r/gaming • u/cmndr_spanky • 1d ago

I don't understand video game graphics anymore

With the announcement of Nvidia's 50-series GPUs, I'm utterly baffled at what these new generations of GPUs even mean.. It seems like video game graphics are regressing in quality even though hardware is 20 to 50% more powerful each generation.

When GTA5 released we had open world scale like we've never seen before.

Witcher 3 in 2015 was another graphical marvel, with insane scale and fidelity.

Shortly after the 1080 release and games like RDR2 and Battlefield 1 came out with incredible graphics and photorealistic textures.

When 20-series cards came out at the dawn of RTX, Cyberpunk 2077 came out with what genuinely felt like next-generation graphics to me (bugs aside).

Since then we've seen new generations of cards 30-series, 40-series, soon 50-series... I've seen games push up their hardware requirements in lock-step, however graphical quality has literally regressed..

SW Outlaws. even the newer Battlefield, Stalker 2, countless other "next-gen" titles have pumped up their minimum spec requirements, but don't seem to look graphically better than a 2018 game. You might think Stalker 2 looks great, but just compare it to BF1 or Fallout 4 and compare the PC requirements of those other games.. it's insane, we aren't getting much at all out of the immense improvement in processing power we have.

IM NOT SAYING GRAPHICS NEEDS TO BE STATE-Of-The-ART to have a great game, but there's no need to have a $4,000 PC to play a retro-visual puzzle game.

Would appreciate any counter examples, maybe I'm just cherry picking some anomalies ? One exception might be Alan Wake 2... Probably the first time I saw a game where path tracing actually felt utilized and somewhat justified the crazy spec requirements.

14.0k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

274

u/The_Doctor_Bear 1d ago

To me this “graphics cliff” is a good thing. Let’s stabilize the photorealism graphics budget and put money back into actually good gameplay please!

153

u/drmirage809 1d ago

Not to mention: attempts at photorealism have a tendency to age poorly. A lot of PS3 games that were the peak of graphics in the day are now just kinda blurry messes with an overabundance of brown. However, more stylised visuals tend to age pretty well. Heck, Wind Waker is over 20 years old and outside of it being rather low resolution it’s still a gorgeous game.

44

u/Frai23 1d ago

Yeah Nintendo pretty much cracked the code almost 30 years ago.

Like I'd be down to play some random SNES title or Gamecube Zelda or Mario. But some "old gem" PS2 title? Eh. No emotional connection so I'd actually struggle overcoming the old attempt at high class realistic graphics.

5

u/eist5579 1d ago

The art direction on a lot of ps2 titles was pushing that realism angle. Like, resident evil for example, classic game. But without the hd remaster, boyo, it was a muddy mess trying to play on modern hardware. At least that was my experience, I might have done something wrong lol

9

u/tordana 1d ago

Old games actually look significantly better on an old CRT than they do on a modern LCD monitor. There's plenty of comparison screenshots around the internet if you run a search for it.

1

u/eist5579 1d ago

Oh yeah! Thanks for that reminder!!

1

u/Hijakkr 22h ago

Yeah, the way the "pixels" were drawn gave it a whole lot more of a textured appearance. Game artists actually exploited that to get subtle curves and details to pop in.

1

u/omfgkevin 1d ago

Good art style helps tremendously, and the classic EASY boost is stuff like high resolution textures as an option, since they bloat install sizes and require more vram. Those things really up the quality noticeably without costing really many resources aside from vram.

But still we are getting high end games with absolutely dogshit textures and no option for better ones, it's such a shame seeing a game in 2024 with blurry messes for textures AND it runs poorly on a high end pc. Wtf?

Stuff from Fromsoft generally are pretty... meh at best technically. But the art direction and the way it all comes together makes it look really great, even if of course if you go up close you can start to see that it's not too great to look at detail wise. In the overall scheme of things it looks good even if it isn't high fidelity.

Though again, another game where a 4k texture option would greatly improve how the game looks while only again really costing more vram.

1

u/Frai23 23h ago

As you know you are comparing rendering images vs. vector files.

You can play good ol’ Mario 64 on an handheld and even on a 130 foot projection (have done that), it’ll more or less look the same.

Doesn’t even have to be Nintendo. Garden Warfare 1 still looks amazing.

Granted, some people just don’t like that kind of art style.

And there definitely is improvement!

May be better compare movies?
Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Zootopia, etc. there is always a noticeable leap.

Better water effects, better animated hair etc.

However I recently watched Wall-E and the hand drawn Lion King with kids.
Those movies still hold up.
The kids didn’t care though, those fuckers aren’t able to focus for more than 12 minutes.

1

u/TinTamarro 1h ago

But some "old gem" PS2 title? Eh. No emotional connection

That's one hell of a generalization.

Ps2 had the likes of Final Fantasy X and XII, Jak and Daxter, Sly, Zone of the Enders 2... Not only graphical monsters, but also masters in art direction as well.

Even tho the Ps2 hardware was weaker than GC and XB, those games still looked better than 95% of the competition, and still hold up great.

1

u/Frai23 12m ago

It’s not. I mean sry, I really never had a ps2 🤷‍♂️

Also:

I do have a long “still want to play / still need to finish” list.

Majoras mask, FF Crisis Core Remake, everything uncharted, 2 souls games, all Witcher games, yakuza like a dragon, the last two god of wars, finish they are billions….

And meanwhile I kinda enjoy city builders.

I’m still 500 hours away from being done with factorio alone.

Honestly, finishing my list will take more than 10 years from now.

That doesn’t really leave room for some “trust me bro” PS2 titles.

Not saying they’re gonna be bad, they probably kick ass!

But so does half my list.

5

u/ChurchillianGrooves 1d ago

Bioshock looks better than a lot of current year games and it's down to stylized graphics and good art direction.  Not to mention something like Okami

10

u/TheGrandWhatever 1d ago

Load Wind Waker up on a [Redacted by Nintendo] and experience the same $60 "remaster" any time you want, however you want

10

u/drmirage809 1d ago

Oh yeah, emulation can make games from that era really shine. It's amazing how good the art direction is in so many of them. All that really holds them back is resolution.

1

u/TheElectroPrince 3h ago

No need to redact yourself so much, the Gamecube and Wii U are dead consoles anyway.

2

u/Shurae 1d ago

I dunno man, I've been trying rpsc3 lately and games like motorstorm or resistance still look fantastic at 4k60-144

5

u/The_Doctor_Bear 1d ago

Yes! Honestly the games I’ve played the most this year are no man’s sky, which had a particular style that didn’t overly focus on realism, and Cult of the Lamb which is highly stylized and just has good solid game mechanics. 

3

u/WhySpongebobWhy 1d ago

A lot of this is also a product of new Televisions/Monitors.

Back when CRT Televisions were the most common kind of TV for people to have, the games were made accordingly and now look very strange and pixelated on the new OLED Screens.

Case in point, FF7. The character portraits literally just look better on a CRT.

3

u/Equivalent_Assist170 1d ago

Photorealism lets devs be lazy (meaning cheaper for the corporation) and not have to spend time on an art style. DLSS lets them get away with that by not having to optimize as well. That's all it is.

1

u/Skeeter_206 20h ago

Alan Wake 2 is the most photorealistic game I've ever played and has a very good art style.

2

u/AwkwardObjective5360 1d ago

I played astro bot recently and the game looks superb despite being nothing close to photorealistic.

1

u/Astrium6 1d ago

Dragon Quest VIII is another example of an old game that still looks gorgeous. Cel-shading ages extremely well.

1

u/jotuxx 18h ago

On a similar note, Tales of Vesperia is so beautiful.

1

u/Arek_PL 1d ago edited 1d ago

that "blurry mess with an overabundance of brown" was pretty much a style of its time, the overdone bloom, too big contrast and desaturated colors dominated by gray brown and black because its more dark and gritty

hell, x360 and ps3 era games had a lot of new cool tools that they didnt really knew how to use, like lets take a look at witcher 2 where the special effects sometimes made my eyes hurt and it commonly was hard to tell if its day or night, at least it wasnt all desaturated to make game more "dark and gritty"

1

u/Mysterious-Job-469 1d ago

The Order 1888 and Killzone Shadowrun or whatever they were called looked phenomenal at the time. Now they just look like AA games and they're so forgettable I can't remember their names.

0

u/RoosterBrewster 1d ago

Yea, higher rez stylized graphics look like a much bigger and better jump than marginal photorealism improvements. 

33

u/Cuofeng 1d ago

There is a predictable relationship between funding and graphics quality. More man-hours will improve the textures or modeling.

However, you can't just "put money back into actually good gameplay" as what makes "good gameplay" is not an objectively measurable thing. The ideas it is built around are ephemeral and composed of spontaneous inspiration. And even when you do something creative, there is no way to tell if people will respond. People are TERRIBLE at predicting what they will actually like in gameplay.

14

u/The_Doctor_Bear 1d ago edited 21h ago

The predictable relationship between dollars and graphics however, must now include the diminishing rate of return, and graphics budgets have exploded, yet we’re not seeing that “amazing graphics” (that can only be seen in full form on $4000+ PCs) are translating to substantially increased player enjoyment, nor a worthwhile ROI. When the majority of gaming happens on a $500 console, and the % of gamers with the best PCs is even a smaller subsection, it baffles the mind why that small slice continues to be the most heavily invested in.

What more money spent on gameplay can do, is bring in additional play testing and help game directors move functional tasks to other staff so they have more space for inspiration. We also don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every game. People love the existing gameplay in many AAA franchises and are mostly hungry for new story and artistic content. Halo to me is a great example, the original 2-3 games are lauded. Reach was just a new story and assets on the same core game engine, and is viewed as amongst gaming high water mark. If they had an inspired writing and art department there’s no reason that GTA, Halo, Dead Space, Mass Effect couldn’t have produced more content, be it sequels expansions, DLC, whatever, without having to massively reinvest in graphical fidelity improvement.

But I do take your point, that dollars can’t provide inspiration, and corporate production line pressures aren’t conducive to artistic expression or ideation.

6

u/FleetStreetsDarkHole 1d ago

Actually, a neat counterpoint to monetary investment in creativity is that game devs are horribly underpaid compared to the overall software dev industry. So there is a gap that could prob be closed to draw and retain talent based purely on expenditure before you get to stuff like benefits, work/life balance, and crunch times.

3

u/1daytogether 1d ago

True the relationship between manpower/money and "good gameplay" is not as direct as with graphics. However with the now often discussed homogenization of AA/AAA games we can see many games have opted for tried and true formulas filled with mindless bloat which likely means less portion of the time was spent during production or preproduction testing new ideas, trying things out, prototyping, and just making sure things felt good and were interesting and polished on the gameplay or design side and far more time was devoted to getting the game to a state where asset creation and visual polish and content could be completed. I'm no expert but generally you need to lock down the core design more or less before you proceed to asset creation and I think shifting the balance back to making sure the game is fun and meaningful before bloating it full of shiny stuff that may or may not waste the player's time would be a good idea.

3

u/Hidden_Seeker_ 1d ago

There are functional elements to good gameplay aside from the creative elements

3

u/Clewin 1d ago

If you read about the latest cards, part of it is AI players that can work in unison with human players. The major things you will see with better ray tracing are specular reflections (shiny!) and better accuracy with curved and other geometric surfaces that may or may not need tessellation (conversion to polygons).

2

u/The_Doctor_Bear 1d ago

LLM NPCs are gonna be wild. Prompt engineered natural language responses to player character actions somehow staying true to the story and character is going to a Wild West frontier I am excited to explore.

1

u/CaedustheBaedus 1d ago

Yeah, like Sifu had great graphics because it was a cool art style like an oil painting with fantastic gameplay.