Today Ahead Released for Oculus Quest with PC crossplay, and the update resulted in some major changes to Onward’s PC. The fans are not happy.
As a result of the port, the PC version of Onward has been patched to v1.8, which includes dramatic changes to the map to accommodate modifications made to make the game run on Quest. Previously, Downpour Interactive had told us that these changes would be mainly in the form of altering the design, removing some features that Quest could not have at this time, such as additional foliage, etc. But it seems more dramatic than that. The Onward Discord server is a constant stream of users unhappy with updating and publishing reports of various new bugs.
After reading the Onward VR Reddit reviews, new PC VR user reviews, Discord impressions, and testing the new Onward PC version 1.8 for me, the differences are pretty clear. Each map is now noticeably visually degraded, suffers from similar pop-up texture issues that hinder the Quest version, and is generally lower quality overall.
At the end of last month, the Dev Blog hinted at these changes, but it didn’t sound as dramatic as it seems now.
On the plus side, the upgrade has resulted in significant stability and performance improvements on the PC. Users who previously had trouble maintaining frame rate are now likely to have a much smoother gameplay to enjoy. Additionally, KasperVid, Community Manager at Onward Discord, states that the new game structure will allow for more robust and feature-packed updates in the future:
“We rewrote and rebuilt large parts of the game in the past few months,” says KasperVid on Discord. “On the one hand, we have created tons of free space for future game improvements and expansions, on the other hand there is the temporary pain that we are experiencing right now.” And I fully understand that it’s frustrating. But we have been working on this game for many years, and we are dedicated to it. That won’t change, so please give us some credit so we can fix it soon. “
In addition, MrDeathpwn, an administrator of the Onward community on Reddit, also explains: “I and the developers have been recording all your comments and we will do our best to resolve these issues as soon as possible. I will share all comments with the team. Let’s make this a 2 step forward and 1 step back situation. “
We reach out to Downpour Interactive directly for additional feedback and will update this post once we hear from you. Let us know what you think of update 1.8 on PC on the Comments below!
