Modder Unlocks Watch_Dogs’ E3 Graphics Settings

Watch_Dogs has had a successful if rough reception. Despite being the highest pre-ordered game in Ubisoft history, the actual critical response has been mixed. A seriously flawed PC port, a sloppy focus on the main premise, and game design  continuing an unsettling trend of Ubisoft seemingly trying to homogenize and mass produce it’s games has some people on the fence. The latest revelation about the notably downgraded graphics from earlier E3 showings will not help in this regard.

Found by Guru 3D user TheWorse, apparently not only are the original 2012/2013 demo settings still in the game’s code, but they are specifically labelled as E3 settings. It’s understandable that such promotional settings would be left in partially — Deus Ex: Human Revolution‘s dev console unlock mods from a while back revealed that bits and pieces of press demos, special debugging commands, and levels could still be found in the core game.

The reason why this is going over far worse is that these settings aren’t just leftover partial assets. All the original coding and effects are there, and they can be activated in full. Several users on Reddit have reported that running the mod has even reported improved game stability on PC. Not only does it make the game look notably better, but it fixes a problem that apparently resulted from Ubisoft downgrading the graphics. For reference from your usual experience, here’s what the game looks like with the mod applied:

And here’s the game in a similar instance without mod:

Take a minute and process that. By making the game look inferior and trying to demand less from your machine, they made it less optimized and run worse than if you have all the original highest settings running. This was chosen by Ubisoft over just releasing the game with the E3 settings enabled. 
Currently the mod includes the following changes:

• Changes to the default fog values
• Enabled bokeh DOF for the main cameras
• Stuttering Improvements
• E3 2012 Bloom
• Performance Improvements
• Enabled Headlight Shadows
• LoD Changes
• Reflection changes
• Added 3 new cameras to the game(closer, normal, further)
• Rain changes(High quality rain drops, properly reacting to light, etc)
• LensFlares(WIP)
• Lighting changes(TESTING AND WIP)
• Civilians density changes

While it is nice that at least PC gamers can finally get a game far closer in look to the original E3 demo, it’s confounding that Ubisoft would choose an inferior version of the game to release. All major press outlets have reached out to Ubisoft for feedback, but no word has been reported at this present time. After the Assassin’s Creed Unity controversy and similar upset towards Far Cry 4, in addition to the botched PC launch and console authentication issues of Watch_Dogs, Ubisoft certainly has some ground to recover.