14 DAY TRIAL // From Software's action role-playing game Dark Souls 2 was hit by the downgrade hammer in the visual department just before release, as the game struggled on last-gen consoles and the developers opted for lower graphics quality in favor of smoother gameplay.
The decision, of course, resulted in an outrage from players worldwide, and developer From Software responded by revealing that the game was unplayable on consoles before the graphic downgrade took place.
The game's graphics on release are of a visibly inferior quality to the preview trailers that have been shared over time by the developer, which showed crystal-clear graphics, a vivid color scheme and great lighting effects.
Unfortunately, the game had to be playable on the Xbox 360's 512 MB of RAM and on the PlayStation 3's 256, not to mention the rest of the outdated hardware, and as such the visual quality dropped by a considerable margin.
The good thing is that you can play it on your 8-year-old console, but the bad news is that the developers have misled you by showing you what the game could have been, and not what it actually is, which is a dubious move at best.
Many players hoped that the compromise would only affect the console versions and that the PC one will be where the game will truly shine. The joke's on them, as From Software has just removed the Dark Souls 2 screenshots that showed a higher level of visual quality from the Steam Store page.
The fact that the early promotional screenshot that advertised the game's impressive graphics detail was removed can only point to the fact that the PC version of Dark Souls 2 will have the same gimped graphics that the console version has.
At the moment, the Steam page features only seven screenshots released this month, showing graphics that are very close to the visual quality of the PlaySation 3 and Xbox 360 version of Dark Souls 2.
"Throughout the game development process, a game is constantly being balanced not only in game playability, but also in the realm of resource management," From Software responded when the console downgrade occurred.
The company previously stated that the PC version of their action role-playing game will have increased texture resolution and an enhanced frame-rate option, to take advantage of the much more powerful hardware, but now it appears that they don't plan on fully delivering on their promise.
Dark Souls 2 is scheduled to launch on PC on April 25, 2014.