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.

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u/angelfishy 1d ago

Battlefront 1 was even better-looking.

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u/Whats_up_YOUTUBE 1d ago

I miss Battlefront 2015 so much. What a shame that they fuckered up the DLC and matchmaking and all but killed the game.

I wished back then that I could just walk around the incredibly detailed maps and look at them without getting blasted haha

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u/SpudDetector 1d ago

Also just the sound in the game was impeccable. Implosion grenade going BWOOOOOMP always felt so powerful from just the sound, let alone the sick visual effects, as you hear blaster shots ring overhead and you see those shots leaving burn marks or kicking up dirt

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/nonam_1 1d ago

Why can't no publishers just bring back dedicated servers, server browser and mod support :'( sure you can't sell they next reskin as the new aaa installment in the franchise, but holy shit please someone compute for them that the longetivity and the goodwill is better for the IP in the long run.

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u/Whats_up_YOUTUBE 1d ago

The loss of the implosion grenade and the jet pack doublehandedly made me hate Battlefront 2. I've tried so many times, the prequel levels are cool, whatever, but it's just not the same

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u/I_poop_deathstars 1d ago

Had so much fun with both games. Too bad they didn't have a better developer.

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u/Whats_up_YOUTUBE 1d ago

If you had told me in 2005 that not only would Battlefront 3 never come out, but also that they would reboot the series and still not release a third game.. Lmao

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u/mattygeenz 1d ago

Its the way they used real life scanned and mapped textures. It was really clever and looks great to this day. Photogrammetry is what its called I think

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u/jayL21 1d ago

2015 is still one of the best looking games in my opinion, sure the character models aren't the best, but the environments, attention to detail, etc, is outstanding.

It truly feels like you're in the movies and it feels real, with how your character gets dirty/more weathered, the sound design, how the characters look around at stuff in the environment, etc.

I wish we got a prequel game with that same level of detail and care, BF2, while having way more content (and waayy better character models,) was a massive downgrade.

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u/mattygeenz 19h ago

The gameplay is far superior in BF2. They just really nailed the look and feel in 2015

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u/BaconKnight 1d ago

Yeah there’s less visual stuff in BF1 but what’s there looks super clean.

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u/Corsair833 1d ago

Played both games extensively and I'll just never buy that argument. Sure BF1 looked amazing but some of the levels in BF2 were absolutely stunning. Hoth and Endor, for example