Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Patch 8 - Colors Became Too Vibrant And Washed Out Darker Shades

Man, I hadn't taken too much note of it before seeing this thread, but yeah. This is both too vibrant and washed out at the same time. I actually would've thought those two flaws would usually be mutually exclusive, but as it turns out, no.

Ease up on the happy pills, Larian. We want some dark fantasy grit in our RPGs, thank you very much.

Man, I reinstalled the game the other day, not having played in a year, and I knew something was off. Kept thinking to myself, "This does not look as good as I remember..." Dear Lord, I hope they fix this screwup.

I started my current playthrough knowing of this threads existance, but I must say I feel the game looks better then it ever did. It is difficult to say where the colours, better cutscenes, better UI comes into the play, but I don't remember BG3 looking that good. It could just be that some of the cutscenes start looking like cutscenes though.

Dear OP

I disagree on the washed out outdoor comment. I think there has been a big trend in media to push that bigger than life contrast in movies and games but ojectively if you step outside the world - when under the sun - is a bit washed out.

For the rest, I tend to agree with you.

My biggest problem in the revamp is the Underdark. It is way too bright to the extent it completely remove the need for darkvision, light cantrip and remove the "fear factor".
The Underdark in dnd is... Very dark. And in patch 8 this is completely lost. That is for me the most pressing issue

Dear OP

I disagree on the washed out outdoor comment. I think there has been a big trend in media to push that bigger than life contrast in movies and games but ojectively if you step outside the world - when under the sun - is a bit washed out.

For the rest, I tend to agree with you.

My biggest problem in the revamp is the Underdark. It is way too bright to the extent it completely remove the need for darkvision, light cantrip and remove the "fear factor".
The Underdark in dnd is... Very dark. And in patch 8 this is completely lost. That is for me the most pressing issue


It was very atmospheric.

I found myself taking the time to light candles and braziers, casting light on my weapon, and in general slowing my pace.

+1

As a Drow, I would like to make an appeal to restore the natural beauty of the Underdark.

We prefer watching surface dwellers stumble and fumble about helpless and confused.

just wanted to login to say i support this thread. because i like the idea that if your ill prepared to venture into a dark place you need to take another route that immersion gets killed if every dungeon thats supposed to be dark is just bright. in the case of Underdark there is a choice of going through Underdark or going through main road. If it works the way that you need to be prepared with torch or darkvision if you choose to go through underdark then that is up to you to be prepared for that. anyways nice comparisons i support the notion.

Wanna see something funny?
Do you remember how we were teorizing that this change happened, bcs some people (myself included) were complaining that they dont actualy *see* anything in the game, even tho their character *have* Darkvision ...
So Larian decided to make whole game brighter, instead of fixing Darkvision?

Well guess what ... it didnt help either:

I also prefer the subtler colors in earlier patches. If my older eyes require more light in specific situations, I'll adjust the gamma temporarily. I'd rather do that than play in a washed out world with over-vibrant colors. It would be fine to include new color options, but seeing my favorite hair colors (dark browns and auburns) replaced with tones I'd never pick isn't my idea of an improvement (with the result that I quit playing the patch before I completed character creation).

Imo they should do something like the light radius system from Diablo 1 and 2. It is imperfect but making the surrounding glow more around a darkvision player would help.

That is basicaly exactly what we had before they started to "improve" it.

I really do hope they go back to the pre-8 pallet, contrast, and lighting. It just looks better and there are better ways to increase visibility in the darker. low light areas of the map than a brute force, global change like this. It kinda reminds me of the Disney HD "updates" of classic animated features:

https://www.boredpanda.com/disney-a..._medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

Wow, I'm actually shocked how terrible the Bluray version looks. I'm quite grateful for my DVD collection now, that's just nightmare inducing what they did

Ugh. And Disney trying to retcon her dress to being blue so it will fit their marketware for her when you can clearly see it was silver/crystal white.

Hever seen the old movie, but i had Disney book when i was young ... and they were blue there aswell. O_o
Also ... cant Disney retcon in their own movie kinda whatever they want?

It's not that it's the process they used to do the 4K conversion. Obviously the original was done by hand frame by frame but the conversion was global. That's why I thought of it because the pallet/contrast/lighting changes they've done with the version 8 update are global rather than specific to the problem they were trying to address (which I guess was how dark it in in the Underdark and other indoor areas). What they should do is return the colors to version 7 and then go in and actually re-work those areas to get the effect they want and leave the global settings alone.

Black hair looks grey now. There is no more black. That needs to be corrected.

Fact is that in the original movie her dress was silver or trying to be as "glass/crystal" as animators could make it. But when they later released wares related to the movie, like toys etc they changed her dress to a light blue as it was easier to produce and they were afraid a silver one would look like a white whedding gown.

So yes Rag, ofc they can. They can also stop making movies and move into the flower business if they want. Just like Larian can remove functions in dialogue in BG3, a decision which I remember you personally wasn't a big fan of. So what's your point, I'm not allowed to have an opinion or voice it?

Bump, this is too important to loose in the mountain of other issues (IMO at least )

I don't think it is lost, just personally I feel like I've said everything I had to say about the subject. The feedback is here and hopefully received, so adding even a thousand more replies won't make them work any faster if they wish to make the colors and lighting realistic and immersive as they were prior to Patch 8. Nor will it make them change their mind if they do not.

Personally I do not think this is the final state of how the game is going to look due to plenty of inconsistencies in graphic quality which has severely degraded since Patch 8, so I think if they are making any changes and improvements it will be seen with Content Update #9 or the update after when they do the optimizations. Patch 8 broke many things since Patch 7, so this might just be yet another victim of feature implementations.