Something I have been mulling over about the GOG Cut for the last few days:

Despite GOG in recent years having moved more and more towards being a "normal" gaming platform with modern game releases etc, the website is still very much associated with its name and it old, and still ongoing, function of providing Good OLD Games.
The user base of this platform has a lot of old and new gamers who seek this place out for the classics or obscure deep cuts of gaming of earlier decades. This includes an appreciation for the style of of these games. Pixel graphics and all.

Now, vanilla Daggerfall has a pretty distinct pixel graphics style with some fantastic pixel art used for many sprites. These are all replaced in the GOG Cut by AI upscaled sprites, modern 3D models and and effect and HD textures.

This is because GOG Cut comes prepackaged with DREAM, reShade, Handpainted Models and more. It is created to try to make this old pixel-art game appear as a modern game. But why would GOG of all places be where you would have that build? I would think a "GOG Cut" would lean into the retro style of Daggerfall and instead concentrate on QoL and Content mods that make Daggerfall into the game it should have been in the mid90s.

Many GOG Cut users seem confused about what Daggerfall Unity is and think the appearance in the GOG Cut is caused by DFU itself. To anyone who thinks that, have a look at this heavily content/mechanic modded playthrough using Daggerfall Unity with Retro Mode activated:

https://youtu.be/XdC6vBkffpg?t=286

Coincidence or not? Both GOG and Steam released DF / DFU GOG Cut within a very short time frame. And both screwed it up: Steam released the unpatched more or less unplayable official Bethesda version, incompatible with DFU, which was patched to the latest Bethesda version only recently. And GOG made (the fully patched version of) Daggerfall (which had been offered for years to customers buying other Bethesda games for free) available for all GOG customers, followed by the release of the DFU GOG Cut. Certainly a nice idea, but poorly executed: The focus of the GOG Cut is on graphical enhancements (classic DF + DFU alone is less than 1.5 GB, the GOG Cut is more than 6 GB), and the update mechanism is problematic, to say the least (mod version problems, game configurations, etc.).
My personal consequence is that I returned to classic DF + pure DFU + the mods I want to have, manually downloaded, installed and maintained.

Being optimistic, I'd say that the GOG guys are probably sweating about fixing the mess right now, and I hope they consider Ralzar's ideas, which make a lot of sense in my opinion. With that said, it will be impossible to make everyone happy.

Is reShade a component of another mod, or its own thing? Because I don't see it listed in the mod list on the GOG product page.

Honestly, I am not completely sure what reshade is. It is not a mod in the traditional sense. It is a third party software installed in DFU in some way. I do not use it so it has been too long since I installed or tinkered with it to say for certain. However, when watching recordings of anyone using the GOG Cut I see after every load the reshade software pops a grey transparent log down from the top of the screen for a second or two as it loads.

But it's not part of DREAM?

OK, generic, not DU-specifc, got it. And thanks.

I remember commenting on that a few days ago. Maybe GOG scrambled to get the GOG Cut out to draw away steam users that were searching for how to switch to DFU? They could have been working on this and then suddenly moved their time table up drastically to try to cash in on the DFU upsurge caused by Steam.

It would explain why this felt so weirdly rushed when DFU itself is still in beta, so there is really no rush at all.

Eh, a lot of the things GOG does feel weirdly rushed or otherwise half-baked. =P