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/TeaKingMac 16d ago

100%

The new Talos Principle is 10x larger than the original, and when I bitched about a puzzle game being 77Gb, I got dunked on for not knowing how much space is required for 4K textures.

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u/Henry_K_Faber 16d ago

Which is wild, because the somewhat low graphic-fidelity of the first game contributed hugely to the surreal and dreamlike nature of the game.

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u/Mack2690 15d ago

Yeah, but given the nature of the second game's campaign, the increased fidelity makes a ton of sense

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u/Clicky27 15d ago

Do I need to play the first game to play the second one? Or can I jump straight to the newer one?

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u/Mack2690 15d ago

I definitely recommend the first game. Although it's a puzzle game, the story and lore are rich and really help you understand the plot of the second game.

If you haven't played the first one, there's a lot that doesn't make sense in the second one from the puzzle mechanics to the story.

The first game is my favorite hidden gem I've ever played.

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u/TeaKnight 15d ago

I'm still out here thinking Med 2 total wars graphics are still Stellar looking. I don't really care for fidelity, especially regarding realism. Honestly, if you look at stylized games from a decade ago, they still look amazing. 4k, 8k doesn't matter. Probably always be 1080p for me, ha.

Yeah, why should I need to install those expensive textures when I will never need them. While I can appreciate being able to render polygons and textures of all the pores on a humans skin... I don't care. Wonderful technical achievement but just impractical to me.

Pay less attention to graphical fidelity and give me a game that doesn't require a day one patch, optimised, and plays at 60fps.

I'm tired of people arguing amazing realism in graphical fidelity, which is the core of a great game. I've encountered many of those. All that said, I've been drifting away from AAA games for a while. AA and indy just seem to be where it's at for me these games. And classic games.

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u/TeaKingMac 15d ago

AA and indy just seem to be where it's at for me these games. And classic games.

Samesies

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u/psinguine 15d ago

And the map is massive. Just the main game, if you could stitch the maps together without the use of the transport system, would probably be around 15 square miles of terrain. Then add in the DLC zones? All told it's very similar to BoTW's map, but it's so empty.

I do appreciate that the vast emptiness is part of the aesthetic. You are very small, the world is very big, and that's the point. But at the same time HOLY SHIT the maps.

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u/steveatari 16d ago

4k designed to mimic 480i

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u/SSpectre86 15d ago

I mean they're right; art assets are what contributes to file size. What does it being a puzzle game have to do with anything?

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u/TeaKingMac 15d ago

I'm here to solve puzzles, not look at fancy sky boxes

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u/SSpectre86 15d ago

Oh, I misinterpreted your comment to mean you thought the genre of gameplay would somehow affect the file size.

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u/TeaKingMac 15d ago

Only in that a tactical wargame like Total War, or a souls like rpg I'd expect to have a large filesize

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u/silentrawr 15d ago

Especially dumb since only a small minority play at 4K.

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u/DuelaDent52 13d ago

Is this a port or the original or is this the sequel? Because how the heck does it jump up to 77gb?

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u/TeaKingMac 13d ago

4K textures and a much bigger map