[Video] BioWare Makes Fun of Marvel's Spider-Man's "PuddleGate" Controversy

[u/cristi1990an]

https://youtu.be/yQph-_imtDY

[u/sonofseriousinjury]

An old gameplay trailer showed a puddle on the floor. A new trailer showed the puddle was smaller. Some people said Insomniac was downgrading the game just like Watch Dogs and want their heads on spikes.

EDIT: Even if they had to make graphical concessions in order to improve performance/gameplay I think it's funny how many people are vehemently upset by this.

[u/And_You_Like_It_Too → u/sonofseriousinjury]

Supposedly, the original argument wasn’t actually about the puddles — it’s about the (alleged) removal of real-time reflections. Meaning, when Spiderman swings by or runs along a building with reflective/mirrored glass, it will show the reflection of everything except him. They were saying that no character models (including Spiderman) have a reflection in glass windows, puddles, etc. anymore, and that puddle was reduced to minimize how obvious it was that none of the character models were reflecting in the puddle (after that scene previously showed off the reflections in an earlier trailer). People don’t care about puddles, they care about basic reflections. Again, I’m not saying they’re right in saying or believing that, but to not give it that context is as silly as believing that they’re outraged about the removal or reduction of a solitary puddle.

Do I personally care about the controversy? No. Preordered and anxious to play it. Just figured I’d try to clear up the misinformation a little.

—————

Clarifications:

1. Several people below have pointed out images, gifs, and videos that demonstrate puddle reflections. I don’t know exactly “when” the game was supposedly downgraded, puddles changed, or reflections removed... so it’s hard to know if the images and gifs in comments are from before or after that time. But what matters now is that it definitely appears that they’re in game, so all you puddle-gaters out there, this should put it to rest (I hope). Look through the comments below and be your own judge.
2. I should have chosen a more recent gif of Spiderman running on a glass building without a reflection; I wasn’t expecting this comment to be so huge. Some have claimed that this gif proves that there were never glass reflections of Spiderman on buildings. Others have claimed that there are minimal reflections (I’m not sure how recent this gif is, or what source it came from). In the August 16th “Just the Facts” video, at 0:39, 1:08, and 1:59 there don’t appear to be obvious reflections, but this could be due to the time of day, the orientation of the sun, which compass direction Spiderman was facing on that building’s surface, etc.
3. I never intended to be the mouthpiece of this controversy. My intention was just to point out that it was the reflections (or lack thereof), and not the puddles, that people were originally discussing. Then articles, threads, and videos began discussing the puddle outrage without that context. I personally think “puddle-gate” is stupid. I think complaining about reflections is stupid. I think this entire thread is why CD Projekt Red was hesitant to show us “Cyberpunk 2077” gameplay, because it will be analyzed to death and people will be outraged over any graphical changes or alleged downgrades, no matter how minor.
4. I apologize if I misled, misinformed, or misspoke in any way. I’d have chosen my words more carefully or not commented at all, had I known it would blow up like this.
5. “Spiderman” looks amazing. That’s what we SHOULD be talking about.

[u/FJLyons → u/And_You_Like_It_Too]

Well that's ridiculous. Reflections are a very taxing system in a game. It's not like mirrors. They have to recreate the full section, with NPC's and mirror their movement in real time. It effectively doubles the resources of the scene or environment. It's not something that's going to be in most games, because it's not something better technology can really fix. The better the graphics, it's still double the resources, and most games run using a fine tooth comb to split the hairs.

[u/FJLyons → u/[deleted]]

Well not easier, so to speak, they're designed with raytracing enhancements, so you're paying a premium for GPUs designed to do that hefty work. In a few years they'll improve and come down in price, but it's unlikely the next gen of consoles will have something like that.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

They make them better. They're harder to produce, they just look better.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

nah its easier too (but not necessarily easy). but still expensive. raytracing's biggest benefit is easy reflections and having that at the hardware level is an amazing convenience I didn't think we'd get for another 5 years.

[u/TheAfroNinja1 → u/[deleted]]

Its not easier to to RT, it looks better but your games are going to run worse with rtx on than off.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheAfroNinja1]

In terms of developing the reflections, RT is dead simple compared to the current techniques. Hardest decision (outside of the obvious "how many rays do you want to sample with") is how "true" you want your reflections to be; I. E. If you want to render stuff in a reflection that isn't in the camera, you need a way to store that info, since normal GPU pipelines discard those triangles before lighting comes into play. So, easier but not easy since this step above isn't trivial (I believe).

But yes, this still does take time to do and will obviously impact performance. Having a dedicated core for this helps, but there's always costs associated with using and moving around info obtained from the GPU.