The problem with that is the back catalogue of games that developers have to compete with. There already are better games with worse graphics, the big studios aren’t going to risk competing in that crowded market that already has its crowned victors.
Yeah graphics are nice to have, but sometimes I want to game on a small and light laptop like I don’t need revolutionary HD high quality all the time
Art Style > Graphics. Kingdom Hearts (2002) looks wildly better GTA: San Andreas (2004) and Fallout 3 (2008).
Fallout 3 looks like dog shit man. It has since day 1. It’s one of my favorite games and I have 100% on it, but it has never looked good.
Every bethesda game looks like dogshit.
not skyrim. or fallout 4. beautiful landscapes everywhere
Fo76 looks amazing on max settings and nvidia upscaling. It still has ugly elements but overall I made so many screenshots the only other game I made this many screenshots is modded Skyrim.
I will link one later actually to demonstrate it
No it doesnt. It looks like an upscaled 2003 game. Hell, Starfield also looks like its from 2010. Plays like it too
It’s just like your opinion man
Idk, I’m playing FO76 on ultra on 4K right now and it looks like shit. Not much different than Skyrim. Compare it to something like Forza Horizon 5 and it’s not even funny how bad FO76 looks like.
I guess I compare it more with games like Elder Scrolls Online that are so ugly and without physics that they are unplayable to me. Valheim also barely makes it fidelity wise so fo76 looking this good and having physics and stuff and everything from a singleplayer game was a shock.
It is genius level of game dev. You don’t even feel it is online most of the time, no lags and such. There are some bugs it is Bethesda after all but overall wow. Why can’t all online games be like this?
Not to mention it has the best open map since frikin elder scrolls morrowind. It feels like the same person designed the map with ash region and stuff.
Now, if they improved it with some sandbox type economy a la eve online that would be shared between all instances and some kind of control territory map also shared between instances connected to camps… there is huge potential here. I want a fallout game with elements from Star Wars Galaxies while still preserving fidelity on the level of a single player game.
There is another project that tries to achieve something in that direction since 12 years and 700 milion dollars called Star Citizen but it’s been a real mess with few redeeming qualities if any.
Because you’re playing the game wrong You’re supposed to install at least 300 mods first /s
Unironically what they say
San Andreas is my favourite GTA but man that game wasn’t good looking at all even at launch on PC
Modern Quality of Life settings, novel features, styled to look seamless with itself, optimal usage of resources so the experience is only about the content and not the settings.
I just want games where the devs get to release the game they wanted to make without the studio enshittification microtransactions, always-online single player and so on tagged on to it.
Activision and Electronics Arts were both started by people who wanted to put game developers first. Gathering of Developers, as well, which was eventually absorbed into Take Two.
It’s not something that seems to last in this industry.
They don’t even get absorbed these days. They get bought and then laid off.
They do exist and in greater numbers and variety than ever before. Play Undertale, Baba is You, BeamNG.drive, FTL, Disco Elysium, Emily is Away, Islanders, NEO Scavenger, Rodina, Whispers of a Machine, Proteus, etc.
Totally random examples, but I could name dozens more. We are spoiled with great games that are pure expressions of their developers’ visions. There are more of them than anyone can realistically ever play.
So… Battle bit?
July and August were so fun
Just make guns and bombs work in MSFS.
until then: DCS
Then just browser itch.io for games
Obligatory: Starsector
Also Rimworld, Project Zomboid, Prison Architect, Factorio… basically if you like sandbox games, there’s a ton out there.
When thinking of space games with limited graphics, the first thing that comes to mind is ASCII Sector.
But the Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters (or whatever it’s name is now) gets my strongest recommendation. And Starsector looks inspired by it, so I’ll have a look!
starsector deserves so much more popularity. 10/10 would cause the collapse of civilization using hyperillegal ai cores that accelerated the collapse in the first place while getting blackmailed by those self same ai cores again
Kerbal Space Program, Derail Valley, Nucleares, …
I want shorter games, on average. 10-20 hour completion times would be right up my alley.
I blame Far Cry 3 for this proliferation of open world bobbins. So much shit to do and almost none of it is worth doing.
Halo: Infinite was fun the first time around, but on replays, I just want to get to the story events.
I also can’t play the open world parts on my PC. Somehow looks worst any of the retro or retro revival titles I play with single digit frame rates.
Halo infinite is the first Halo that I only played once.
lol, replays of any Halo game past Reach? You’re funny. I could barely get through Infinite the first time. At least it was better than 5, but so is a turd sandwich.
My scalding hot take is that 5 is a more fun game than Infinite. 5 looked like shit and had an awful story, but at least the big cinematic moments still felt like Halo. Infinite just bored me and felt hollow.
The gameplay in 5 is actually really good. The set piece battles are very replayable. The biggest issue for me the the creeping Live Service shit, the “Cortana bad” story and the flat out false advertisement. The game only fans seem to think you need to read the books for it to make sense, but I’ve read the books and it wasn’t any better. Wish they made a spinoff game of Sangheili “Blooding Wars”. Those were the peak levels.
Halo 4 has a solid story and the campaign played fine, but the multi player at launch was bad. The MCC version actually fixed a lot of the issues I had though.
By Halo Infinite, including Halo Wars 2, we’ve had three games in a row that ditched the Big Bad from the previous game because the devs had a knee jerk response to loud fans and that AAA studios have a revolving door for upper staff. I’ve bailed on the franchise because I don’t think I’ll ever get a satisfying conclusion to The Endless story. Or any conclusion even.
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We share the same opinion exactly. I completely agree with your point about the books. I’ve read every book, comic, etc and that game still made no sense.
I also agree about the gameplay. Warzone was probably some of the most fun I’ve had in a Halo. I never got good enough for regular slayer ranked though so I can’t comment there.
4 is my second favorite campaign for story, but I am a book fan so I may be biased.
Infinite lacking the set pieces is what really killed it for me. Where’s boarding a scarab? Where’s giving the covenant back their bomb? Where’s tank beats everything? Where’s the death star trench run while the best song ever blasts in your ears and the Earth hangs over you to show you what happens if you fail? Where’s jumping down an unfolding Guardian?
The open world is why we couldn’t have those set pieces in Infinite because approaching from any angle makes them basically impossible to choreograph well.
I tried to play borderlands 2 and I was moving happily through the main story when I realized I was way, way under-levelled for the next part. I then realized I needed to go do half a dozen of the 30 or so fetch quests I had ignored up to that point. I did not continue playing Borderlands 2
Steam says I played that game for 2.5 hours. Conversely, I’ve put over 150 hours into Nightmare Reaper.
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You were more patient than me. I lasted about an hour of it. I just don’t think FPS gameplay and RPG stats gel at all well. Can’t stand Destiny for the exact same reason.
Call me a traditionalist, but I expect enemies that take bullets to the face to do the decent thing and drop down dead, rather than just take very slightly more damage.
for my own gaming purposes i would agree, but i have seen my son do some very interesting stuff with borderlands 2 and payday 2 builds.
Borderlands is great because you can just break the math. Like these skills and this perk and this gun synergize in such a way that any enemy explodes if you look at them sideways.
I enjoyed Fallout 3. But I agree with the general point. RPG/FPS’ rarely gel.
Fallout 3 isn’t a FPS. It’s got turn-based combat because of VATS, and that’s what makes it good.
So true. Although I didn’t always use VATS, sometimes I enjoyed the options.
That’s why Shadow Warrior 2 was so disappointing after the first reboot. Reboot was an updated fps thay even managed to make the sword melee relevant through the whole game. 2nd one was a bullet spongy mess
I’d love to upvote this more than once. What’s the point of all those super high quality graphics if the core gameplay hasn’t advanced in the slightest 🙄
One of my favourite games was Operation Flash Point Dragon Rising on Xbox 360.
Graphics were terrible then but the gameplay was amazing.
I go back today and still play it, unfortunately the AI hasn’t kept up and you can exploit it rather easily.
AAA studios
Best I can do is predatory monetization and half-baked dlc. Also, now the Eula prohibit you from making unflattering comparisons to that one game Larian made
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I don’t even understand what Star Field is supposed to be. And I don’t think Bethesda know either. It’s basically what No Man’s Sky used to be before they fixed it, yet somehow worse.
Given the fact they knew that fallout TV series was coming out, I do find it a bit baffling that they didn’t just make fallout 5. Which would have worked better with the limitations of the engine as well.
After that they could have taken their time to reskill their staff on either a new engine of their own or just a off the shelf option.
I won’t lie, they pulled the wool over my eyes with Starfield. I kept waiting for that moment where they brought it all together and suddenly it would be a great game. I was shook when the credits rolled and I hadn’t yet found the fun part.
Kudos for even making it til the end. I just noticed half way in, I might as well watch paint dry instead or play something else.
Given the fact they knew that fallout TV series was coming out, I do find it a bit baffling that they didn’t just make fallout 5
I’m pretty sure the TV show began development in 2022, four years after Starfield was announced in 2018.
2 years to go from pre-production to complete release, and with extensive special effects requirements as well. Na, It may have begun prep work in 2022 but it’s been known about longer than that. Pre-production takes a very long time, you have to scout locations, you have to hold auditions, you have to work out schedules, you have to work out your set design and your costume, you have to get the script written. There’s a lot before anyone shouts action.
Also that would have been a fair amount of time before that where the studio and Bethesda were negotiating the IP license.
Also I wouldn’t be surprised if Covid got in a way of all of that as well. So we really could be looking at 2019 or even 2018 is a start date so it’s entirely believable that they weren’t that far through production and giving the problems that they would have found by then, they really should have switched gears.
If you’re going to reach back into the time period before they hired the writers/showrunners to actually develop a script in early 2022, or selling the rights to Amazon in 2020, then you’re talking about a project that was far from certain it would actually get made. Hard to say that they “knew” a tv show was coming before 2022.
Dusk runs buttery smooth on any modern, low end hardware. I’ll take that over textures or models popping in when ever they feel like.
Games were better when graphics were secondary
Depends on the genere. I think a very immersive game like Metro Exodus benefits a lot from its graphics and wouldn’t work quite as well without them.
Honestly, I have to agree with the article - while you could say graphics have improved in the last decade, it’s nowhere near as much as the difference as the decade before that.
I’d easily argue that the average AAA game from a decade ago looks just as good on a 1080/1440p display as the average AAA game today - and I’d still bet the difference wouldn’t be that noticeable for 4K either.
And what do we gain for that diminishing return on graphics?
Singleplayer games are being made smaller, or vapid “open worlds”, and cost more due to more resources going to design teams rather than the rest of the game.
Meanwhile multiplayer games get less frequent and smaller updates, and that gets padded out with aggressive micro-transactions.I hate that “realistic” graphics has become such an over-hyped selling point in games that it’s consuming AAA gaming in its entirety.
I would love for AAA games to go back to being reasonably priced with plainer looking graphics, so that resources can actually be put into making them more than just glorified tech demos.
I don’t have a 1080p monitor, but most games look like shit on 4K. Bumping texture resolution is not enough for 4K, you also need better geometry and much longer drawing distances. If it’s not an Unreal 5 game with their virtually infinite geometry detailing, then it mostly likely looks like shit.
Halo 4 at 1440p looks very good, and it’s 12 years old. Fully agree. I’d rather see more entities on screen, more particles, and draw distance. Polygon count and textures don’t really impress me anymore.
I’d rather see highly stylized games with a lot going on in the world, rather than wasting half of my frame render time on a character’s face.
Exactly. If my graphics card is going to be chugging, I’d rather it be because of the sheer amount of stuff to interact with in an area, rather than a beautiful but vapid landscape
Well it’s a scaling effect and diminishing returns
To the human eye 480p vs 1080p is significant but 4k vs 8k is hard to tell
I think focusing on new technologies such as AI upscaling/world generation or VR is a better use of developers time and pushes the industry back into the innovative space it’s supposed to be
VR will always stay a niche technology just because of the limited circumstances where people can use it (e.g. not on the move, not while watching kids,…).
I agree
I should’ve clarified VR/ AR. I do think AR will be a large part of daily life and apply much further than video games in the not too distant future
Depends a bit on screen size and placement, too. I play on 27", 1440p, about 3 feet from my face, and my eyeballs are definitely the lowest resolution link in the chain. 32" screen on my desk, 60" screen in front of the couch, and 1080-1440 will start showing their pixels. I’m not anxious to upgrade my screen, because 1440p gives me great framerates with a cheaper video card. Also a 32" screen at a viewing distance of 3’ is hard to actually see everything.
I’d much rather have a good game that runs fast at 1080p than have to get a $700 card for OK framerate and style-over-substance gameplay just to get 4k.
Agree that using VR to get immersive, wide-field graphics from fewer pixels is a great alternative.
There’s hundreds of great games on pc to play without all the focus on graphics. You just can’t focus on industry giant game devs. Go play Stardew Valley, or Hades, or Subnautica.
Of course there are, and I do - but the focus of the article, and thus the thread was on the AAA gaming space and its obsession with graphics.
Smaller studios and Indies already figured out the whole “you don’t need to be able to see every fibre of a character’s hair in order for a game to be good” thingSubnautica is a game I play for the audio, and that’s really saying something because the visuals are great. I bought open back headphones for that game.
I’d easily argue that the average AAA game from a decade ago looks just as good on a 1080/1440p display as the average AAA game today - and I’d still bet the difference wouldn’t be that noticeable for 4K either.
If you just count pixels, yes. But what really made a big step forward in this decade was the realistic animation. And it does require a lot of effort and time to make it right.
Honestly I’d still argue there’s diminishing returns on this front as well.
I play plenty of older titles, and I wouldn’t say I notice that much of a difference - though that is my very subjective opinion
