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’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…
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!:))
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.
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!
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…
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.
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.
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!
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.
People care about graphics.
But they care about other things more
So the graphics need to be in service to something.Imo the problem is that studios have become risk adverse because their budget is so big, so they pick an already popular IP, choose a marketable aspect of that IP, and spend that fortune turning the dial of that aspect up to 11.
Like X but bigger map
Like Y but more playable characters
Like Z but better graphics
Etc
But none of the time actually innovating any new player experience.And players are finally getting fed up with playing the same handful of AAA game experiences again and again with different titles.
Graphics just happens to be the marketable attribute they like to crank most often
What they need to do is throw some spaghetti at the wall, see what’s fun, then throw their hundreds of millions of dollars behind THAT.
The graphics are too expensive for AAA games? AAA means they are throwing the highest category budget for developing a game. And they ONLY invest in graphics, discarding the rest like a proper story (if any), decent characters, bug fixing, balancing, etc. Now they create junk only 1% of players with a 4090 can run somewhay decently on medium settings with 30fps average and loads of framedrops.
Wow guys, amazing, thanks I guess, this costed me 80 euros. Can’t you tone down the graphics by at least 60% and focus on the “game” part of the game instead?
There are plenty of titles that do just that you can buy instead you know.
Oh I do, I’m skipping all AAA games. I illegally download them out of curiosity, but often delete them after 30min of playtime. But it still gets me angry because it basically is a major scam. Luring in loads of people with cool looking videos, then to deliver a bug simulator with most content locked behind more purchases (DLC’s, loot boxes, subscriptions), completely unbalanced and abandoned after the fist sale period because fixing the bugs and balance doesn’t provide more income so might as well quit and start a new scam. And then the audacity to complain people should not expect Baldur’s Gate 3 to be a standard to compare other games to. Maybe do see it as a standard and try to create a properly working product with actual decent content worth it’s money?
Oh these fuckers.
So now the horribly expensive games with micro transactions isn’t enough for them? Well of course.
Nothing is ever enough for them.
Fucking are we gonna have to do a violent armed socialist revolution just to checks notes keep having graphics in games we have to pay an arm and a leg for?
add me to the crowd where graphics is not a major thing. its great ad can make one game preferable to another but im all about character customization both in look and abilities.
They pushed this on us so they can make us buy new video cards every other year.
that’s fine bc nobody can run it anyway. just do your graphics like control and it’ll run fine even without upscaling.
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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.
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.
And hardware that’s GENERATIONS behind.
The NYT article doesn’t mention that new AAA console games often cost $70. I have not bought a brand new game in years because I just can’t justify that cost. I have such a huge backlog between PS4 and PC, that there is just no reason to buy new games
I am betting, adjusted for inflation, that would not be especially higher than a new NES game.
It might even be cheaper.
That’s definitely true. Didn’t think about inflation. I still think $70 is a lot more than the many other ways to play, including inexpensive older games, Steam sales, Epic/Amazon giveaways, etc, all of which have “good enough” graphics for me
Yeah I’m always surprised when people are complaining about the cost to buy (not to produce) a game nowadays.
Where I live, games are way cheaper than they used to be during the Playstation 1 Era and it’s now really easy to buy used games online.
Of course if you buy every season pass or special skin for they used to game, it ends up more expensive.
bruh Im out here still playing Beyond Oasis. Just make a good fucking game and I’ll play it for 30 years. I dont think people making games actually listen to people playing games.
What about destructible environment, physics, attention to details?
All what I see nowadays are mediocre products in flashy packaging. Consumers seem to prioritize aesthetics over quality; if a game is colorful and visually appealing, it often sells well. Whats up with freedom of jumping on that crate, blowing up that wall, shooting up the props etc.
At times, it feels as though I am confined within an enclosure, where the visuals and sounds serve merely to distract me from this realization.
Maybe they’d do better if they tried selling games instead of games as a service and stores with a game attached.
I’m also going to add my stone to the pile here and point out that this hyperfixation on more and more “graphics” usually results in it ultimately being impossible to actually see what the fuck is happening on the screen.
You are a realistic barbarian dude who is brown, and wearing brown. standing in a realistic landscape which is brown, against a realistic highly textured and bump mapped bunch of trees which are brown, with leaves that are waving around in all directions realistically and are brown, trying to dodge arrows (which are brown) raining on you from the half dozen hairy orcs in the distance, who are also brown. And about nine pixels tall, and hidden in the bushes. Which are brown. And if this isn’t happening verbatim (or even if it is), 2/3 of the screen is also covered by a zillion glowy particle effects, motion blur, and bloom, which are the only colorful parts of the image but still add up to you not being able to actually see jack shit out of what’s important.
Bonus points if this also requires near frame-perfect inputs to handle, and you have half a second of input lag in between all the shit your console is trying to render plus the two or three frames eaten by postprocessing to make it “look pretty.”
Yeah, fuck all that.
A major part of game deign that everyone seems to forget a lot these days in the name of making everything realistic and/or extra graphicy is clearly communicating to the player just what the hell is going on. Older games, I find, often did a significantly better job of this.
This was actually a lot worse in the early 2000s, as this video shows: https://youtu.be/6qQIhIOaiY4 I agree that there tends to be too much visual clutter on the screen sometimes in current games, especially particle effects. It’s ironic that almost every 3rd person game seems to have a “Batman vision” toggle these days that simplifies what you see on screen so you have a chance to actual see stuff that’s important. Also the often criticised yellow markers for climbing passages.
This screams anecdotal. I don’t find that this is true of next gen titles in general. Lots and lots of absolutely stunning, gorgeous games are available to play where not everything is brown, or otherwise difficult to see.
The concept of realistic graphics doesn’t necessarily have to equate to realism either. Hear me out. Games can look so gorgeous and realistic without having graphics that portray something that looks like this world in which we live. Alien worlds, unnatural colors, but still with light that behaves physically correct using advanced techniques.
I’m all for amazing graphics, and giving developers the tools they need to fulfill their visions. If it looks like garbage though, don’t buy the shit.
I totally agree. It’s actually difficult for my brain to process all that detail. Part of it may be due to me being raised with ps1/ps2 graphics.
Graphics are not everything, for me it’s game-play first. I’m playing Carrier Command 2 now for a month straight and it has mediocre pixel and low-poly graphics, but the immersion is fantastic. It’s a time sink and I forget when I should quit playing it. Hyper realistic graphics have their audience, but now they’re at the point where a little improvement in graphics has diminishing returns, hence the high cost.
Great, new game to try. Love me some quality time sinks.
Fully agree on graphics- I want to enjoy a game, graphics are only a component of that, and its not necessarily hyper realistic.
I used to play carrier command back in the day. It had low poly graphics, but it was great for the time. I used to love flying a Manta to escort a walrus to hit a long distance target. Did you play the original? How does it compare?
Unfortunately I haven’t played the original but the sequel is fine for me. I just beat for Christmas 4 AI enemy carriers and it was fun. Sure, the game feels unfinished because it was cut out mid production due to time constrains, but according to me, the game devs are sitting on a golden goose. They simply have to finish the game and make it more popular. I’m pretty sure the game would rock. Up until now it’s fine as a RTS in first person perspective, but definitively it needs QOL improvements that the community behind it are desperately asking for. It can get stale and boring after a while. More variety of play is needed and definitely more complex islands to invade and conquer.
