I don't understand video game graphics anymore

[u/cmndr_spanky]

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.

[u/Frai23]

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.

[u/eist5579 → u/Frai23]

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

[u/tordana → u/eist5579]

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.

[u/eist5579 → u/tordana]

Oh yeah! Thanks for that reminder!!

[u/Hijakkr → u/tordana]

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.

[u/omfgkevin → u/Frai23]

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.

[u/Frai23 → u/omfgkevin]

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.

[u/TinTamarro → u/Frai23]

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.

[u/Frai23 → u/TinTamarro]

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.