The original BT IV...
The Director's cut...
Seems to me they took a shortcut to the performance upgrade by disabling cast shadows and volumetric sunlight! I would love it if they patched in the vol light/cast shadows as an option!
EDIT: It seems as though ini tweaking is supported as the settings in game fall under low-ultra+text for ini tweaks!

Think part of the reason is the director cut came out on consoles and most of the work was done on them and then ported to pc. Wish they would leave pc settings alone when they do this as most pc's these days can handle the upgraded graphics fine.

One of the devs said over in the Steam forums that the missing NPC shadows are a bug, but overall they overhauled the lighting system to make it run better.
Although they sell it as an improvement, personally I think the visual downgrade is too large in many areas to warant it.
I do hope that at least the NPC shadows will be fixed soon.

Yeah, I noticed immediately how flat and washed out everything looks. Such a shame, I was really looking forward to this DC. Hoping hard they're gonna bring the old look back as an option.

Yeah, consolitis strikes again, a PS4 player over at the steam forums posted this, and it looks exactly like a potato PC version! Mostly PR ass-covering, but the lighting/textures/shaders has been severely nerfed to coincide with the console's version, it looks exactly like a console port no matter what they say!

I'm going to rant a bit here. Flame on:


Yep--the main thing that wasn't a problem in the game--the original graphics--is what they severely cut back on. They made no provision at all for the people who really liked and enjoyed the original graphics and, if anything, expected an improvement in the DC version rather than a severe downgrade. Many people actually told them how much they enjoyed the graphics in the original game--they were ignored, completely. I know that I said plenty about the graphics, very complimentary stuff--and it was all ignored. I have no idea why. It's not just shadows, unfortunately--they changed the meaty textures for lightweights & low res textures in many cases--the only textures/shaders noticeably improved in the DC over the original are the character textures--they are a lot better, but even with those the shadows and lighting are off and often look incongruous with the scene.

This game is a work of art--a dark, Irish song of tragedy and struggle throughout--but they even monkeyed with the original color palettes in the game and Skara Brae looks vaguely like the "Gingerbread City" now. The problem with that, imo, is that the graphical theme of the game now undercuts and battles the game's dark themes and core. Ireland is often beautiful in its rugged bleakness--and the wonderful music in the game combined with the graphics to create a spell-binding atmosphere! This was never supposed to be a Gandalf meets the Hobbits game!....;) *Fool of a took!*...;)

The devs say they understand what a degradation the DC is graphically--and they even posted screen shots illustrating that they do indeed understand the graphical problems--and they've pledged to put everything right. Why this was allowed to ship beats me--it's really difficult to believe, considering the amount of time and patience us original KS backers have put into this game. And especially considering that after we told them how much we liked the graphics--then they went and scuttled them. I really don't understand it.

My wife tells me that sometimes I have the patience of Job...;) I can wait, again, until they undo some of really poorly conceived graphical changes they made. So much wasted work by these devs just because they don't appear to listen well when their customers and supporters are speaking to them. It just makes no sense at all to only heed your critics while ignoring your fans and supporters and *customers*.

But after all of this time the question I have is "Are they really going to fix it?" I hope so. I love the game and enjoy playing it--I was ~76 hours or so into the first game when I shelved it to wait for the 2.0 version and then later the DC. I want to go back to the dark and haunting Irish atmosphere of the original game; but I also want the gameplay advantages of the DC. Guess I'll go back to waiting again....They did so many things right in the original game--stuff that should have been fixed in the DC were things like overt, known bugs, inventories that that actually ran out of room not only for the players but also for the shop owners! This is what everyone thought was being done for the DC, and by and large they've done a good job fixing some basic things that should never have made it into the original game!

I keep this up and I'll write a book, and likely no one at inXile will read it...;) Time to sign off. Several of us in the original KS stated repeatedly how much a BT4 game would need a save-anywhere option--along with the luckstone saves that functioned similar to but were better than checkpoints. They didn't listen to that, either--and what happened? They had to go back in and do a major patch--as one of the inXile devs stated: "Save anywhere was our most-requested feature!" Well, duh...;) Not listening doesn't pay! So much of this could have been easily avoided in the original development cycle! Why would a game developer like Fargo say, "Let us know what you want in the game!" and then flatly ignore it? It makes no sense at all.

I know these guys @ inXile are tired of all of this--but, listen, guys--your customers are just as weary of it--especially when savvy suggestions are made by people who've been playing all kinds of games for decades, BT games included--and inXile ignores the suggestions made during the KS by contributors--fonts of wisdom that should have been heeded but weren't. I mean, how could anyone who has played more than a couple of RPGs in his life design truncated inventories that--like the save-game function--were so poorly done that major patches were required to go back in and fix it after the game shipped? I never said a word about inventories during the KS because I didn't believe I had to!....;) Same thing now with the game graphics! There's a definite pattern here inXile--a pattern of asking for suggestions from your customers, getting them, and then ignoring the best of the lot--only a few of which I've mentioned.

I mean, is that how you guys get overtime?....;)

Flame off.

Hear, hear! Yeah, this is most likely consolitis striking again as this game's now identical to the PS4 version... I hate consoles as they are infecting their taint upon PC games! They said they will be fixing the graphics save for the part envisioned by their artistic vision which means they're going to keep part the console shit graphics.

But we shall see, I hope they prove me wrong...

Agreed, And they seem to be off to a good start. I really do like the game, it's just that the graphics downgrade is so severe and obvious that the rationale for doing that to the game seems inscrutable. It's almost as if it's a kind of petty vengeance taken against PC owners who didn't buy the game as inXile expected when it first shipped, an "OK, so you didn't like the game? Well, we'll redo it for consoles, then, and hopefully they will like it better! Take that!"....;) "Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" is another old saying that comes to mind. I really don't think it was any of *that*, but...I want to be optimistic and hope they'll listen to their customers a bit more attentively now. Having to perpetually go back into a game and patch it because strong, emphasized suggestions were ignored during development is surely a dead-end street. Proper course, imo, would have been to do the Windows version; then to do a "lite" graphics version for consoles and Macs, if need be. Would have been constructive to do a Vulkan API version--which at least theoretically would have aided them cross-platform to a degree. Taking your best effort and then dumbing it down to console level in a one-size-fits-all, less-is-more approach is hamfisted, imo. I will enjoy it if they prove both of us wrong, for sure....;) But one size does not fit all, and never has, really.

Whelp, they plan to release the patches this week so we will soon see!

Oh my god. Is that why there is this infuriating save point system?

Should I not be playing the director's cut?

That's incredible. Can it be bypassed? Turned off?

I tried asking in a new thread, but the forum button on the Bard's Tale IV DC GOG page is wrong and just lands you on the main community forum.

There's a game option: you can have "save anywhere", or "save only at save stones" (or whatever they call those). The second one is there for people who wanted it to be like BT1 where you could only save at inns and you had to get back there safely. It's optional though!

It's not a checkpoint save system, thank goodness...;) Two ways to save--save anywhere you are in the game by pressing the "save game" button on the in-game menu, or by clicking on a "Luckstone" anywhere you see one (unless it's where you last used a Luckstone save)--and it saves your game exactly like "Save anywhere" does, except for the added bonus of restoring all your party's hit points! That's why it's called a "Luckstone"....;)

There's actually a third way to save--I had forgotten about--when you "quit to desktop" via the in-game menu the game is saved at the point you quit.

What is infuriating about it?....;) I think it's fine. Yep, I'm happy with the first patch--seems to be coming along fine, I'm glad to say. Big improvement...;) And they plan to do more, they say. It's OK with me!