While I think the ray-traced version looks better in a technical sense, it seems to me that they have completely forgotten to apply darkness and shadow appropriately in the scenes to create an immersive atmosphere.
Keep all the new tech and dial the ambient lighting down. That would look way better.
Make it feel dark, uncertain and risky again. You’re not supposed to know what’s in that corner or that room before it comes lounging at you.
In the RTX version you can see everything in every location, completely killing any sense of suspense.
I've always wondered that by gaining the ability to simulate light (or basically anything) in a more accurate manner, we reduce artists' ability to control the final result.
Back in 2D times, an artist could just set a pixel to a given color, and it would be that color, in early 3d, they had the ability to paint in shadows/highlights or control the texture colors directly.
With the physically based workflow, they had to author roughness/metalness and albedo maps, and were hoping for the best that the final result looked good in the game.
Nowadays with simulated light bounces, changing anyting in the scene could affect everything else, making controlling the final result that much harder.
Yes it does look better automatically, but at the cost of adding difficult of channeling the artists' vision.
Keep all the new tech and dial the ambient lighting down. That would look way better.
Make it feel dark, uncertain and risky again. You’re not supposed to know what’s in that corner or that room before it comes lounging at you.
In the RTX version you can see everything in every location, completely killing any sense of suspense.