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Mere weeks away from E3, developers and publishers are working flat-out behind the scenes to make this the show of their lives. There will be new game announcements, surprise reveals and eagerly anticipated re-reveals. In many cases, it'll be our first opportunity to see some of the biggest titles of this year and the next. Doubtless, we shall see some amazing software running on console and PC - but at the same time, we strongly suspect that there'll be a vast array of marketing materials that end up bearing little resemblance to final software, or at the very least misrepresent the quality of the featured game. Even with the very best intentions, it's a situation that can backfire badly, as CD Projekt Red has discovered over the last couple of weeks. To be frank, it's been difficult and frustrating for Digital Foundry to cover this story. Of course, we see all the forum posts and Imgur comparison images that you do, but at the same time without access to the game itself, it's very difficult to add anything of additional value to the debate - and we only received PC code on the day of release. However, knowing that our colleague Robert Purchese would actually be in the studio with CDPR, with first-hand access to sources that could get to the bottom of the story, we were at least in a position to get answers to our most pressing questions, and to put our point of view across to the developer.
Bertie's remarkable story provides eminently plausible and reasonable reasons behind the differences with the 2013 reveal trailer, and reminds us that CDPR - in common with the vast majority of game developers - are fundamentally decent people at heart, doing their utmost to bring us their best quality work. It also emphasises that conspiracy theories - in this case an apparently deliberate campaign to make The Witcher 3 look better than it actually is - only flourish when there is a lack of communication between the studio and its fans.
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