• ryepunk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    It is very very funny to me that the AAA gaming industry has basically made their own projects completely untenable to produce because they need so many engineers and artists producing the highest fidelity content and engines possible and so now they need like at minimum 500 people over a 4-6 year period to produce a game that typically has the exact same gameplay as something produced 15 years ago. And they’re like “wow we need to raise the price of games to compensate for all this added cost we added to the production of our games”. And the solution is right there, quit wasting time with chasing constantly new art assets and better engines, and just reuse the shit you already have. Fromsoft and RGG (Yakuza devs) ship more games with more interesting things than all the western AAA publishers produce in ten years. And they need like 8 months of patches to make them actually run anyways.

    Oh and let’s not forget most consumers probably can’t even tell the difference between 1080 and 420, let alone 4k versus 1080. I know all my normie family over the age of 50 can’t. So they’re pursuing ever higher graphical fidelity for literally no reason.

    The industry is a joke. Indie games are all I need.

  • peppersky [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    because they need to somehow fool themselves into thinking spending 500 bucks on a console with no games is worthwhile

    also ideologically they can’t accept a world in which relevant technological progress has basically slowed to a stop

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    I am significantly more visually impressed by good animation over anything else these days. ZZZ’s gameplay isn’t for me but the animators are fucking incredible. While over in Infinity Nikki the clothing animation and attention to detail with respects to cloth stuff absolutely blows me away because they manage to make it feel like characters are actually wearing the clothing items rather than just being physically part of the same model.

    Animation is just so much more interesting and impactful.

    • IWantToMakeProgress [any]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      Yeah. Skyrim still has graphic mods today, people mod Minecraft to look better. Play enough of pretty graphic games and the standard is set, it’s hard to go back.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 months ago

      That’s aesthetic though, not graphics. Higher fidelity graphics can be worse looking than something heavily stylised, because they’re messy and muddy and hard to look at.

      • IWantToMakeProgress [any]@hexbear.net
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        2 months ago

        Higher res textures and shadow can be easy to spot. Go from lower setting -> high -> ultra setting, you can see the graphic different. Heavily Stylised game won’t look as good if you play it at lower setting compared to higher setting.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    I’ve been officially bored of “OMG LOOK AT THOSE GRAPHICS” since the age where expensive new hardware was used to show high fidelity rusting fences and decaying rural and urban ruins ever since Half Life 2 made those fashionable.

    Now, if a game has impressive art in it, where the medium does something delightful to look at, that pleases me. That has nothing to do with hardware flexing.

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      Source set a new bar. Left 4 Dead 2 still looks great despite being over a decade old (we’re coming up on the first game’s 20th. birthday). Part of that was how Source did textures and it used a lot of them.

      Since Source, I can’t think of anything that had that much of an impact. Unreal 5 looks decent enough, but it’s not like the jump from Goldeneye to Day of Defeat.

  • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Devil’s advocate, the techdemo aspects of Spess Mehrine II stuck out to me. Games have been diminishing returns technically since the PS4 at least, so seeing big impressive swarms of Tyrranids or huge columns tumbling put me fondly in mind of F.E.A.R., or Half Life 2, or like The Darkness, Idk.

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    It was a struggle for me to finish spesh muhreen 2 because my computer couldn’t optimize the game for shit and everything was a janky junky choppy mess for me.

  • Idk, I guess if your goal in making a game is to have some beautiful scenery that’s also realistic, knock yourself out. But I love games that are focused on enjoyment first and foremost. The games I spend the most time on are really simple graphically.

    That’s why I maintain that the Switch is the GOAT of systems, it’s just really fun. Shitty company that’s gotten worse over time, sure, but they don’t exactly take the crown and at least I get something enjoyable out of it.