers. Despite this clear evidence, a Ubisoft PR agent hastily denied any that changes had been made to the game's visuals or capabilities.
It's not uncommon for a finished game to fail to match up to its earliest screenshots and footage. Developers work through many iterations and issues along the way, after all, so it's natural that a game will change as it's being crafted. In this case it was more noticeable since Watch Dogs' graphics were seen as one of the marquee examples of what the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 would be capable of. It's unknown why Ubisoft dialed down the game's fidelity, though it's likely it was done to eliminate glitches experienced by one or more game systems.
A few clever players recently decided to look under the hood of the PC version to try to discover what exactly was changed. After running decompiler software, they've turned up some surprising findings and posted them on Reddit and NeoGAF. Reportedly, all of the missing features from the E3 demos are still hidden deep within Watch Dogs' code, and may have been functions created specifically for use at E3. PC gamers willing to meddle with the game's underlying code can even put the missing effects back in. So far, enhancements have been found that include greater rain density, differing fog amounts, higher NPC numbers, and several lighting effects like realistic blooms, lens flares, and shadows that are generated by car headlights. Those who've tried the hacked version of the game that restores these features have reported less glitches and stuttering, even though the added effects require more computational horsepower.
Within one week of its release, Watch Dogs rocketed up the sales charts, becoming Ubisoft's biggest selling debut ever with more than four million copies sold. Ubisoft has yet to comment on the hidden E3 files.
