We agree there’d be some graphical compromise, maybe we’re just disagreeing over details of the scale of that compromise and the hardware that would be ‘permittable’ by this scenario.
I was imagining something that looks and plays almost exactly like Witcher 3 except at lower resolution, which doesn’t seem possible to me. I’d say if you simplify the graphics (replace dynamic lighting with pre-baked lightmaps, do gouraud shading instead of PBR, remove most post-processing effects etc etc) and make all models look like half-life assets, you could definitely render something at an acceptable frame rate. However asset streaming would still be a huge issue for a large and detailed open world like Witcher 3, considering memory limits and slow disk reads
I was imagining something that looks and plays almost exactly like Witcher 3 except at lower resolution, which doesn’t seem possible to me. I’d say if you simplify the graphics (replace dynamic lighting with pre-baked lightmaps, do gouraud shading instead of PBR, remove most post-processing effects etc etc) and make all models look like half-life assets, you could definitely render something at an acceptable frame rate. However asset streaming would still be a huge issue for a large and detailed open world like Witcher 3, considering memory limits and slow disk reads