Are the Brink screenshots photoshopped?

(Joe999) #21

i guess from all that fuzz and talk on the internet about the screenshots being photo-chopped, not only in that magazine but also on other forums, SD will add a note from now on, when you guys release new ones :smiley:

also: gief those screenshots! (and beta)

(SST) #22

Hey there,

thanks for explaining how said screenshots came to be and yeah: I`m sorry for blaming the Shots to be photoshopped. I still stand to informing our readers how much better those shots look than the showed gameplay did. But i just assumed them to be photoshopped and that I am quite sorry for.
There will be a correction in the next issue. And overall please remember that the very vast rest of my preview was quite praising.

Oh and due to this discussion I got an insight in the making of developer-screenshots and this is quite a deep topic. Why do target renders and photoshopped screens exist? Is a staged scene from within the engine with max. effects and a dramatic angle a “real” screenshot? What is a “real” screenshot? And what are the reasons that developers usually don´t ever publicize screens with the usual player-camera (mostly found in racers and shooters)? I think there a lots of different views on this topic - from a gamers and a developers perspective. Interesting!

All the best,
Sebastian

(tokamak) #23

Yes that’s interesting point you raise and I personally think it would be great material for an article.

A staged screenshot is ‘real’ in the sense that what’s being shown is possible in game. That’s to say, a spectator watching the match could have taken that screenshot. It doesn’t mean that it’s likely that the situation in that shot can arise, just that it’s possible.

Now why do they do this? Developpers usually want to get screenshots out in a time where the game is still in a diaper phase and a huge chance that the player’s HUD is nothing but a few ugly codified fonts. It’s buggy, certain animations don’t work, textures are missing etc etc. It would be impossible to simply play the game as it is now and record screenshots as you go, it would be a mess. In order to still come up with the latest art the developers take the models and make a little ‘diorama’ of still standing models objects and particles looking like they’re in action. There’s still a huge difference between photoshopping and staging a screenshot, one that the respect and integrity of a developer relies on.

So when a developer wants to show how the game looks like but can’t because of the early phase, the least it can do is to show what the artists have got so far and what the engine is capable of rendering. The reason people got upset over the accusation of photoshop is because the method they used is still limited by what their game can potentially do, but with photoshop, the sky is the limit, anything is possible.

And what are the reasons that developers usually don´t ever publicize screens with the usual player-camera (mostly found in racers and shooters)?

There’s a couple of reasons for this. The main reason is simply that a player perspective is always limited. When they do show it from a first person point of view, it’s because they want to show how good their gun art looks (especially UT3 paraded around with their beautiful gaudi guns). Secondly, a screenshot doesn’t move, it’s very hard to convey a scenario from one single shot from a player, in a trailer movie you’ve got hundreds of frames to show what happened, but in a screenshot everything needs to happen at the same time, you can’t show what happened first or what will happen next only if you ‘stage’ it.

Even if a photographer had a full game at his disposal, it’s still unlikely that he’ll go and play this game for hours until he got just the right material to take a screenshot off. It’s also simply cost-effective.

And secondly, people usually aren’t interesting in the hud, it’s distracting and hides the rendered game. A HUD shot would only need to be taken once is more to illustrate the functions than the graphics.

Then again, as a games magazine, there’s nothing stopping you from taking your own screenshots the moment you’ve got your hands on a testable game.

(Exedore) #24

Well, I think the standard practice even then is to have publishers provide the shots, to prevent bugs from getting shown or other sorts of general unpleasantness. It’s only full commercial release that will grant that freedom.

Target renders can be useful for getting the development team, publisher and public on the same page about what the game is about and how it feels, and different people will have very different takes on this… I mean, I worked on Killzone 2. For the actual gameplay, they’re not so much use, and I would say that screenshots never really convey what a game feels like. Video is a step up, but only an interactive demo really gives the feel of play, and that’s inherent in the medium!

The ‘medium’ bit is the key to the whole thing, by nature the material doesn’t translate between them seamlessly.
Like say, video game movies. :wink:

(SockDog) #25

I think this is fair, although you have to be cautious to the fact that on PCs at least those quality choices are largely optional. The engine is capable of producing that output, this is what SD are very clear about in regards to manipulation.

IMO It’s also only worth stressing the “staging” of a picture if it is clearly misrepresenting the game. To me these shots are to show the art style (customised characters), levels (variety, virticality), hints to the gameplay (team play etc). I’d also say that given the absence of a HUD from the pictures I would never consider them representative of the kinds of shots or angles you’d get while actually playing.

There will be a correction in the next issue. And overall please remember that the very vast rest of my preview was quite praising.

That’s good to hear, I hope you take on some of the feedback and perhaps make it an educational piece for your readers as Tokamak suggested.

(mortis) #26

Actual gameplay for me always requires a compromise between graphics and frame rate. My computer in the early days of ETQW was a marginal system and had to run at ugly graphics levels. It didn’t matter that the engine could produce art-quality screenies, because on my system, many textures were intentionally blurry. Even running old W:ET, I still find that running max settings degrades performance in some cases.

My current system is much stonger, but by the time Brink gets near release, my system will be nothing special, and I don’t expect to be able to run it at 1920x1080 at 30 Hz. Only bleeding edge hardware can give you max graphics, but it’s still nice that it is there, IMO.

(Joe999) #27

now they put it on their webpage:

“Screenshot-Hinweis: Sie sehen es den Screenshots sicher bereits an: Sie sehen viel zu gut aus, um echt zu sein. In der Tat wurden diese Pressebilder mit Photoshop bearbeitet. Das nervt uns genauso wie Sie, insbesondere da das Spiel auch ohne Tricksereien wirklich gut aussieht.”

“screenshot-info: you most certainly already see it in the screenshots: they look too good to be real. in fact those press pictures have been treated with photoshop. it annoys us as well as you, especially as the game also looks good without those tricks”

:mad:

(Nail) #28

quick note from Bethesda’s legal department should fix that

(DarkangelUK) #29

I think he took the huff cos he got shat upon from a great height and decided to post his bullshit any way.

Very poor magazine that can’t even research it’s own articles.

(tokamak) #30

That’s…dissapointing. The least they could do is to take the photoshop accusation away and simply state that according to the reviewer the screenshots looked better then the shown footage.

(SST) #31

sigh

Sorry guys. I was on a press-event for a few days and just arrived back home today. I just edited it to meet my point better. Our online-staff is a different one and sometimes they take print-assets and post them online - without telling anyone. ^^ There was no intention to bother you again with this. Just some sloppy communications. Sorry for that.

And now I´ll have a little jetlag-coma.

All the best,
Sebastian

(mortis) #32

You cannot convince people once they have made up their minds that things are a certain way. Again, how many times did we have these discussions when QuakeWars was in development?

(Joe999) #33

a lot. best solution to all of this: direct feed in 1080p of the quakecon presentation :smiley:

(tokamak) #34

Thanks for correcting it!

Translation.

The screenshots come directly from the developers, however, they clearly look better then the what we saw in motion. According to Splash Damage the pictorial material originates directly from the game engine, which may be correct. Nevertheless we find it worth mentioning it to you. Don’t worry: The game looked brilliant with the presentation even though in a different manner!