Players glorified Ubisoft when they debuted Watch Dogs E3 2012 due to its masterful presentation of next-generation processing power. But when the company released the dumbed down version of the original title demonstrating less-detailed graphics, players could only ponder on the real purpose of this so-called "downgrade".

The catch here however is, a lot of high quality graphical features that we saw at E3 2012 are actually hidden in the game's PC build or say, turned off by Ubisoft. Now, they have been unlocked by modder TheWorse, with high hopes of fully restoring the celebrated display of the open world action-adventure video game anytime soon.

For now, TheWorse's version 0.7 is available, and Extreme Tech took it for a spin to get a feel of the enhanced graphics quality.

First case scenario: Rain and reflections (Now rain is reacting to light more suitably)

TheWorse has tweaked several aspects of rain handling but as per Extreme Tech's review, the most noticeable improvement is the way reflections are improved. Look at the difference below. The first photo shows the default display while the latter one's modded:

Second case scenario: Light and shadows (Changes to the lighting system)

By adjusting the bloom levels, TheWorse has created a clearer shadow effect. Due to a more diffused pattern, items now appear more focused and defined.

Notice how the light touches the trees. To quote Extreme Tech's observations, "We don't see the same hard cutoffs between lighted areas and darker ones."

A complete list of changes made by TheWorse is presented by DSOG including the 3 principal cameras to choose from (close, normal, far), a more crowded street (civilians density changes), and stuttering improvements.

What does Ubisoft has to say regarding this discovery? PC Gamer cited a statement made by the developer's spokesperson posted on the Watch Dogs website: "The PC version does indeed contain some old, unused render settings that were deactivated for a variety of reasons, including possible impacts on visual fidelity, stability, performance and overall gameplay quality."

He went on to emphasize the downside of enhancing the visuals: "Modders are usually creative and passionate players, and while we appreciate their enthusiasm, the mod in question (which uses those old settings) subjectively enhances the game's visual fidelity in certain situations but also can have various negative impacts. Those could range from performance issues, to difficulty in reading the environment in order to appreciate the gameplay, to potentially making the game less enjoyable or even unstable."

Extreme Tech presented a chart on their site that shows how the modded version is going to hit the performance harder on a modern GPU due to its outrageous memory footprint.

Nonetheless, players can install the mod by visiting Guru3D.

Are you willing to try the modded version? Sound off in the comments section below!