Watch Dogs PC Version Purposefully Imperfect?

[BogusMeatFactory]

So modders have finally cracked up Watch Dogs to see what they can do to improve the visual quality of the game and, lo and behold, they noticed settings in the code that, when enabled, provide the level of visuals shown at last year's E3 reveal.

This really baffles my mind as to why they would do that. Why would they have visual effects in the game unavailable that would improve the overall graphical fidelity? Is this some effort to make the console versions comparable to the PC in order to keep software sales high on the consoles?

Sure, many computers may not be able to handle the high end visuals that are being unlocked by modders, but do you feel that people should still have the choice to have them enabled or not?

[MrPopo]

I've seen things like this having been disabled in the end product because the implementation has some sort of bug that happens under certain but noticeable circumstances. If they can't iron things out before ship they end up locking a nearly complete feature away, as it's much easier to make a small disable if check rather than remove whole sections of code and assets (look at Hot Coffee).

[casterofdreams]

Crysis 2 and Skyrim released hi-res packs after release.

I remember so many people threw a shit fit for Crysis 2 when it was released over its graphical options and outputs.

Ubisoft may do the same.

[ZeroAX]

Ubisoft may do the same.

You clearly don't know how much Ubisoft is willing to shit on the plate of its PC fans

[isiolia]

Crysis 2 and Skyrim released hi-res packs after release.

In those cases (or at least in the case of Skyrim) there were gigabytes worth of high-res textures that came later. This is, far as I see, simply changing settings with the existing assets.

More than a conspiracy though, I'd agree, it was probably just left in because it was easier than taking it out.

[flex wood]

So those threads are extremely TL;DR but is there any mention of how much vram that the game uses with these mods/settings enabled? Because according to all the benchmarks I've seen the vanilla game is horribly unoptimized and extremely vram hungry. I'm afraid to even wonder what it's like with with these enabled.

[MrPopo]

Ubisoft may do the same.

You clearly don't know how much Ubisoft is willing to shit on the plate of its PC fans

Fixed.

[dsheinem]

wake me if there's a downgrade patch, it refuses to run with current my directx11 install.

Ubisoft has fans?

[MrPopo]

Ubisoft has fans?

Touché.

[Luke]

What the fuck is a Ubisoft?