I have been playing since the early access on the 12th on the xb1 and while I really do like the game (to put it in perspective Overwatch has been pretty much the only game I play and it hasn't even been turned on since the 12th), the lighting in this game is absolutely terrible. As in, actually unplayable in some cases at in game night. When entire expanses of map are pitch black unable to see literally 5 feet in front of your face in a game where a step in the wrong direction puts you in the middle of a firefight (que BDS william defoe quote) while you're essentially blind.
Some examples I've taken here:
"Hi, I'm Joshua Summers, and you would never have known I even existed if there wasn't a nametag hovering in the middle of nothingness"
https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/jedc75/video/71423363
And that's actually the not so bad example. can you tell what is going on here?
https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/jedc75/screenshot/11758870
What about here?
https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/jedc75/screenshot/11758832
How about now?
https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/jedc75/screenshot/11758839
No? well neither can I, and I'm the one getting shot. Look I'm all for realism where it can work, but you have to balance that with playability. I've even tried maxing brightness and it's still like staring into a black hole. We get it, it's night time, but unfortunately we still kind of need to be able to see what is going on to be able to play your game. You have no outdoor lights in 70%+ of the map and your guy (or girl) seems adamantly against even carrying his own light. How's that for realism?
Haha. The Joshua part was pretty damn funny. I saw him and was like "God damn, he's a ghost in the DAHKNESS." There was also a time I went into this fight in the fog at night. I was shooting at enemy icons only to find out a moment later that there was a car like 15ft infront of me between me and them, and I was shooting it like a moron. LOL Could not see it or them at all.
I know from playing around with lighting settings in games that it can be hard to fix it game-wide. Depending how they have their shader code setup, it could be challenging or simple. If they're separated by day and night time settings, then it'll be easy. Just add more ambient lighting to the night time. If it's just one universal setting, it could end up blowing out the lighting during the day if you tweak the night, and will require hours upon hours of trial and error (which in my experience is no fun.)
I agree 100% with jedc750. Some dark areas are too dark. There was one spot in a replay of a main mission that it was so dark, I was stuck for 5 minutes trying to figure out why I couldn't open an elevator door. Turns out it was already open, and I needed to hop down, but once I hopped down I couldn't see anything at all, to know what to do next.
And when it is midnight, it is foggy or raining far too often, making the view distance in the dark night even worse.
What time of the day (real world) do you play? I've played the game exclusively at night and had no problems at all - thinking the lighting is really great even in those cases where the game is genuinely dark.
However I know from plenty of experience that trying to play dark games during day time, even with the curtains closed, is often an exercise in frustration. It's very difficult to see anything, and that mood lighting in dark game areas that look so great when I play games at night, just look washed out and inscrutable during the day.
Solution (not a great one): Don't play dark games during the day.