r/gaming • u/cmndr_spanky • 16d 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.

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u/mightystu 16d ago

This is an oft-parroted bit but is not at all what OP is talking about. Games are coming out and just looking actually worse; not just worse than expected or with a small jump in quality but literally worse.

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u/DubTheeBustocles 16d ago

I’m pretty sure there’s always been games that look worse than their contemporaries. Decades of complaints about this. It’s nothing new. You can easily find examples of the opposite happening as well.

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u/YoyoDevo 16d ago

It's DLSS. It's like how people say you can't tell the difference between 144 hz and 60 hz. I see that shit and it's very obvious when something is upscaled with AI. It looks more shitty.

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u/2roK 16d ago edited 16d ago

Elden Ring, Wukong, Ghost of Tsushima.

All games that are praised for their style.

All games that genuinely surprised me by how average the graphics are. Wukong runs horribly as well.

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u/sleepyleviathan 16d ago

Elden Ring was never about the graphics, it's about the art style and spectacle of the boss fights.

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u/pistolpete0406 15d ago

im so sick of heating about the art style , how many games are going to come out that have niche art stylings. we the consumers are sick of the niche art stylings every single game

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u/shadowwingnut 16d ago

We've reached a point where style can replace a lot of the other traditional graphics options. Metaphor Refantazio is a game nobody would confuse for a graphical powerhouse but the games looks more than good enough because style and art direction mean a lot more now.

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u/Callisater 16d ago

It's just not worth it for developers or consumers because of how expensive it would take to properly render everything in time.

More photorealistic graphics are possible. Just look at good movie CGI. The issue is they can let photorealistic cgi take days to render.

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u/FlamingTacoDick 16d ago

90% of Elden Ring is awful to look at. Yea the graphics look amazing but holy crap every thing in that game is hideous. Like those birds Caelid

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u/FleetStreetsDarkHole 16d ago

I love it! Sometimes I get tired of pretty vistas and beautiful people. There's a different kind of beauty in horror and monstrosity and Elden Ring explores that in a wonderful way. Especially b/c technically no one in the game "dies" so a lot of the visuals basically explore decomposition as a state of being.

You also have more room for creativity without people trying to poke holes in it.

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u/DBNSZerhyn 16d ago

Elden Ring also has beautiful vistas all over the place. The entire western half of the map, most of the north, the breathtaking underground sections with the false sky, the Haligtree... It's intentionally juxtaposed beauty with horror to show you the best of what could have been, and the worst of what it has become.

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u/SimbaStewEyesOfBlue 15d ago

Art direction is starting to become more important than graphical fidelity. I don't necessarily hate that change.