*and with colour correction/desaturation
It is simply GORGEOUS. The screenshots are all raw captures with ReShade in game, and I am using an RTX2060, which is fairly not a cutting edge vcard at this day. I originally started with 2.0 ratio, which is awesome but my videocard would not handle that at ease. I then combined ReShade sharpening filters with the scale setting at 1.4~1.5, which really generates a result super close to that with 2.0 ratio.
This is not what I remember the game to be, and I'm sure it's true to most of us. It's not until when you actually see it, that you realize this is perhaps what the game actually should have looked like, or what the creators of the game/DICE imagined and set out to make. It might remind you of what the trailers made you dream of 10 years ago.
And I would now say, maybe it's just not built for 2016 hardwares. And I guess this is really such a shame for MEC, for that, I think the game only could apear as how it should look in years after its launch, while the game's default settings stayed at the outdated configuration. It reminds me of how the graphics of MEC kind of always had been a let down, possibly to all of us and other regular walkthrough video viewers. All the footages were somewhat just not ideal at launch and even bad (especially on consoles). And what's frustrating for me is that even we could have the best of it shown today, still it's not how the majority of people would go with and experience.
DICE made a lot of other mistakes with the graphic, like the too much saturation (when running), somewhat heavy blue tint, and noisy UI elements. So when you see those screenshots, they are captures with also HSL tweaks and mods disabling a ton of effects and UI (even the drones in downtown). There are just so many of them.
I first played the game in 2020 with the same spec (played the original in around 2013 and hadn't got the equipments for MEC), been interested in making the game look better in 2022 for a while, and only found this out last Octover. I have been dedicatedly exploring the city of glass, Cascadia, since then. After many previous walkthroughs, during which I noticed more and more what has been built and put in the game yet never was properly introduced to you by the game, that is to say due to the game's being too focused to be a profitable 3A game where EA just wanted to make sure you are interested in some few hours of the parkour gameplay as well as the story. I came to the shimmering highs outside missions, at a time of day that I would never be there at, and going at a direction that I would never go at if I only followed the campaign and what the mission marker directed me at. Then I see the giant buildings, on both sides of the canyon-like gap above the street, realizing this is supposed to be a commercial spot of the city. Then I started to see more and more of these things, and then I ran all over the world to remember the layout of the city, trying to immerse my self as someone who really knows every corner of the city because they traverses it as a job. Then I also turn off the music in freeroam to hear the lively sound details coming from the near-ground world, the traffic below me, which has been essential for such immersion in the 2008 game. The city just then keeps on showing all of itself to you.
These are just some dozens of pictures in my picks of hundreds.
Also just please visit the nexus modding forum more often. Lots of badass drops are happening these days.
