Because since RDR2 and last of us part 2 I only see that they’re going backwards or just stagnant.
The only exception is RE4 2023, that game looked really good. I don’t count Hellblade due how limited the gameplay is, it sacrificed most of its gameplay for the graphics. Is basically a movie with walking sections.
Edit: I guess guardians of the galaxy looked also really good when was released.
There’s a whole slew of near photo realistic games being made since the trailer for Unrecord went viral. But these are all indie games. I think the big boys have learned that trying to be photo-realistic means it will look like shit in a just a few years as the tech advances, so they stick to a more stylized approach that won’t age as rapidly if at all.
Two games I wouldn’t use as barometers since those studios are known to be the ones pushing graphics forward with a budget most other studios don’t have. I think Alan Wake 2 looked great as for something newer.
What about A plague tale then? Looked really good, I forgot to mention it and is what… 7 years old now? And on a small budget
I work at a video game company in QA. I would say that most games still look great, but the extremely fine details are getting reduced. I think graphics are stagnant, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. We’re worked to death over these minute details, games should be more stylized and less demanding on our health as workers.
They’re no longer just fine details when a pleb like me notices it.
It’s literally my job to look at these graphics. Between the 5 projects I’ve been on (all for the same franchise), the character models, maps, weapon designs, etc all clearly had different studio priorities for art but were consistently good. The problem in my eyes isn’t the art, it’s management. Art bugs make it through because the release schedule leaves no room to get the fixes out before release.
Creating high-quality graphics requires not only robust hardware capabilities but also a blend of artistic talent and technical expertise. This translates to increased costs for developers, and ultimately, it’s the consumers who bear the burden.
Tbh, I’d rather games look “worse” if it means it don’t cause their devteams to have to crunch.
Honestly it’s nice seeing at least some games trying to go for more stylised stuff rather than the just “shades brown” of games that were around when I was younger.
Those “shades of brown” were excellent games though, gears, RE5, MW… And sometimes that brown looks better than unfitting colours, that explains how Gears of wars 2 and 3 look much better overall than gears 5 despite obviously having better tech. Is like they forgot how the game is supposed to look.
The $60 limit to most video games has really started to alter the industry. While the technical limits of video games has increased, reaching those limits requires more manpower in creating assets to populate these larger worlds. However, given that the price of a AAA video game hasn’t increased in over a decade, the budget to create the content isn’t there any more.
Freemium makes things worse.
Games were $60 20 years ago. It’s been a long time.
reaching those limits requires more manpower in creating assets to populate these larger worlds
Yeah, when a character design consisted of like 30 sprites of 32x32 pixel resolution, that could basically be done by an artist in a day. Then the “physics” of game play could be simply defined in a two dimensional space.
Going to 3D, with different models of clothing, armor, weapons, hair, requires a lot more conscious artistic choices within a broad but consistent visual design language. Each time resolution or polygon count or frame rate or hit box number go up, the complexity of the visual design, gameplay design, etc. go up accordingly.
Physical realism in games increases game development cost exponentially with each generation in tech. A lot of studios simply stepped off of that rat race and went towards cartoony visuals and physics that don’t even pretend to be realistic.
The price has increased though. I remember when full games were just 55 euro. Nowadays almost every game goes to 70, and that’s the vanilla version
Nintendo 64 games could hit $75 in 1997 dollars. It wasn’t until Sony enforced a $50 cap on Playstation games that the industry started seeing a practical cap.
Nintendo being Nintendo. That’s why I barely bought anything from them.
That’s more due to exchange rates than anything else.
Capcom wants what, $30 for 4 characters after I already paid for the “ultimate” version of street fighter 6. No can do.
Can you give an example of a new game you find backwards graphics wise?
Assassin’s creed looks worse now than 10 years ago. Only has better lighting. Characters look worse, animation looks worse, wall textures had been recycled more…
The new batman open world games look worse.
Starfield looks like a game from 2015. Skyrim looked more like 2009 game in 2011 but was less egregious.
But I’m not talking about sequels, I’m talking about games in general.
You’re comparing cash grabs to what used to be flagship AAA games.
AC has been a shit show for a while now, the Batman games used to be incredible but the latest are cash grabs.
As you said, graphics have never been a priority for Bethesda games either, they just struggle to get anything to run well.
I don’t think it’s fair to say graphics are getting worse based off those comparisons. You should look at the top games like FFVII Rebirth, Alan Wake 2 etc. which look incredible.
But to give some credit to your point, people don’t upgrade their machines like they used to and the current gen of consoles has been out for a while as well. So the hardware is a bit stagnant which may be having a knock on effect to the graphics of games as well.
graphics have never been a priority for Bethesda games either
Oblivion even had a documentary about it’s design. They never moved past that in a way though.
Meh, I always thought that game looked horrible even on 2006 lol those faces and teletubbies colours.
It has certainly been stagnant. I wouldn’t say it got worse though.
Besides, photorealistic ≠ good.
a lot of games these days have higher graphic “fidelity” but it’s at the point where they’re exaggerating them just to show off. light and reflection systems in particular have kind of an uncanny valley feel to them now at least to me, and it makes the games much less pleasant to look at
Technology is certainly improving and in many technical aspects, modern games are much more advanced than older ones (e.g. raytracing). Some aspects of graphical detail aren’t really dependent on technology though, but on effort and skill. RDR2 is a great example of that, as the devs really went out of their way to add incredible detail to every part of the world and especially the animations. It must have been very time-consuming and prohibitively expensive to realize that level of detail. Even back then most devs didn’t go through that kind of effort and now, with so many development studios getting closed or shrinking, most will take a much more economical approach to graphics. There are still some incredible examples of advanced graphics from recent years though, like Alan Wake 2.
They could… Scale down their games though. Smaller worlds, shorter playtime but with richer experience. That’s why I love the remakes of resident evil games. The games look very good at the release, yes they’re aren’t the biggest but give me a better impression than the other big franchises with big less focused world and worse graphics.
They can do anything they want. The question is, what will make them the most money? Usually the answer isn’t short, offline games with great quality and value. It is cheap, micro-transaction maxed, whale-pilled, online service games. Graphics have become subservient to that. You’re not buying random rock skins, so why spend manpower and time on that instead of the next Dragon-balls blue skin?
And yet those games get zero money from me. Meanwhile I’m ok with giving more money to Capcom and it’s dlcs due the great RE experience.
I mean… Sure, but you’re also supporting the company that put out Street Fighter, and their monetization scheme. What game do you think is making them take in the big bucks?
I don’t care about street fighter tbh I got Tekken
Yes they can, that’s how you get games like Hellblade 2. Short games often don’t sell as well though, so devs are more likely to focus on content.
That’s going to the other extreme though. I’m not asking for that, again, RE and God of War 2018 show us how it’s done.
