With great hype and attention comes great scrutiny and the last victim thereof seems to be Spider-man, as fans found reason to believe that there's been a significant graphics downgrade from the footage we've been seeing and the final game.
It all boils down to the puddles or should I say Spider-puddles, which ended up being the catalysts of the controversy. Plenty of users gave their opinions on dubiously captured screenshots, many of them lo-res, but YouTuber and twitter user PressStartKofi took some screenshots that made side by side comparisons easier.
As you can see from the screenshots below, there's definitely been a Spider-change of some sort. The second image, which is from the final, launch-edition of Spider-man, looks flatter, for lack of a better word. While he still looks decent enough, it's certainly not what has been advertised.
Granted, initial trailers featured Spider-man in a suit that was so shiny that it looked like latex, which fans immediately complained about. Insomniac Games have promised to tone it down and the latter versions ended up looking pretty good.
The puddles, on the other hand, are clearly different and even though we're not talking about game-breaking changes, I mean c'mon - it's puddles, it's still a significant downgrade. Insomniac Games have since taken to twitter to refute these claims, but it's quite difficult refuting this.
The dev jokingly suggested there's plenty of puddles elsewhere in the game, although that's unlikely to have helped. As for the rest, they claim that the game's lighting has changed over the course of development, which led to Spider-man looking as he does now.
Now, I'm not going to pretend the game looks like crap now, because it most certainly doesn't. However, having been on the receiving end of Witcher 3 and graphics downgrades, I know exactly how it feels to be deceived. For the sake of objectivity though, you decide for yourself.
PressStartKofi
PressStartKofi
At the time of writing, Insomniac Games are still adamant that they've changed the position of the sun and lighting during the development, denying there's been any downgrade whatsoever.
Spider-Man Gallery
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