This will be sacrilege to say, but please update the graphics

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
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The community that plays Grim Dawn and continues to do so are very passionate about how great the graphics are for this game. A lot of people rely on them staying the same too because they play on lower end hardware. I expect most people who would care about this facet of the game has already selected out of the game so this post is likely to be heavily critiqued or ignored by the existing player base.

Having tried to get back into this game after Last Epoch, POE2, and more, it’s not the systems and the gameplay that stop me, it’s the graphics. The fidelity specifically, not the style. A lot would claim that graphics don’t make a good game, and I would agree, but I do think it’s holding this one back.

Many games have a stylized and timeless look to them that can hold up over time. Games like Ocarina of Time, Mass Effect, Skyrim, etc. all retain strong graphical style many years after their release. I’m not contending that all older graphical styles hold back the game, but I am claiming Grim Dawn’s style does.

The environment art styling is fantastic, as is the UI, but all of the spell effects, shaders, and more all flow on to the screen as a spew of colors as if applied by pastel brushes. Nothing in this game is sharp. Late game builds have so much visual clutter on the field it’s difficult to even see the monsters you’re fighting. Every spell effect looks the same - some sort of smoke particle effect or pool. Aura’s are not distinct, and in general the lighting is underdone despite what should be possible with non procedural maps.

For reference I play on a 4090 with maxed settings. It isn’t a hardware or monitor issue from me, and much of the recent you should play grim dawn videos explicitly highlight the graphical quality issues. I know the existing player base is fine with this, but for me having attempted and failed to get several friends to play this game over the years and having them churn from the look and feel of the game feels rough.

Grim Dawn doesn’t have to be a game for everyone. But there are people who this game is made for, for which the current graphical fidelity is a dealbreaker, that I believe is missing out on what is otherwise one of the most well crafted games in its’ genre that from a gameplay and systems perspective. It can easily stand toe-to-toe with POE2 and Last Epoch, if it chose to do so. A good example is Diablo 2 Resurrected, which preserves art style while vastly upgrading the graphical fidelity of the game, it can be done.

Please use this as one additional data point in favor for modernizing this engine. Either in this entry or the next. It is important. Not all great looking games are good, but it matters, it’s not insignificant, and it should be core focus for this genre.

This clip probably speaks louder words than I can type on what should be possible here: Twitch

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I don’t think the Twitch link is working. I don’t get any GD related video.

While I disagree with most, this

is definitely true. Especially smaller enemies you can’t tell what they’re doing as they’re covered under all your attack particles and stuff. Not sure how much can be done about it, but I wouldn’t mind some better visibility in those scenarios.

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Try again? I just edited the post, my bad. Tested it now.

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Would be hard to do considering they have maxed out the current game engine to its limits. The only fixes it can do I guess is reducing some of the particle effects

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I agree that graphics should be updated, but I’m not sure I agree with your examples.

What I do agree with: there’s a lot of visual clutter, and there’s a lot of foggy or smokey visual elements. Not smokey as in smoke, but lacking sharpness.

Turning off aura effects will be possible (or alreday is, I haven’t played in a while), but I think the main problem is rough textures on some environments, enemy models or skill effects. As an example of each, I think environments like Burrwitch or that part after Asterkarn and before Fort Ikon don’t look that good. I think it’s the ground foliage, it looks kind of blurry.

As for enemies, Grobles look like they could use an update, they look…I don’t know, somehow just poor…

Skill effects are the most important, though. Most are fine by me, but some, inexplicably, are really rough. Especially bad are item granted skills- Oblivion, for example. For a skill that is the main skill of some builds, it looks really bad. Very rough, it somehow clips all other objects around it or in its path.

I don’t know how to really express myself, I know that some with more knowledge of visual design and animation could say what I said more precisely, I’m jsut commenting on how things see to me.

And they should also add the option for fog in the game - not removing it completely, but making it further away, like in that mod where you can do that. That way you have sharper image, but also have that atmosphere in levels like the Seal of the Loghorrean.

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“Graphics” is a broad term. We update “graphics” all the time, like when we raise the visual bar with DLCs or when we up-rez an old monster (most recently Dranghouls). But there are limits to this approach.

It’s not going to be enough to just up-rez the entire game, which would be a tremendously expensive undertaking in itself. We would also need to fundamentally rewrite the engine to integrate new tech for rendering, lighting, and FX.

We’re talking remaster levels of work, at which point shouldn’t we just…make Grim Dawn 2?

Not to mention that in doing so, we would have to raise the system requirements for the game, and that seems like a dick move after 9 years. Not everybody wants to, or can afford to, keep up with the latest hardware.

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I completely agree with this.

I do think some, select, skill effects could be realistically upgraded. Skill effects are an obvious choice because the plyer sees them most frequently. Like I said, most are fine, but some not so much. I t doesn’t make sense for me to list examples here, because people disagree over that, but as I said before, item granted skills (Oblivion, e.g.) seem to be somewhat less polished than mastery skills (it does make sense, however, since mastery skills are used more often)

EDIT: But, to point out, I think the vast majority of the game looks very beautiful, and holds up really well despite being 9 years old.

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I really like the style and detail of the graphics. I do think some ability effects could be updated though, maybe brought more in line with their current standards. Some abilities just lack effects entirely (like Scourge).