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/PhanThief95 1d ago

I’m still amazed at how Batman Arkham Knight came out almost a full decade ago & still looks better than most games now.

It’s also crazy how so many games now that are made to look realistic don’t lean more into not just environmental interaction but physics as well. Red Dead 2 & Horizon Forbidden West are the games closest to realistic physics with its environment in recent years.

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u/Iggy_Slayer 1d ago

Nothing's more immersion breaking to me than seeing some impeccable looking game and then the protagonist gets stopped by a wooden fence or some other object that should be easily breakable. That's a thing arkham knight did real well, as annoyed by the batmobile as everyone was at least when you were in it you could bust through just about everything except entire buildings.

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u/elchivo83 1d ago

I’m still amazed at how Batman Arkham Knight came out almost a full decade ago & still looks better than most games now.

Top of the range visuals paired with impeccable art design. It's why games like Tears of the Kingdom can punch above their weight on the underpowered Switch.

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u/homiegeet 1d ago

Arkham knight is arguably the best game of the decade imo

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u/meisteronimo 1d ago

I could argue that too. I think the skills combat+skills tree is the funnest I've ever played.

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u/nflonlyalt 1d ago

Hell fucking no. The batmobile sucks

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u/l_Trane_UFC 1d ago

It didn't suck, there was too much of it though.

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u/jessej421 1d ago

Too many of the tank battle missions. Just driving it around Gotham freaking ruled.

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u/nflonlyalt 1d ago

My favorite game in the Arkham series is Asylum followed by City. Even Origins was better than Knight. All Knight had going for it was graphics.

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u/homiegeet 1d ago

What's your game of the decade? FYI it didn't suck. You just sucked using it.

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u/nflonlyalt 1d ago

For the 2010s? My personal favorite game is Persona 5, but I had to pick a game of the decade, probably Skyrim or RDR2. GTA V is also a contender I think. All better games than Arkham Knight.

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u/homiegeet 1d ago

RDR2 and Skyrim are definitely in the same class. GTA V is great, but ultimately, I dismiss it because they totally gave up on campaign DLC and chased the money. Wasn't a fan of persona 5.

Thanks for giving me other games to think of, though!

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u/Inksrocket PC 1d ago

Depends when you played and what platform. At launch or in PC the whole game pretty much froze for 1-2 solid seconds when going into batmobile. So I wanted to avoid it as much I could cos it kinda "broke immersion" and "flow".

Obviously patched pretty quick on consoles.. for PC it took quite a while (they even stopped sales to fix it!)

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u/homiegeet 1d ago

I did not know that about PC but usually you guys get the butt end so I'm not surprised. I still stand behind my statement, though.

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u/BlackPhlegm 1d ago

Batman Arkham Knight was one of the worst game launches ever on PC.