These are cut-scenes...
Have you ever played a GTA game in your life? All of GTA's cutscenes are done with in game footage.
The cut-scene graphics are MANY times better than the actual gameplay graphics
Rockstar stays doing this.
They spruce up the screen-caps and then when you play the game the screen looks NOTHING like it.
There's a reason why the cut-scene graphics are better than actual gameplay. The first is because when you're running real-time cutscene scenario like GTA does you're dealing with a smaller confined space rather than the whole open world. This allows the engine to better effectively process everything that's going on in the scene graphically. From a programming perspective, the amount of gameplay variables in a normal gameplay scene is going to put a fair amount of stress on engine. When you're dealing with a scripted scene those variables are lowered drastically and more power can be shifted to the framerate, lighting, polycount, anti-aliasing etc. An example would be when you're running around in the open world with a third person-view the draw distance for objects is increased and therefore the poly count is lowered for items on screen. When you're in a smaller confined space and dealing with scripted scenario the polycount can be upped because you're not having to render and load an entire cityscape map.
There's a reason why sound stages are used in filming rather than open air areas right? Because they're a controlled environment. Well, the same applys to the gamespace. Much like real-life films, lighting and set construction are going to be big parts of the anatomy and quality of the scene. When you're watching a cutscene, the lighting, poly count, camera movement, physics, etc can all be fine tuned and controlled. You're dealing with a lot less variables and therefore the attention can be put on the direction, motion capture, sound, and overall experience of the cut-scene. Thus, you're going to get a more polished scenerio.
With screenshots there's also a lot of doctoring going on by PR by many developers. You might get screens that are totally touched up or even painted over in Photoshop every which way. Stuff that's sent out to the press that was taken in 4k resolution running with max anti-aliasing, oversampled shadows, and was totally staged in a static environment rather than taken from running gameplay.
However, the argument that "cutscene" footage or screenshots are always better is false and depending on the developer some games' gameplay (see Deus-Ex: Human Revolution) actually look better than their cutscenes. This is due to the fact that many developers who are not using real-time scenario will record the scripted cutscene as a video. They will then take the video and compress it down (usually with the Bink Video codec) to save disk space. Depending on the compression rate and recorded resolution the results of the cutscene can look worse than the actual gameplay.
Speaking as someone who knows exactly how this works and having seen GTA V in person I can tell you that in regards to these GTA screens this is a VERY fair representation of what their engine can do. These stills look like running GAMEPLAY shots. I would say that color and brightness/contrast have been doctored in Photoshop a bit but the models are certainly running on a true polycount from what you're going to see in gameplay. The anti-aliasing doesn't seem to be overdone and the shots look to be stock HD resolution. You can be certain that they're using shots from a high end PC build but that does not mean that they're doctored. Rock* has been great as a developer with representing their product accurately. I cannot say the same for companies like EA or Activision.
I'd like to say that just because something comes from a cut-scene does not make it any less representative of what YOU the consumer will actually see on your TV or PC. It is NOT a cop-out and takes drastically more work from artists, riggers, programmers, and designers than pre-rendered scenes, especially when dealing with interactive cut-scenes. The debate should really be "when are companies going to stop showing us PRE-RENDERED cgi cutscenes and go 100% to real time rendering like GTA or Uncharted do?" I'm looking at you Square-Enix
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On the same subject of doctored screen shots, there was some developer speak up from Naughty Dog about their most recent batch of screen shots (see below) for The Last of Us (which I've also seen in-person and is looking amazing and VERY mature). The conversation fits right in with what we're talking about here:
Someone complained that these images published in the latest game informer weren't a true representation of what the game looks like and one of the devs from ND responded:
Screenshots captured DIRECTLY from the gameplay demo we presented to Game Informer – so yes, these are gameplay images, not trailer shots or high-res static renders.
Fair enough that the aliasing isn’t representative, but you’re telling me can’t imagine some aliasing? I’m sure you can draw some in on MS paint
Colors, textures, models, lighting, shadows, that’s all exactly representative.
It’s not like we give GI 234098 by 123098 pixel screens or paintovers or CG renders. You’re kidding yourself if anybody else doesn’t give them PC resolutions or supersampled images either. Or at least wants to, if they can’t for some reason. It’s just sounding more like a tired argument these days to belittle the any game’s asset release. What’s the point?
I would see your point if we released some CG images as gameplay shots and the final product differed radically. A certain football game and off-road rally game both come to mind of perfect examples of what we don’t do.
I’m tempted to do a comparison of a 1x and 2x screenshot for you when the game is close to the end of development from our kits just to prove a point
@ the crap they put together for the pc verison of gta iv
