Demo Graphics Downgrade

Yeah that's a fair assessment. The details do look nicer in the 2018 version. I really would like the background to have more shadows and color though.

As for Miriam's model, I'm really, really saddened by it. It looked so gorgeous originally, it's why we all voted for it after all. But yeah looking at in the demo, I always thought it looked off but couldn't put my finger on why. I was asking myself "This is what I voted for?" The weird splotchy grey on the frills was really bugging me. Now seeing your comparison between the two models, everything became so much clearer.

Sadly it seems like that old model's been long gone for years now.

Well hold on a second here. That thumbnail...yeah, if you go to the scene at the very end of this, post-Vepar where she's posing, that's very close to the old character model, just the face is different (and of course the cyan outline is gone). Far as I can tell.

In-menu, dialogue scenes and gameplay it seems to be different. Hm. Unless I'm crazy. dareka what do you make of it? It at least seems closer/close enough that I don't mind

In regards to BloodyHell's points, which I just finished going through, I'd agree for some and not others. I think that glossy look is great for the ship's pillar on the interior because it gives a greater sense of depth/volume to it than what the 2016 demo showed. It makes enough sense to me that it could be damp in there anyway. I think the garden comparison shot near where you first walk in looks better now than it did before.

Dunno if anyone has said it, but it just looks like ambient occlusion and shadows are pared back significantly. This was likely done ON PURPOSE to test for stability of the engine. A lot of betas do this. You don't get the final games graphical enhancements.

In short, don't judge the game's graphics until the actual final game is out.

This looks fairly obvious to me anyways. Don't know why anyone of you actually think this is how the final game will look. Betas and demos ALWAYS warm you that they aren't reflective of the final product.

Well, I'm not willing to say anything definitively by looking at two videos (versus actual gameplay), BUT, here's what seems to be going on, to me.

1. Other than the blue fresnel shading, the main difference between the two models (E3 2016, E3 2018) seems to be coloring of the frills (pink vs black/grey).
2. The original model for Miriam - the one that was used to showcase the shader - used some additional, different colored lighting, and also, it seems, higher resolution textures, at least for details such as the frills. So it would appear that texture resolution had dropped for the in-game model, which is the same model that appears in the menu, by E3 2016.
3. The model in the cut-scenes, however, has higher resolution textures than the in-game model. This applies to both E3 2016 and E3 2018 versions.

Conclusion:

The in-game model has always been the same one used in the menu screens, and is not as good as the original model for the shader voting. However, this contrast stood out as a result of using this model for the dialogues in the 2018 version, because you zoom in closer on it. Lower resolution textures tend to become noticeable as you zoom in, obviously. The models used for the cut-scenes (as opposed to dialogues) has always been higher-res, and very close to the original used for the shader voting.

So it's not a change between 2016 and 2018, it's a change between cut-scene model and in-game model, and the fact that the latter is a downgrade became noticeable when they used it for dialogues for the first time.

So lovelydumpling , it's not that it's gone per se, it's that it's always been cut-scene model, not an in-game model.

Fortunately, if the model's already in there, it should be easy to implement for gameplay, or a the very least the dialogues and the menus. Since items equiped are reflected in cut-scenes, it's probably the same except with higher resolution textures. And if the devs don't do it, this is probably the sort of things modders can do on day one.

Thanks, that is just what I had suspected, in-game Miriam being down-res'd for gameplay.

If it's not possible to keep her high-res at all times (which may be borderline unnecessary - especially in portable platform cases), having her at least so in menus and dialogue would be a big improvement for me.

Unfortunately, I think if this is the case they would've already said something. I think they're trying to formulate how to best break the bad news to us at this point.

Yeah, absolutely. If that's all taken care of, the extent of my graphical concerns have been satisfied. My assumption is the demo's lighting isn't final (or even present) and the textures are something I didn't even notice until I leaned forward to check the jpgs here. If those are changed/improved, that's great, but for the most part I'm satisfied.

The cannon thing I agree with though, and some parts of the village area are rough (ground textures and two trees being placed identically next to each other). Procedural generation will fix a good bit of that though.

A final note that came up earlier in Discord too, the village as seen in Dev update 8 has much better looking colors imo. I don't think the rocky floor is there anymore either?

The thing is, I believe the lighting was also done with high-res textures... I was fooled by it at first too, but when I kept looking at the trailer for the Zangetsu fight (the pretty one), I noticed the lighting, though pretty, was completely static. There's no reason why this won't be a high res texture overlayed over the other textures. So many objects that look 3D are also actually 2D billboards with textures of pre-rendered pasted on top, which they can get away with convincingly because of the 2D nature of the scrolling.

... I dunno, at this point I'm just getting the feeling they haven't gotten around to baking in the textures used in the procedural generation process, and that those textures are the ones that are missing... I mean, look at the carts in that video. Then look at the ones in the game. It's basically the same geometry but a vastly different texture. What appears to be lighting on the cartwheels is also fudged with textures. So we might end up worrying for nothing. Why would they not just say so if that were the case? Well, I dunno, but it's possible it's just an oversight. Yes, I know, to us it seems like too big a deal to be an oversight, but game devs, especially in Japan, are generally not PR wizards - and that's being generous. 

At any rate, there's only one obstacle to going back to the pretty textures - which seems to me to be the only element downgraded, actually, even though its effects are huge - and that's whether or not they made those texture assets, at that quality, for all of the rooms in the castle or not. If they did (and I'd find it odd if they didn't considering how much they already invested on procedurally generated assets), then the final release will look like the previews or better. If they didn't...modders, do your thing. 

The procedural generation video looks great because both the shadows and procedurally generated textures are there but the demo doesn't include them.

If they would just confirm that... this thread wouldn't even need to exist.