LazyGunn wrote:

Haha cheers liveinadive There are so many aspects to graphical advancement it's unreal, be aware that nvidia also contribute in physx a traditionally GPU accelerated physics system - the amount of gameplay options opened just from sheer 'prettiness advancement' is staggering, but the fact that so many things come from the same hardware race, physics, GPU compute - always worth it, behind all these pretty, super budget 'crappy' games is a story and a legacy. I'll never hate these kind of games, if you're looking at the latest big budget for new games when you already stated you prefer games from q bygone time, just trawl greenlight or kongregate or something, there's loads of competent spinoffs made extremely easy to make thanks to all these vilified big releases

The implication here is that generic nonsense is made at a cost of tens of millions purely to serve some other people.

In the past there was fewer trade offs in this regard. Or was there? SM64 traded on advancement + gameplay, Halo CE the same, GoldenEye, OoT, Forsaken, Metal Gear, FF7. Super Mario Bros 1, 3.

I don't personally think that has gone away. Rather the nature of the industry has changed.

Nintendo no longer make the most powerful hardware (SNES N64), their games still look fucking good but not as outright above as others, so that kinada eliminates them (and Rare).

I remember JRPGs being way out there in terms of graphics but the reality was the really impressive stuff was pre rendered cutscenes and/or backgrounds, tech all over has moved on now, I would say that stuff really was smoke and mirrors.



What I love about how graphics are going now is that they are becoming limited by vision and not hardware. I will call up the recent Rayman games again here as they look superb, but even things like Thomas was Alone have a style that is acceptable (if not great) in it's boldness.
GTAV was hands down the most technically accomplished game of the last gen but I bet it wouldn't top the forum top ten, and that is great because it shows developers have the freedom to express rather than technically conform.

The thing with graphics is that its very hard to go back. So many times in games I think "nah, thats fine, no need to move on from here" and then you get to the next level of tech and get used to that, and it makes it hard to go back. I just sold my ps3 and was checking everything was working pre-sale. Popped in the ps2 disc for Pro evo 6 and was amazed at how basic it looked. It looked the same way ISS 64 looked when I started playing the pro evo series. Developers continue to amaze me with what they can produce graphics wise and I agree that the ideal situation is that the tech becomes so good that its the vision that holds back the artist and not the tools.

Stuck record again but again, vr, something even you guys might not be really understanding until into next year. 90 plus fps, big resolution, even 4k doesn't cut it - for ANY type of graphics fidelity you wish to achieve, this is cause you're releasing against the demands of the human nervous system. Hearing a bunch if devs talking about vr is crazy, after valves showing at this years gdc j think a bunch of devs are like 'fuck this' to traditional 2d display paradigms and suddenly the demands for performance, and hence investment needed into things that will invest into things that provide this performance, becomes fundamental

VR, for me personally still has a huge barrier, like wearing a kilo or two of stuff on your face and depriving(or fully indulging) a sense.
I am sure I am not alone in this.

LazyGunn wrote:

I think you forget hardware underpins all this at a fundamental level yet you dont seem to think it exists as a factor

It's gotta be a two way street. If people didn't want things to look better then they wouldn't need better hardware. 

There was an excellent article in PC Format years and years ago about how Obsolescence was essentially driven by envy. If you locked yourself in a room and taped all access from stuff, one would be happy with their excellent looking Half Life forever. It's seeing other things and what other people do (almost driven by a need to be and have the best which is a nother fundamental crutch of nerd society) that drives things forward.

This isn't to say that progress is only driven by flighty superficial nonsense (engineering and weather maps totally rely on better computational power to save more lives) but in the realms of games it seems just a marketeers monkey grinder at play.

Another thing: the biggest PC games at the moment: MineCraft , TF2 (based on HL2, based on Quake mod), Dota (based on Warcraft 3! (remember when it was an RTS) and Counterstrike. None of these games needed the HD era to be made (maybe Minecraft, and in conjunction with the net advances), but lo still doing pretty damn well.

I have only played Minecraft on XBone.
Based on that I consider it a HD game.
Smooth as framerate, soft AA and them bright colours need the umpppggh.
"HD" games isn't just about aspect ratios.

Liveinadive wrote:

I have only played Minecraft on XBone. Based on that I consider it a HD game. Smooth as framerate, soft AA and them bright colours need the umpppggh. "HD" games isn't just about aspect ratios.

You're right, it's simply a shorthand.

The line occurs between Xbox360 and before.

Worth it? Not yet. But everyone's hands were basically tied, that's business.

I want graphics that are stunning rather than realistic. Will always be moved by something that is quirky, arty, innovative over amazingly accurate faces and how a protagonist moves. The graphics in Cuphead excite me more than those in Uncharted 4.

Doesn't matter how much time and effort has been spent on the naturalisation of characters, the controller in my hand is always going to be a barrier to being totally immersed. Also hyper realism can be quite disconcerting, thinking more of The Hobbit cinema release where the frame rate (I think, bit of a luddite) was increased to the point it became quite intrusive to my enjoyment of the film.

I've not played it, but was the GTA5 upgrade worth it? Was it that different? Rockstar went on about how they basically put a new title's work into it - I mean, personally I'd a rather got Bully 2 in that time, but maybe it was a GAMECHANGER.

JonB wrote:

GTAV isn't much of a game at all, for instance.

Ruh? Surely it's as much of a game as the GTAs of the PS2 generation?

GTAV's world is amazing. The actual game just doesn't provide interesting things to do in it. It's so bad that whole chunks of Los Santos will go unseen by many. 

The gameplay is sluggish and a mechanical mess. If a dev could provide a similar environment again, online, with the fluid gameplay and divine controls of, say, Destiny, with interesting and varied objectives that incorporate all the nooks and crannies of the map, coupled with some Minecraft style creation, then we'd have some true next gen shizzle.

I'd argue that was ever present throughout the series, even the PS1 top down original. There was that one early mission where you did a drug deal and when the mission ended the fella stayed in the game world. You could kill him, get your gear back and keep the money. But that was it, no more of that type of thing since, which remains a massive shame.

Still not sure where the upgrade to HD comes into all of this.

Paul the sparky wrote:

Still not sure where the upgrade to HD comes into all of this.

Yeah, it's not that specifically, more general changes based on the size and scope of big games now. There's too much breadth and not enough depth in something like GTA, and it's got worse as they've got more ambitious, which is related to the tech available.

I definitely prefer focused games that do a handful of things well, than games that try and include everything but then effectively reduce interaction to context sensitive presses of X.

There was definitely more of that in the last gen, with games like GTA and Assassin's Creed, and even stuff like Batman AC or Tomb Raider.