I guess normies still equate graphic quality with overall game quality, so that’s why there’s such a big emphasis on photorrealism for many AAA games. An old colleague from university, ~2010, only liked to play the shiniest, “best looking” stuff and scoffed at 2D games, “we’re way past super nintendos”.
Then stop making games with cutting edge graphics. I just want to play it on a steamdeck anyway.
Honestly. I prefer games that don’t make the steam deck use its fans.
What games accomplish that?
Aside from indies or 2D games I guess.
Yeah, that’s basically it.
Risk of Rain, Dungeon of the Endless. I can play DRG Survivor at 80% scale without triggering the fan.
Whereas BG3 turns on the fans for the title screen.
Hades is great.
The problem is all the AAA publishers just keep increasing budgets to keep up. This creates a situation where games are so expensive they can’t take risks, so they just follow a formula and are boring and generic. That’s how we’ve gotten to where we are now. AAA games are failing because their budgets are too large. They need to make more smaller, interesting and unique games rather than one massive budget game.
I have essentially fully turned away from AAA personally. Thinking about it, I can’t actually tell you the last one I played. Indie games are where all the good stuff is.
The only AAA I play are Nintendo ones (and RTS/MOBA since its a niche genre and you need a community for PvP). Since quite some times already. But I only look out for indies, I love getting new experiences and gameplay.
And even when the gameplay is not new, the attention to details (gameplay wise) is at 1000% only on indies (Celeste, Hollow knight, Factorio, …)
Same! Maybe builders gate 3 but they kind of straddle the line between aaa and indie.
For real. I’m just having a blast playing Hades right now.
This is a totally reasonable request yup.
Shooters with beard hair that waves in the wind but gunplay that sucks and broken physics.
Nailed it. Here I am playing Celeste on Pico-8 and loving it. Gameplay matters before graphics. This is why Nintendo has a loyal following despite their litigious ways.
And hardware that’s GENERATIONS behind.
But also graphics doesn’t necessarily mean crazy 3d graphics, pick any game by supergiant and it’s gorgeous with beautiful music and fun gameplay.
Know what you’re willing to invest in and make design choices to reflect that.
Art style fuelled by pure intent and vision trumps photorealism any day of the week.
Heavily biased here, but just look at Warframe. It is undeniably one of the best looking games out there because it has a voice of its own, and it still runs just fine on decade-old hardware. Same with most pixel/voxel graphics games.
We really don’t need to see a billion open pores per square centimeter of facial skin as long as the gameplay’s solid, the story’s good, and the characters are well-written. Add a touch of art style as I’ve mentioned before, and you’re golden.
Plus I’d rather have a functional game than a pretty one any day of the week. The current trend of rushing big budget/high-tech games to market then finishing them over a couple of years is really getting on my nerves - looking at you, Cyberpunk 2077, Darktide, Baldur’s Gate 3 (hate me all you want, but that game was a technical mess at launch), Rogue Trader, S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2, Space Marine 2, (insert ~75% of big budget games released since 2018 here).
I just bought 2077 and No Man’s Sky with some Christmas money. They were $25 each. If they screw up the launch, that just means it’ll be in the bargain bin quicker for us patient gamers.
I haven’t tried Cyberpunk yet, but NMS is very solid for $25. I don’t think I’d ever have paid full price for it though.
Cyberpunk is 4 years old or more, afaik it never got more than 50% discount, too much for me
I’ve been enjoying NMS. Could be a while before I form an opinion on CP2077.
That’s the silver lining, but it still doesn’t excuse the practice in my eyes… It’s like someone selling you a house advertised as fully complete, then spending another year or two finishing up the interiors and the plumbing, while you’re living there… Or a Cybertruck…
Uhm, googling warframe screenshot (to avoid promo material), i’d count Warframe as a more fotorealistic game, aside frome the weird humanoid figures. I mean, look at this:
“AER memories of old” (currently 90% sale) is what i count as own, simple, art style.
Or maybe Satisfactory, that’s good enough in realism, playable on my Cezanne Vega 8 iGPU.
There’s a vaguely cartoon or fun look to the game but I’m having trouble thinking of good examples. Things have the right proportions but it’s stylized just enough.
The Plains of Eidolon (your screenshot) is the first open world area, and looks more plain compared to Venus and the cambion drift. Most of the game is made of stylized tiles stitched into levels. It’s more obvious as you see all the syandanas and weird frames and the individual factions.
Aah, but they’re tricking you through really good lighting and scene composition;) Everything in this game has its own distinctive twist, like a realistic cartoon. Plus DE are aces at painting a scene!
Granted, their modeling and texture work is damned near witchcraft, I still don’t understand how they manage to cram so much detail into a 3D model…
And thank you for the recs! I’ve already played a bit of Satisfactory and it is very satisfactory (sorry…)! Also bought AER because it looks gorgeous!
AER was a lovely stop-gap for me after I’d finished Outer Wilds and was a bit bereft. Not remotely the same but I loved the music and flying around.
Not to mention the extra strain on the environment and a person’s wallet.
True! One of my favourite games is Cultist Simulator, I literally get stuck standing for hours in my kitchen exploring the library and trying not to die on my phone… That game just stinks of vision, love it!
Art style ages much better too
Agreed. I have a concrete example in mind for this: while it’s clear that GSC are still acing the Ukrainian Fallout style, I feel STALKER 2 lost a lot of the series’ personality by switching to Unreal… The grit’s no longer there, and that grit was a defining element of their atmosphere. I still feel a lot more tension in the first three than in this last one, because I’m sucked into their mindset right from the menu.
Edit: I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 is still a good game (technical issues notwithstanding), it’s just… lost some charm along the way.
I’m mad about Space Marine 2. It could have been so good but instead, after losing my progress a bunch of times, I don’t really play it at all. I understand dudes are still losing progress even? And the matchmaking is still broken? What the heck are those devs doing?
I don’t know, either… They have such a solid core with the gameplay and the world building/art style, but seem to be headed in the wrong direction in terms of ongoing development.
And, yeah, the multiplayer UX is questionable, to say the least…
Hell BG3 still feels like a technical mess.
It looks good enough, but runs like shit on the Deck. And I’m not sure why, it’s not like there is a ton of render distance or detail needed.
Heh, I started considering if I should edit in a rant about BG3 in my initial comment and you’ve graciously provided the window I needed, thank you!:))
I don’t know what they did, either, I mean Rogue Trader used to run better while in Beta, and it wasn’t even supposed to run on the Deck as it was… Hell, even my PC starts trying to lift off during most of Act III…
Plus, and I may get nuked for this, the game is incomplete as well. Yes, first and foremost Justice for Karlach and Minthara, the most endearing and the most emotionally complex characters in recent memory respectively (try a Good romance with Minthara and get whiplash going from total domination, blood and carnage to the healthiest concept of a romantic relationship in the entire game, that needed sooo much more exploration!), who both got severely shafted content-wise.
But even beyond that, the bits they cut out near the end can really be felt as rushed amputations rather than anything planned… At least, that’s how they feel to me. Credit where it’s due, Act I and II, and most of Act III are pretty much RPG perfection, but it hurts so much seeing it fumble right as the crescendo boils to an end…
Honestly, Warframe should be what every corpo gaming company is trying to emulate. There’s a so much content, amazing game play, stupidly complex story, the monetization doesn’t harm the playerbase or limit the game, and the devs not only care, but actively play the game themselves.
They’ve got a dozen different genres of game crammed in there now, don’t want first person shooter? You can play space battle, kiju hunter, street fighter, fishing sim, cabalela’s big game hunter, tony hawk pro skater 2, interior design sim, and more without ever opening a different game. I keep trying to play something else and keep going back because it’s both a fun and exciting game, and playing different game modes reward you with things that help your other game modes. Imagine if spending an hour shooting things in CoD and fishing in animal crossing rewarded you with better magic in Skyrim.
Frankly, corpo companies spend millions to have this kind of walled garden system and warframe managed to do it on a budget and to the player’s benefit instead of harm. It’s what gaming needs to strive to be.
DE truly are impressive in how utterly not greedy they are. Not to mention that, as you’ve said, Warframe really seems to be a passion project for them and it shows in every single detail - especially the Warframes themselves, every model is a display-worthy sculpture, I swear!
And, yeah, they are perfectly attuned to the community, actively participate not only within said community, but also mobilise people toward helping other noble causes (see the explosive success they’ve had with fundraising for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation)!
And I totally understand what you mean about the almost paralysing amount of choices on offer in the game itself, I have 2.5k hours in it, playing relatively regularly for 5 years now, and they thoroughly hooked me in with their last batches of updates! Again! I have to consciously make myself play other games every now and again just so that I won’t burn myself out!
I’m really hoping that, with 4 vehicles now and the knave racing in duviri, that we’ll get a conclave racing game mode at some point.
Oh, Conclave definitely needs less killing and more sports! I think Lunaro could be great if they’d rework it a bit. And actual races sound like they could be a blast, yes!
Heck, Tennolympics! Why not! Go all in!:))
Like, we found acceptable, beautiful levels of graphics years ago.
We’re not the ones saying “make it look even better.” They are the ones that seem to be whipping themselves into some frenzy and saying “we can’t keep doing this!”
So fuckin stop.
I’m fine with graphics from 20 years ago, i just need it to run 4k 120fps with no stutters. GTA SA (the original) is totally fine for me visually with a few mods to allow high res, widescreen and high fps fix.
recent games are graphically too intensive for my gpu even on lowest settings, and i paid fucking 800€ for it a few years ago!
If appearances are so important for their game, they can make it an interactive movie with everything pre-rendered. Works well for crap without actual player influence on the events.
Or - a hint - there are such esteemed genres as classical quest and visual novella, very much alive in the indie world.
That’s hilarious because cutting edge graphics is all they have left
All the best games I’ve played recently are deliberately low poly models, low res textures, and 100% focused on JUST satisfying gamefeel and fun gameplay mechanics.
Fuck graphical fidelity and fuck “AAA” studios for wasting our time and money on it.
I WANT SHORTER GAMES WITH WORSE GRAPHICS MADE BY PEOPLE WHO ARE PAID MORE TO WORK LESS AND I’M NOT KIDDING
Absolutely on the shorter games. I just do not have time for 30 to 40 hour games anymore. 8 to 10 hours is the sweet spot for me. After that I get bored and the game feels like a drag.
Imo it feels like the content is not very fresh compared to when you played that first rpg/open world/etc. It just does not feel like these aaa studios are innovating anymore- I’m looking for compelling stories and tight gameplay loops but they’re feeding us rehashed side quests fillers and eye candy. Anyone feel like they’re just playing borderlands sequels where you’re constantly forced into a meaningless quest to do somebody’s bidding?
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I am soooo fucking sick to death of everything needing to be ‘open world’ (for some reason) that I could puke. Sure, some games may benefit from - or hell, even be downright enriched in some manner by - their use, but outside of a few, notable exceptions (Elden Ring and RDR1/2, in particular, spring to mind, for example) when I see a studio touting their “new and improved, expansive, X times bigger, blahblahblah” open world, all I can think is two things:
-
There will almost certainly be no more than five types (and likely significantly less, tbh) of copy/paste activity I’ll be expected to engage in shotgunned haphazardly across the map. The studios that go ‘above and beyond’ MIGHT attempt to switch things up a bit by slightly altering building or adversary layouts in places, but that’s usually a ‘best case scenario’ kinda thing, and you’ll probably be fortunate to end up with some sort of palette swap. How compelling, eh?
-
I’m going to be subjected to either a veritable fuckton of bland, faceless NPC’s with an equally bland line or two of ‘dialogue’ that is ultimately meaningless or a flimsy pretext to go over there somewhere for… reasons… or a handful or so of them that are inexplicably absolutely VITAL to (or otherwise the impetus behind) everything that is plot - which they have a flimsy pretext for, natch.
Look, I played WoW back in the day already. If I really desperately wanted to waste dozens of hours of my time delivering imaginary packages to forgettable people, or being sent in search of someone who is the only one who can help stop BBEG/the apocalypse/whatever - and will totally help, but need a favor first… Ugh - then I’d go back to the good ol’ WoW treadmill. I left that shit behind because I was sick of it all just feeling like checkmarks someone had to tick off somewhere to appease the C-Suite douchenozzles that don’t understand why we can’t add in a battlepass. (Those are SOOO hot right now!)
Tbh I don’t think you’re in the minority. By far there are so very few truly well done open worlds, but how many of them were anything like mass effect which tied the stories together and had actual ramifications? The time investment is so not worth running around their lifeless worlds accomplishing nothing; I really dislike open world games
-
I WANT SHORTER GAMES
Can I have my cake and eat it too? I want games with a short critical path, but satisfying ways to spend more time with it if it’s fun.
So like interesting NG+ stuff, boss rush modes, different builds, whatever.
built in randomizers please
Actually, on that point, I love it when a game becomes a platform for continuous content. Minecraft is a bit trite as an example but it fits: You buy it once, and you can beat it in a couple hours if you really want to, but you can extract as much enjoyment out of it as your imagination will allow, and the developers are constantly adding more stuff to do (although not all of what’s added feels great all the time…)
BUT HOW DO WE FORCE PEOPLE TO BUY OUR NEW CONSOLES?
You would think if anyone had any brains they wouldn’t want you to have to buy new consoles all the time. Aside from Nintendo, the hardware is usually a loss leader for the other major players and they make all their money on the licensing costs on the software, i.e. game sales, whereas they lose money every time a console ships out the door. Especially nowadays when the distribution is mostly digital and costs them practically nothing vs. the bad old days when they had to press discs and print labels and shit. Machine sales themselves have never been profitable at least for the first several years each system is out for the last several console generations.
It would be more profitable for Sony and Microsoft to keep you on the same console generation forever – with the inevitable falling cost of manufacturing the things, to boot – keeping it at the same MSRP and simply selling you more and more games for it.
Plus it would make their console sales numbers look really badass… eventually. “The Microsoft Xbox X One X S XS Series OneX S is the best selling video game console in history, selling 1.2 billion units over its 45 year life cycle, and counting!”
I guess that’s why they’re hoping that cloud gaming takes off, so that people “rent” consoles instead of owning anything
That’s the fun part: you don’t! :D
That is to say, they tried. And now there are basically no fucking games on whatever they’re calling the latest X-turd, and barely anything worth note on the PS5.
I don’t really think it should be “worse” or specifically low-poly. There is a balance that can be struck and I feel that accepting the lowest quality possible is an excuse for developers to put in as little work as possible while still charging us as much as possible.
Some of the game industry followed the movie format: make a visual masterpiece with barely a plot or purpose.
Unlike the movie crowd, gamers usually want more depth and fun. Personally, I’ve been grabbing indie games with simple/pixel graphics and great gameplay.
I’ve put like 1000 hours each into Stardew Valley and Rimworld. Not a single ray traced, no advanced boob physics, just good fun.
I recently got Necesse and Oxygen not included. Each one has the potential for many many game hours.
I remember when Gears came out - it was made as a playable movie, and they did it well because it had a story line with characters we were invested in. Character deaths sucked, it was engaging, and it was unpredictable but comfortable.
Nothing wrong with the movie format, but you’ve got to tell the story.
Yep, offering more advanced graphics has always been a factor in gaming. But not the only one. I will never understand how much money a big company can spend, while ignoring the importance of writing, voice acting, and telling an impactful story.
That’s because games require some engagement/ investment. Even if avatar has a mid plot you can still turn your brain off and enjoy the spectacle. But you’re not going to put mental effort into learning a boss with shitty mechanics to “save the land” you barely care about.
They apparently are aiming for photorealism these days. That’s much harder than good anime graphics or good “dreamy painting” graphics. Also kinda harmful, even people without special conditions don’t feel too good after looking at such graphics.
Industry Crysis you say?
Can the industry run Crysis?
Don’t be silly, Crysis can’t run Crysis
True. We’re only just getting doom to run on a minifridge.
Watch them start selling ray tracing as dlc 😂
Honestly, that’s not a bad idea. Some of us can’t run RT anyway so why not charge extra for developing it?
They’ll still charge the same for the base game without it, don’t think otherwise.
The steamdeck is my most powerful gpu, so if it can’t run there then it can’t run in my home.
Damn, nobody in here is excited for the future of graphics? Guess I’ll be the outlier.
I’m looking forward to ray tracing being commonly available. Having actual reflections in game really improves that subconscious immersion and even could open up strategy in some cases. Imagine using a mirror the see someone coming around the corner.
Every time I walk into a bathroom and the mirror is just some generic gray texture it pulls me out.
Realistic lighting, textures, and character models are also pretty great. I want to see the pores on the protagonist’s face.
That said, obviously the game needs to be fun more than have good graphics, but man do I love the immersion of high quality visuals.
Look when full path tracing becomes playable easily on a 60 series mainstream level card, I’d be all for devs spending their time on it. Until then what’s the point? I have a 4080 and not a single path tracing game runs in playable framerate/resolution
That why I said I’m looking forward to it.
According too the article, you’re a vocal gamer in your 40’s or 50’s.
Or someone with disposable income.
Deus Ex had mirrors, dude. Duke 3D had them, even.
Yeah, they’re just cameras. And they have to be intentional. Pretty different from having all reflective surfaces reflecting what’s really going on in the scene.
raytracing is insanely expensive. If you saw what current cards can render in real time, you would see a very very noisy, incomplete image that looks like shit. Without ai denoising and a lot of temporal shit (which only looks good in screenshots). It is very very very far from being able to render an actual frame with decent performance.
I am. I love great graphics and more offten than not play at 40fps 4k native max settings than 60gpd and reduct graphics. I mostly play single player or co op games though so I’m I’m the minority. Thing is cheating the graphics dragon is an expencive hobby which game industry is trying g to cheat and fake with AI and upscaling. I’m all 4 best graphics, what i am not for is fake graphics tricks and unoptimized pules of AAA garbage with a fancy package.
I think at a high enough level, the likes of raytracing could actually reduce costs for the developers.
We seem a long way from that though.
Imagine using a mirror the see someone coming around the corner.
I don’t need a mirror to see someone coming from behind me in Super Mario Bros. Sometimes it is a matter of perspective, point of view and camera angle.
Graphics in my opinion peaked at around 2015. I still boot up games from that time and I think they’re not that different from today’s titles
The amount of effort for such imperceptible improvements is insane.
Also insane is how shit modern games run without multi thousand dollar hardware, even if you turn down settings, but then it also looks like ass in addition to running like shit.
So true. A couple years ago, I upgraded from an RX 480 to an RTX 3070. I was excited for ray tracing and so much more. It was very underwhelming.
I recently tried Star Wars Battlefront from 2015 on my PC and holy crap it looks good.
Yup. I got the Mad Max game or $3 at a steam sale and it’s graphics and gameplay is just right.
Art design will always trump straight up graphical wizbangs anyway. There’s a reason Tears of the Kingdom is gorgeous and impressive over here running on a potato versus a lot of games that need more horsepower to run.
The latest game where I thought “damn this looks good” was Sifu. I get like 200fps on my half-potato (5500XT), and that’s at ultra quality, definitely “let’s turn on vsync to get rid of the fan noise” territory. The reason it looks good is good lightening choices, fluid animation, as well as well-decorated levels. As you can see the textures and geometry are often very simple – a red fire hose box in a a hallway is just a red box. No fine detail at all, and that’s sufficient: It’s enough detail so that things don’t feel empty, your brain isn’t thinking “there should be more here”, a whole uncanny valley of its own as the brain gets kinda queasy if there’s nothing that it can ignore, but not enough detail as to be cluttering, that is, detract from the readability of the graphics.
Good style and execution will always win out over realism.
And yes it’s a 30G game, high-res textures and not kitbashing the levels tends to do that. Also, storing stuff uncompressed the download size is 20G.
(And btw whoever made that video is a good player deliberately playing like ass. You can tell by how they’re taking ages to get through the level, the pitiful score, but still not dying or really taking much damage at all).
TOTK looks and runs like crap. Also the world feels bland and empty compared to most other open world RPG’s. At least a little effort from Nintendo would go a long way, but especially climbing some mountains with crappy textures and jagged edges looks eerily similar to a lot of PS2 games I still play.
I agree with you. TOTK (and other open world games) on the Switch is an unpleasant experience. The hardware just isn’t capable of it
I do however think the developers did put some effort into attempting to mitigate the underperforming hardware - hence the seeming emptiness of the world. It just wasn’t enough. There are games that run well on the Switch - Metroid Prime Remastered is incredible, for example, but we must ask why: the answer is that that game’s world consists of a large number of small rooms, basically the polar opposite of an open world design.
Art style trumps graphical fidelity, but you do need a decent baseline capability to be able to pull it off.
Also, if you enjoyed TOTK don’t let me ruin your fun - it’s a subjective thing. Just don’t tell me there’s objectively no problems with it, because there clearly are
I mean, how are they supposed to pay the execs millions of dollars if they have to pay the developers to make the game do the thing?
you can make the most beautiful cake and its worth nothing if there is just sawdust inside
Yup, first and foremost, figure out your gameplay loops.
Get that right and you can pretty it all up later.
