The Pursuit of Realistic Graphics is Killing AAA Games | Extra Punctuation
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- čas přidán 17. 05. 2023
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This week on Extra Punctuation, Yahtzee takes a look at why chasing realistic graphics all the time is hurting AAA games.
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you know sometimes its nice to just get your own opinions repeated back at you for 7 minutes
This man agrees with me on opinions I didn't even know I had sometimes
Echo chamber, comfort zone, safe space whatever you call it, it exists for a reason.
It’s why I clicked on the video
Especially when their repeated back funnier than you thought them
Oh absolutely. i don't even feel the need to comment. He just says what I think...and that's it.
That whole filling out the space on CD-ROMs thing was legit. The devs of the original Grand Theft Auto were worried that people wouldn't want it because it used pixel graphics during an age of 3D games. So to "compensate" for the graphics not using up a lot of space on the CD, they put in a bunch of high quality music.
I think back then it was a bit justified (back when real disks were a thing). Like you have a 16 MB disk, but your game as is is only 4 MB, why waste the other 8 if you can use high quality music, for example.
Now its less of an issue, and sometimes the opposite. Pokemon Sword and SHield was build on a 16gb cartrige, but needed 32 to run (or something like that), so it needs you to download the rest. SwSh did not need to add extra bells and whistles (not that it had many...)
Which costs waaaaaaaaay more money than high graphics. Your point? Absolutely fucking nothing was gained. You know how many games even use actual known music? Practically no one because of how ridiculously expensive it all is.
@@richardhunter9779 Both Worms and Total Annihilation for me. I once spent a full day painstakingly preparing for a LAN tournament, not by practicing, but putting together a custom soundtrack CD to play with!
@@tylercafe1260 In the case of GTA 1, I don't think it used any licensed music. It was all original tracks composed for the game. When I said high quality, I meant that the sound quality was really good and not highly compressed or anything. There was also a lot of music in the game, which also ate up CD-ROM space
The final fantasy games did something similar. You could fit them on like one disc, but you had 3 or 4 extra discs for cutscenes.
I still maintain that games like Red Faction Guerilla and Just Cause 2 _could_ have been a real turning point in gaming; the ability to traverse anywhere in a fully rendered map with one loading screen and entirely destructible environments would be absolutely fucking incredible with the kind of power we have now.
Instead I get to have a mediocre time watching Cal Kestis' beard bristle in real time while the game shits itself into a hard crash.
This was my hope as well. It's sad to see what they did to Just Cause.
Or Mercenaries, RIP Pandemic, F-you EA!
@@squidlytv Both Franchises are dead
Just cause 2 was far from having fully destructible environments.
My dream game is a superhero game in the same vein as Prototype, Infamous or The Darkness combined with RF: Guerilla’s level of destruction. It’s frustrating cuz we HAVE the technology to pull this off, AAA studios just choose to not utilize it. I just want the ultimate power fantasy, man.
As someone with poor eyesight, I rather miss being able to quickly discern enemies, objects, and backgrounds. I liked being able to walk into a room and be able to identify which things I might be able to interact with without scouring my screen like I'm playing a "find the hidden objects" game.
I don't even have poor eyesight and I just could not pick out enemies in the environment in Rage 2. It was damn near impossible for me to figure out where I'm getting shot from even with the bullet trails. Had to return it after just an hour cuz it was just unplayable.
My eye site is also not that great and I have the same issue. Like I can easily tell enemies from the background in something like Medal of Honor on the PS1, but newer shooters, despite having much higher graphics, everything kinda blends togeather. Weird as in real life I don't have a huge amount of issue seeing an enemy in say paintball, but maybe it is just the nature of games being on a 2D screen.
@@scottthewaterwarrior This was actually a major criticism of the Halo remake back in 2011, and well deserved in my opinion. In the original, the enemies are very clearly distinguished from the rest of the environment, whereas with the remake, everything was designed to look as "realistic" as possible, thus the enemies blended more in with the background and made everything more visually exhausting. It's the reason that games like Cyberpunk, while visually stunning (when they work), can be instantly overwhelming and feel more like a chore than entertainment when you're having to squint to find anything from enemies to items.
When I played Quake 3, I disabled nearly all effects, set all texture mappings to the absolute minimum, made all enemies use the same superbright model, and set the resolution to whatever allowed me to reach 125fps on my CRT. And nearly everybody else did the same.
@@willsaenz6320 I haven't had too much issue with telling the enemies apart from the environment in Halo CE Anniversary, but weapons/grenades dropped on the ground are another matter.
Jeff Goldblum's quote from Jurassic Park tends to come to mind: "You spent so much time figuring out if you could do it, you didn't think about if you should."
"Ooh, ahh, that's how it always starts. But then later there's running and screaming..."
That quote seems relevant to about 90% of what's happening in the tech industry right now.
@Ben L yes, the quote is extremely relevant in the Era of A.I
@@northernlightz5319 I wish people would stop referring to LLMs as AI. There is no intelligence, they run on statistical probability.
Micheal Crichton, actually. Jeff Goldblum is an actor.
I feel like this is a big part of why indies are such a big talking point right now. They're not expected to be a part of the cold war of hyper-realistic visuals, they're just able to play around with creative art styles and new ideas.
@Andrew Nesterov Not every indie game uses pixel art, and not every one of them is even designed to emulate retro games. Even the most basic pixel art is more expressive, interesting and creative than most AAA games' obsession with ultra realistic graphics.
@Andrew Nesterov As opposed to non-stylized photo-realism that can take hundreds of people working over half a decade of abusive crunch?
It's fine to have a preference in terms of visual style, but indies aren't limited to pixel-art. There's hand-drawn, Visual novels, cel-shaded 3D, Paper-Cut-Out animation, etc. There's pixel-art aplenty too, but that can mean a lot of different things in terms of the quality and art design. I have more fond memories of Katana Zero's visuals than I do with a lot of the AAA titles I've played recently.
Another thing is that there are no executives and/or shareholders breathing down their necks, ready to cripple the devs when their unrealistic expectations are not being met.
For example, the director of Sonic Team, the guy who gets villainized by the fanbase prior to Sonic Frontiers, was actually the one who pushed for Frontiers' longer dev time against the higher ups so that they can improve the game and get it released in a now-beloved state.
@Andrew Nesterov Please take a look at Wildfrost and tell me that that's 8-bit pixel graphics trying to replicate old game style
@Andrew Nesterov This is a very long comment, but this is a subject I'm interested in and would like to explain my viewpoint. If you want to legitimately discuss this, you should read it, if not, then don't.
I'm not blind to the fact that pixel art is somewhat overdone in indie games. It is. That being said, pixel art can be far more expressive than your average hyper realistic 3D AAA game. Pixel art may be an overdone style, but it IS a style. "Realistic" is, by definition, the very ABSENCE of style, because it imitates real life. Style is when art deviates from what we consider normal, which in this case is real life. (This is not to say that realistic 3D animation is necessarily bad, or that AAA games that use it are always bad. There are some AAA games like this that are actually quite good, even very good.)
Pixel art is oversaturated for sure, but the reason for that is simply because it's an art style that doesn't always require a lot of expenses to produce. You don't need to have a lot of equipment or software to make it. That does NOT mean it is low effort, or easy to make. It certainly can be occasionally, but you can say that about any art style, and without a good understanding of pixel art or even just art in general, it can often seem easier to make than it actually is from an outside perspective.
Here are 3 examples of great indie games that use pixel art and still have a extremely strong visual identity:
A recent example, (at least in terms of when it was released) is Pizza Tower, which uses pixel art in a very non-conventional way, making pixel art by using animation and drawing techniques more associated with more traditional, non-video game art. It uses flat colours, with almost no shading, and instead lets the fluid and creative animation do the heavy lifting. The flat colours also help to accentuate the cartoon like style.
Hyper Light Drifter, a somewhat older and underrated game in my opinion, has some of the most detailed and well animated pixel art I have seen in any game. Its gameplay animations are extremely smooth and follow a more video game like approach, while its cutscenes feature extremely detailed pixel art animation that, like Pizza Tower, adopt a more traditional looking art style, albeit without Pizza Tower's cartoon style.
Rain world is a game with a very interesting art style that can be hard to pin down. It uses what appears to be a mixture of 2D pixel art and 3D models, all put into a 2D plane with a pixel art filter. The reason for this is likely because the game has a lot of creatures and objects that can move in ways that would take thousand upon thousands of hours to draw every possible position each asset could be in by hand. It could be argued whether this one is actually pixel art, but it is 2D, and certainly has pixel art elements, so I thought it was worth mentioning.
There are many, many more, and I could also list some great indie games that don't use pixel art at all, but this comment is extremely long already and I don't want to make a comment so long it turns people off from reading it. (Which I've probably already done)
If you want me to, I can argue this point more, but I'll leave that up to you so you don't have to listen to my insane ramblings if you don't want to.
I really liked your idea of "why make games look good with new tech, when they can play good with new tech". Having massive hoards of enemies, actual fun physics systems and that audio book idea was phenomenonal. Also, I've always liked impressive animations over impressive graphics. I love seeing my character act like a badass rather than look like one.
Open world RPG gameplay in a DYSON SPHERE. Some NEEDS to make it.
Gotta be honest, the answer is because people will say “okay but why not both? My gaming pc is $5000+”
@@itsalwaysdarkestbeforethes1198 you can have both spiderman has both, god of war has both, and the last of us have both graphics and animation devil may cry, the recent resident evil games I can go on
Yeah having detailed character models is fine but it’s the animation that actually sells the character and makes them believable, just look at shadow of the colossus on the ps2. On the other hand, if one of the hundreds of bones in modern game characters doesn’t move right it breaks your immersion immediately
Like RE4 for GameCube
I love that Wind Waker is now the diamond standard for this conversation. So many people shat themselves when it came out with its "kiddie" cel-shaded artstyle. Now, cel shading is everywhere and one of the most beloved gaming artstyles (see Arc System Works fighting games), and Wind Waker is always the first example of a game that will never look bad in any era.
As a follow up to my point, look at 2006 Zelda-likes. 1) Twilight Princess, 2) Okami. Complainers finally got their "realistic Zelda," and it's not winning any graphical praise nearly 20 years later. And its gameplay is some of the weakest in the series. Okami, meanwhile, is one of the most stunningly gorgeous games of all time. And using the motif of ink drawing in both the artstyle and the gameplay means its gameplay is timeless as well.
People forget, so many things that are beloved now were criticized when they came out, it's a really good point, Digimon for example.
@@kdawg3484 Twilight Princess is not realistic, it's going for the classic Zelda fantasy look, even the human characters have an unrealistic fantasy look to them.
I blame the Link vs Ganondorf tech demo that looked more like an Ocarina of Time with game cube graphics. That set a lot of expectations back then to a specific art style, and people were mad when they got something totally different.
@@kdawg3484 Ooooh I wish I can agree with you on Okami, I mean in terms of gameplay. Art-wise? 🥰 Gameplay-wise? 💩. It's an example of what I call Empty Art Games, games that are all style but no substance, or that the substance is terrible.
Another thing id like to note is that these major tech companies are pushing graphical power over compatibility for older software. Its become more and more common for older games to perform worse then they did 20 years ago.
Yeah I can't think of anyone who can run the latest CoD or God Of War without overclocking their Nvidia 30 series card.
Wait what does compatibility with older software have to do with new games running worse than older games?
@@coolcax99 I think it was more that they are refusing to work on their compatibility over graphical power for re-releases and such. The PC version of GoW 2018 is hard to run well (requires way more power than it should) when the PS4 version of GoW 2018 ran great on the PS4. This shouldn't ever happen.
@@coolcax99 think in terms of needing DOS emulators to run older games in their original form, or the option in newer versions of Windows to run programs in certain "compatibility" modes. The evolution of hardware requires the evolution of the backbone frameworks that interpret and render a game's code, so in the frantic march forward to "realism," the ability for newer hardware/drivers to utilize or even acknowledge the older framework has significantly lower priority, resulting in less efficient native (or computationally intense when emulated) execution of a game's code. So in these instances, games either run poorly or simply not at all. At which point community effort works for the sake of preservation to correct what major companies usually refuse to do. The companies already got players' money and essentially bound them to forfeiture of consumer rights in the EULA before you even get to try the game, so there's no _real_ threat of consequence for these companies to do whatever they want (or don't want, in this case) to maintain accessibility to older products; or in the last decade or so: release a game in acceptable condition that isn't under some invisible EoL timer that can become completely unplayable on the publisher's whim without legal requirement to issue refunds. Software laws are archaic, and the ones specifically about updates is the loophole so widely used by companies that it's been stretched from loophole to planetary orbit.
I'm ranting, sorry. I'm so fed up with everything governments and corporations get away with that I'm always finding myself ranting. LOL so silly 😜 😜🤓😮💨😭😭😭
@@illitero actually, modern platforms (ps4, ps5, xbox) are much more compatible with Windows. This is because all the hardware components like the CPU and the GPU are the same (have the same architecture) as that of a desktop computer. Emulation of these platforms are much easier. The reason why they haven’t been emulated yet is mostly due to software lockdowns rather than some hardware compatibility.
It also doesn’t make sense to make a new system with the same standards/interfaces as the old one. What you seem to be asking is for forwards compatibility - current hardware should be just as capable as future hardware when running games. Why buy/create a new platform then? The move that does make sense is to create a new platform, then allow older platform games to be run on the new platform, to provide actual backwards compatibility. This is done really well by current platforms - the PS5 can run all old games, something that wasn’t true in the PS3 days. Xbox is much better in this aspect too, with almost all Xbox games having a windows port, while also running older Xbox games. Nintendo is pretty much the only one lagging behind on this trend - the switch is harder to emulate for the same reasons as the other ones but also because they have a different architecture than a desktop. The Nintendo online emulation is not the best either; the community has done a better job with N64 and GameCube games.
Obviously, new windows OS running older windows programs is really good and has been for decades. You can run programs all the way back to XP easily, and emulate older windows versions than that if needed. Microsoft themselves use this feature - a lot of core tools of windows are actually very old.
Shadows of Doubt is a great example of pushing processing power in a different direction than graphics. Simulate a small city with people with dozens of properties and relations, and then drop the player into the middle of that. It makes my PC chug, and it's amazing.
First game in several several years that made me want to upgrade my PC, with the other being RDR2 and GTA SA back in 2006
Taking the city thing in a different direction, I could definitely see something like an open world game bucking the trend of making increasingly huge game worlds and instead going really dense. Kind of like what Fallout 4 did with Boston where they tried to make an open city area filled with stuff going on everywhere, just using all this new tech to make it not like run shit.
I think that outer wilds does a similar thing and it's amazing. The whole solar system is simulated so if you take an object from one planet to another, or just leave it in space it will stay there. It won't despawn or reset because you've left the area that it's in. Accidentally knock a skeleton and send it flying through space to the other side of the room? It'll still be there when you're back in 10 minutes after visiting another planet. On brittle hollow the whole surface is dynamically modelled with forces so that if you crash into an area, that section of crust becomes more damaged and that specific section will fall into the centre of the planet if damaged enough. And this might not have happened had you not crashed into that particular bit of the crust. If you left your little scout on another planet, it keeps rendering the planet at full render, even if you are on the other side of the star system on a completely different planet instead of building in an arbitrary distance limit to avoid fully rendering two different areas.
The level of simulation going on is impressive and even with the low poly aesthetic and the tenancy to just leave areas empty if there's nothing to find there, it's a way more immersive and realistic world than many games that are graphically superior.
now we just need more software that can use GPU to take the workload of the CPU. imagine if Dwarf Fortress could use the GPU to handle the game's processes, we would have 1000s of dwarfs in a fortress running at a bearable pace.
@@LBFVolthawk To be fair FO4 Boston runs like shit no matter how good your hardware is because that game has horrific optimisation.
"The more time that goes into things like graphics, the less can go into things like game design"
Game Dev Tycoon taught me this lesson as well.
Also me.
I'm not sure how this can be true when they are two completely separate departments. If you're referring to resources, sure. But as far as time allocation is concerned they are two different teams working in a relatively similar time constraint situation simultaneously (for the most part). Unlike indies who have to put more thought into game design instead of graphics because they are one, or a few, people and thus have extremely limited time and wager the opportunity cost of having better graphics over game design isn't desirable for making a successful game. They choose simple art not because it's better inherently but because it's all they can manage with their meager resources. That being said, I'd love if AA and AAA studios cut back a bit on their realistic games and had smaller teams working on more kinds of games (sort of like faux indie studios but with access to more resources and larger staff as needed) which would fix the rather "samey" games that come out from AA and AAA.
@@BeardedCatDad cuz you have to pay people to make games. The more money you use to pay the graphics team, the less you have for the gameplay team, meaning you have to have fewer devs doing the same work, which results in rough edges. On top of that, you have to cut away certain jobs like quality assurance and play testers, resulting in bugs and poor features slipping through.
Well you can only allocate so much room in the download and since publishers just don’t optimise you get shrasdy insane download sizes your standard hardware can’t store
Victims of this from my memory and can think of:
- Halo
- Gears of War
- Forza (Horizon and Motorsport)
- God of War
- Need For Speed
One of the best games on the PS2 was Katamari Damacy, which had simplified graphics but exploited the power of the system by having big environments where you could potentially roll up everything into your big rolling ball. That's still a pretty impressive trick! I wanna see stuff like that.
I want a new Katamari Damacy too.
Holy shit imagine an open world Katamari, just unlocking new areas but the goal being to roll up the entire goddamn world
Oh, I'm going to check that out
my favorite part is that the creator despised video games lol. still have yet to play it, but i want to try it out for that reason
@@knuxuki1013 The remasters are really good too! Pretty much just upped the resolution and maybe the texture quality.
Remember kids: graphics are temporary, but artstyle is eternal.
Meaningless cliche at this point. Someone says it, more people okay it, and the trend continues as Yahtzee says: it’s not a drop in the bucket compared to the part of the market that expects games to look like pre-rendered 8K trailers.
@@MegaZeta Those people will be content with the latest 'Call of Madden 2024 Preorder-Exclusive Deluxe Remastered Edition'.
Give the simpletons a few of those every year and let the remaining 95% of the market flex their creativity.
@@MegaZeta Think it's ok to have an easy-to-remember sentence that sounds impactful going around. It's a simple statement but helps with making people think more critically imo.
@@MegaZeta Not at all meaningless, it's quite important, and the more it's thrown around, the more people reflect on it. The more young creative minds might be inspired by it to make something different. Your attitude is essentially "let's all bow down to mindless garbage because it will always be", although the reason there's always been interesting, creative stuff to counter all the mindless garbage is because people have had better attitudes than that.
@@MegaZeta legend of zelda tears of the kingdom came out and is on track to outsell its predecessor botw, which is #4 best selling on switch and outsold the PS4 best seller (spider-man) by a factor of 50%. genshin impact the anime botw kinda-clone also sells gangbusters and quickly positioned itself into a name even normies know about.
hell literally every game on the switch runs on art style and they sell well.
if we hop over to sony land spider-man itself is more art style than ultra graphics even if it does lean towards realism. ff7r has high fidelity but it's still heavily stylized and doesn't try to render every pore in cloud's face.
The same is true for films - The Polar Express and Beowulf look incredibly dated, while 2d animated films from Studio Ghibli or Disney have a timeless quality to them. Even early 3D Pixar films have a dated look - regardless of their other great qualities.
@@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish agreed - certain early 2000’s cgi animated films definitely hold up better than others, even compared to certain low budget 3D animated films today (how about that Pinocchio film from last year with Paulie Shore?)
@@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish well the human characters in the Shrek series are looking pretty crusty since they were trying to go with a caricatured but still overly realistic look while the nonhuman characters still look fine, which is why I’m glad Puss in Boots 2 gave the humans a more stylized look.
polar express looks like a god damn picture book and i will die on this hill
Disney owns Ghibli now 😢
@@nonuvurbeeznus795 That's what it was based on.
Idea 5. Build more "alive" environments like rain world. Give the AI more interesting things to do especially now that AI is really starting to take off
If there’s one thing I actually want the recent advancements in AI used for, it’s in training NPC behavior so they’re actually as good as player characters. Like, imagine a game like Star Wars Republic Commando that aspired for tactical team based missions, and did a decent job at it at the time, but instead your squad mates had all the actual intelligence of real players, then add something like what football games have with the huge list of plays at your disposal except their combat maneuvers, and your AI ally’s would be able to execute well on that plan and improvise when things went wrong. I would play the shit out of that
Deep Rock Galactic really embraces Idea #1's huge enemy swarms approach. It's not uncommon for the caves you're working in to suddenly be overrun with bugs, sometimes in quantities so large that running is the best option; looking back and seeing what's following you is a stressful feeling few games have gotten out of me, in the best possible way
So meaningless.
Utter showcase of how quantity is a quality of itself.
Plus they’re not hiding the low resolution of the voxel terrain, making it easier to modify because you can see the actual mesh and know how your hits will affect it
@@cezarstefanseghjucan why do mfs in youtube comments type like they're some writer in britain in like the 1800s with a feather pen writing in a journal
The older serious sam games used to have huge hordes of enemies on massive levels. They even combined these with weird gravity tricks like a room where you walk on the roof or a meteor shower in the middle of a battlefield. One of the most intense and fun Games I've ever played.
@@jkeebla Lmaooo, dude's been real quiet after you wrote this one XD
The need for "hyper realistic graphics" feels like the video game world's equivalent of "the serious movie about important things" trap for Oscar bait productions. That those are the "real" movies, while stylized stuff like Windwalker gets pegged as "cute, fun stuff. for KIDS".
Speaking of movies, I've really had about enough of those where all the people look gritty, look like fakers who try their darndest to look tough but fails because they haven't actually experienced the hard life & inaudibly grumbles. 🤣
Very true. I wonder how many tens of millions of copies Tears of the Kingdom will need to sell to change some people's minds. Because it _will_ - with its current sales trajectory, however many tens of millions it needs it'll sell that, and more.
Cartoons are for kids.
"Meanwhile"
The Old Man And The Sea "critically acclaimed deep award winning animation about an old man at sea"
@@KillahMate Nintendo sells AND keeps their value. Yet AAA western devs won't do this, their games hit the sales quickly for a reason.
It's the gaming equivalent of the Animation Age Ghetto!
Give me a game with unique visual style over realism any day.
Hifi Rush is the freshest and best example now.
Is the game that defines me soo much, and so glad I got to play it.
I like realism on games too, but not all game should keep on doing that anymore.
There is space for change and Hifi Rush proved we need the change.
All indie i guess.
Uhh elden ring?
Rainbow Billy, Fe, Seasons After Fall, Lisa: The Painful, have a unique style
Visual style requires-- and in turn inspires-- creativity and imagination.
Michaelangelo's David is an awe-inspiring piece of supreme technical skill and anatomical knowledge... but, I also find it as interesting and engaging *stylistically* as a blank sheet of paper.
Visual style and triple A budgets are pretty much impossible to mix nowadays, because corporations are too afraid to be creative, because it’s risky, and they don’t want to be risky with their ridiculously overinflated budgets. It’s why indie games are so much better most of the time, they have no creative restrictions, only budgetary ones, and it’s why older video games were also better, because their budgets were pretty small too, so they had less to lose by doing something creative and more to gain. These ultra realistic games just need to have their budgets slashed and put into multiple smaller games, if you ask me. While some might fail, there’s more games to succeed as well.
Style ages way better than realism. Darkest Dungeon came out in 2015. Still as fantastic as ever.
SNES games still look good. Realism ages about as well as fresh fish.
Art direction is like a magic trick - everybody knows the strings are there but it does its best to endear you with aesthetics and style that misdirects them. Photorealism on the other hand attempts to delude you (and itself) that it has no strings at all using the latest technology - ensuring, ironically, that as time passes and that technology becomes dated, those strings become painfully obvious.
Agreed. Just look at Metroid Prime, sure the remaster is more shiny but the original still looks amazing to this day
anyone remembers Team Fortress 2?
some dumbass people will call me weird if i say "i think hollow knight, wind waker and hades looks better than red dead redemption 2 or the last of us 2"
I realize we sort of have seen idea 3 in a game, in Hades. That game has a truly colossal amount of voiced dialogue in it, and it genuinely helps a ton to make the game feel alive as characters just kind of always have new things to say.
Its funny how everyone keeps getting impressed by the colossal amount of content in that game from an indy dev team of max 30 or so people. But it proves this video's point; You can make a lot of creative content with 30 people, or you can have them all spend their time modelling horse testicles.
I've been saying 'shitloads of enemies' as a new direction for games for a while. I think a game where the corpses never despawn and become physics object piles. Like mowing down waves of robots for so long it actually chokes off an alley.
I think that’s a thing in left4dead no? Where the pile of zombie corpses stacks up and up and the zombies either need to go around it or over it
Edit: must have remembered it wrong then
@@wouju9600 I wish
There was some zombie game a while back that had literally millions of enemies at once. (Not They are Billions)
Hasn't this essentially been the Total War series' approach since its inception?
Have you heard the good word about Earth Defense Force?
You know, this is why i love the EDF series so much. Even without the most realistic graphics you got to fight a crazy amount of Giant insect, aliens robots and kaijus. Not to mention seeing you and your enemies ragdolling team rocket style.
The only game that realizes that slow down can be fun if it directly correlates with you causing 80 explosions.
Most bizarrely, EDF is one of the few games with so many OR so large enemies. Triple-A games struggle with either, while this series does both at once to a ludicrously awesome decree.
@@uberculex I got that same kind of fun slow down on some old Saturn games, Virtual On notably. Even though it was just the hardware struggling, it made the game feel very cinematic slowing down as the scene got filled with explosions or near miss laser beams!
Panzer Dragoon Saga too, if a certain boss hit you with their most powerful attack (100 lasers in rapid succession), you were in for some slowdown that added to the suffering.
That telephone pole slicing clip from MGSR blew my mind. If one of the primary core gameplay loops for games as a whole is "destroy stuff" make everything more realistically destructible!!
@@DavidHohShow I love it when a game does that. I remember "X-Men: Legends", and how after finishing a fight, the room I was in would often be wrecked, with all the furniture smashed and holes blown in the walls. It really sold playing a group of powerful superheroes using destructive powers.
Grand Theft Auto's radio stations are sort of the podcast idea. There's absolutely absurd talk-show satire in between the music channels. It's incredible stuff!
WCTR from SA will never be surpassed
VCPR!
MGS4 also had an in-game podcast for your literal iPod you can carry around, I think it was basically akin to director's commentary about the game? Not totally sure, I usually used it to listen to the OST's of other Metal Gear games lol.
Spiderman PS4 also has the J Jonah radio podcast, as I can tell from reviews
The physics point is especially great now that Tears of the Kingdom has baffled other devs at how Nintendo made the fusion and Zonai devices work the way players expect them to.
If the Switch of all things can handle that level of power, the fact that other devs can’t grasp how to do it with PS5 level hardware shows how their minds need to shift gears entirely
if nintendo games were available on all platforms they would instantly take over the industry guaranteed
No joke I'd love an in universe podcast that had enough content to last the entire game.
Golf club wasteland had something around those lines. There's a consistently running radio station that builds the lore in between the music.
I would often delay getting out of my car in Vice City to finish listening to a segment on one of the talk shows.
@@paultapping9510 Fallout and Grand Theft Auto are pretty well-known for people being psyched about whatever the radio is going to play in those games.
Like Metal Gear Solid codec conversations that can be listened while playing the game?
just like the subway surfers TikTok videos
Idea 5: actually create good enemy AI.
It's a crime that the best enemy AI in video games are stuck in CRPG's and for shooters haven't evolved or improved since FEAR.
Before it's said: I know Hitman has great AI but that's the exception and not the rule. And they aren't really tactically inclined at all, just routine programs with little to no actual tactical aquity.
It's insane how good FEAR AI is and even more insane how little people have tried to imitate it. Seems like devs just assumed it would be too much work and didn't bother. Now that would be a good use of processing power.
the best shooter ai is part 2, they really did do their thing there
The problem is: the smarter the AI gets, the more glaring becomes it when it it makes mistakes.
Alien Isolation had incredible AI for the xenomorph. It reacts to your tactics and find ways around it. Or it gets tricked, learns the trick and doesn't fall for it again. Or it views a flamethrower as a threat but since you know it ran out of fuel and it didn't, you can use that knowledge to deter it away.
But the moment you click that trigger and nothing happens, it chases you.
@@USMC49er Was just about to point out the xenomorphe ai in Alien Isolation. What a fantastic game.
I don't think I've ever heard Yahtzee more spiteful. You turly felt the words ring inside his soul.
When you've been saying the same thing over and over again for years. Eventually you need to sit people down and go "Look. You don't seem to be listening to me so I am going to MAKE you listen"
It's funny how relevant this is to the new Zelda game that just came out. Some critics are bashing it for having 'dated' graphics that just use outdated switch hardware to its fullest, but regular players are in love with it for the freedom and new gameplay mechanics that it provides. This seems very much in line with Yahtzee's points here, especially considering Wind Waker, also by Nintendo, is also on his radar for some of the same reasons.... Less on the graphics, more on the gameplay - come on people, it's not hard!
I always found it funny about the hyper realistic thing. Cause you get a game like Hades or Darkest Dungeon and everyone gushes about the art style.
And nobody but marketing gushes about the latest AAA graphics.
Photorealism isn't a real style.
This. There's something to be said about trying to make your game evoke a painting or artistic style rather than just trying (and often failing) to make it look realistic.
Like, Streets of Rage 4, for example. Makes you feel like you're playing a comic book. Absolutely nailed it.
@@vincentmuyo if i wanted a photorealistic experience id watch a damn movie.
Or realistic physics for that matter. Everyone was losing their minds over that realistic cam-recorder shooter game a few weeks ago, but give me Doom Eternal's cartoon physics any day of the week
@@kingsleycy3450 unless you're talking about hardcore flight simulations or the like, most gamers don't actually want realistic physics (even if they don't realize it). Most games tweak physics to improve player feel and experience or make the game appear more "fair" to the player.
Hit the nail on the head with HL2 and physics. Only a small handful of games, let alone AAA ones have actually tried to meaningfully push the envelope in the 15+ years people have been messing around in GMod.
Crysis was a good combination of both
yeah i wish physics were actually used as a fun mechanic again, even tho most objects in hl2 are completely useless to pick up its simply fun to throw bottles at the metrocops or stack boxes on top of eachother
"Tears of the Kingdom" has finally made the next step in that direction... almost 20 years later...
Force unleashed was going somewhere with its destructible environments and ways you can mess with a stormtrooper, but I believe people said that those physic engines were hard to implement so most companies didn’t bite
HL2 still is in my backlog and I won't touch it anytime soon.
I remember listening to an episode of the Rooster Teeth podcast long ago (when Rooster Teeth as a whole were actually good), and Geoff Ramsey was talking about graphics in games that resonates with me to this day. I don't remember the exact words he said, but he basically said, "You load up the game, look at the graphics, have your moment of gushing where you go 'Oh my god! This looks amazing! Look at this, look at that!', then 15 minutes later you completely forget about the graphics - because you're focused on the gameplay and not the graphics." Since then, I stopped buying into these marketing ploys about how amazing a game/engine's graphics are, because all I care about is the _game_ part of the video game, not how realistic the pimple on a character's right butt cheek looks - and this video further reinforces my stance on graphics.
This doesn't apply to all games though. Especially open world RPGs like the Witcher 3 that constantly move you around to new environments. There, having a good looking new city valley or mountain range really does add to the experience. In particular, the famous story quest 'Through time and space' was very much enhanced by the capabilities of the engine.
Thankfully, getting natural outside environments to work and look good isn't necessarily the hardest thing to do, because people will look at most things from a distance. Set up a good weather system, make sure your lighting is dynamic, and use repeatable objects that look different from different angles. Further, the open exploration part means you are naturally inclined to look around more and notice the environment so there is more reward for doing this. And nowadays with Quixel and megascans I feel it may soon become something that AI can very easily help you with.
Not so in a linear game like Jedi Survivor, where like you say it hardly matters after 15 minutes.
The thing I love most about the hyper real trend is its making me appreciate highly stylized games even if I have zero desire to play the game. Bare minimum it's good to see a game with a unique look even if the gameplay style is something I would ever try
I love this argument. The industry barely ever innovates on anything apart from graphics. That's the main reason everyone grabs onto individual voices like Kojima's, because at least you know they're trying to push the envelope in other areas as well
Yeah, I want good graphics AND good gameplay, why can't we have that?
@@yol_n budgets are finite, you can't put infinite programmers and infinite artists on your payroll
@@terradoom8503 gta 6 and the riot mmo disaggres
@@yol_n they also don't exist
@@terradoom8503 Keep it al graphical level of Crysis, some people say it ugly and dated nowadays :P
I’d love to see an ultra realistic pizza tower mod, that would be horrifying
might be possible to do with AI perhaps? Swapping out all the sprites for realistic versions would make the game look like a surreal nightmare, or maybe simply look like Hylics lmao
lol. was thinking the same thing. love seeing graphics advance. Grew up play ugly games that now clasify as indy.. commodore 64
Imagine running out of time on the escape timer and seeing a photorealistic pizza with realistic eyes and mouth appear
@@cybercrafted4229 Hyperrealistic Pizza Face with hyperrealistic tomato sauce
Which is precisely why it should never happen.
I worked with some folks on making games and some people are absolutely obsessed and neurotic over graphics. The best explanation I got was "if it is not realistic, then it is a children's game and we're not making that"... completely missing the point of gameplay and everything else. They are insane and clearly running the AAA corps
art is an interpretive expression of reality - not reality itself. the more abstract/interpretive the expression, the more artistic it is. when it gets to the point of being a 1:1 replica of reality, it almost ceases to be artistic, creative, or meaningful in any way. not only do i not need hyper-realistic graphics, but I inadvertently reject it much of the time for that reason
Ah yes, famous children's games such as Conker's Bad Fur Day, Mad World and the Dishonored series
I know personally, there are artists who I overheard a conversation with my friend, he was listening to another experienced Graphics programmer claiming that "Stylistic art and choices in interactive visuals design of videogames compared to high-fidelity graphics, if you hand in a work to the executive has creative Stylised graphics, she claimed is
Your failed, along some of the lines that, initial getting into the industry: you have to show the high-ups your Graphics-Art is an impressive high-resolution eye candy, stunning detailed Poster.". I was like, this is the works of an upside down, stagnational stagnating industrious society.
I've always thought the graphic chasing is actually to sell games to non-gamers, typically parents. I suspect this will end as less and less people exist now who aren't gamers of some kind. But when I was younger I didn't buy any games, they were bought for me by people who didn't play games so judged them (perhaps subconsciously) on the only thing that they could really compare: how realistic it looked.
I'm reminded of when I was told about the dominant game design philosophy over in Japan.
"You make it look good first, then you worry about gameplay, story, etc."
The difference being, over in Japan, the definition of "looking good" is mostly hyper-stylized, with barely any attempt at any sort of realism.
It's like hacks in media always operated. It reminds me about Hollywood productions in the 50s - you greenlight a cool looking poster and then shoot a movie in a couple of weeks to fit this poster and your budget.
Its not even hyper stylized, its just. Good. Good core gameplay, good visual and audio design. Something like Metal Gear Rising isn't hyper stylized as such, it just has a good aesthetic and decent-is graphics.
Oh that's why honkai star rail is like a poster, good (demanding for my shit pc) graphics, with not much to gameplay.
@@TheStrangeBloke in this case they were refering to the look of the game not the feel of the game
@@crackedemerald4930 well thats chinese developed game but the phylosiphy is much the same
I hope the overwhelming success of Hi-Fi Rush is sending companies a hint. Obviously it didn't break the box office but it did spectacularly well for a shadow drop. Games don't need to look realistic to be good. Make them good and fun first and THEN go nuts with visuals if desired.
Problem is that Hi-Fi Rush still cost *a lot* to make. Just see end credits. It is very competent, well designed, well crafted game, and it definitely hasn't cut corners to achieve result. And that is problem - money bean counters want to see money spent. Stylized game requires them to actually *understand* games. But they don't and most of them don't want to and never will. Only thing they understand is - ohh this game looks super realistic, I actually can see where money has gone.
It is basically same reason why they don't want to waste money on QA.
Replace money counters at corpos with people who actually understand games and possible player preferences and you will be fine. But again, problem - corpos don't work that way. People who own them want money counters to lead the ship because they think they only understand how to make money.
If the idiots who made it didn't make it console exclusive to Xbox, it would have sold gangbusters.
@@PeciskYou realize if they did what you suggested, they would stop making more money each year than they did the previous, right? And that's just not acceptable. That's not allowed. Your shareholders will want you dead.
@@MrGamelover23 Gamers: Too many games are cross platform now, it kills the point of choosing one console over another. Exclusives need to exist.
Also gamers: Fucking console exclusives, how dare they not release on [console I use]
Go complain to Microsoft. It's not the devs faults.
It wasn't really an 'overwhelming success.'
This is exactly why Tears of the Kingdom is so popular: just how deep the system mechanics are and how they interact and can work together to create a truly interesting and compelling experience. The ultrahand is one of the most impressive things in gaming right now - a power that lets you build anything your mind can imagine using in game objects, in an open world game, and it doesn't crash? It's insane. Tears of the Kingdom is doing much more gameplay wise with so much less horsepower than most AAA games today.
Honestly, the ultrahand does not impress me very much. What impresses me is how it works every time, and integrates well with the other mechanics.
yeah anything in the game probably has some sort of use for the ultrahand (whether intended or not) and i find it fucking amazing@@henryfleischer404
Yahtzee's comment about realistic Pizza tower just made me think of a game that's like the realistic cutaway frames from shows like Spongebob.
Honestly, we've kind hit a singularity when it comes to graphics. Halo 4 was an impressive feat in realistic graphics and I still think it looks fine to this day for an 11 year old game. What I rather have is a unique art style or aesthetic. Pretty much every one of my favorite games has this: Persona 5 Royal, Psychonauts, Okami, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, Borderlands 2, Fallout New Vegas, Shadow of the Colossus, Stardew Valley.
I couldn't tell you what's so special about the newest AAA games' graphics cause they all end up looking the same, but I could give you an individual laundry list of art style choices that have stuck with me for each one of those game from how vast the sea felt in Wind Waker to the weight and scale of the colossi in Shadow of the Colossus.
No we haven't, lol hitting "the singularity" in terms of graphics has been talked about for decades. This whole video is fucking stupid and nothing new. I do agree that artstyle and vision is really what sets some games apart in the end.
Don't understand the New Vegas pick. That game is so damn ugly now and it'll continue to look worse over time.
@@romofin 1950s Sci-fi Cowboys, that's a unique aesthetic and a cool one at that. I could care less about graphics at this point.
I think it's not a singularity, more like a plateu. We're brushing up against a transistor limit. Transistors now are nanoscale, and there's not much room to go lower. That's why games like battlefield 1 still look awesome, despite being 7 years old.
The Hordes of Enemies model is basically the route the Earth Defense Force series went. And speaking of which, another thing to do with that processing power: blowing EVERYTHING up. Take the destruction physics of something like the old Silent Storm games and apply that to a mech sim. Property damage galore!
Remember Red Faction 2? Like that, but GOOD.
Mercenaries! I guess that was mostly pre-rendered destruction, but it was still cool being able to level every building you could see.
Never played Earth Defense Force before, but the idea of having hordes of enemies reminds me of Heavenly Sword way back on the PS3. That game’s whole hook was having hundreds of enemies in screen all at once.
To my knowledge, it’s the only game to ever sell itself on that
those b movie sholock games had no right being that fun
@@scottthewaterwarrior War of the monsters and battlefield bad company 2 immediately spring to mind.
Callisto protocol is a case study of this for me. It came free with my graphics card, no doubt to show it off. I'll admit the burning ruble and glissening slime on the monsters was all impressive. I even stopped at a moment to admire an eelvator shaft I had to crawl through because of the number of fully rendered pipes and spinning fans and swaying cables in the six foot square room I was literally meant to just crawl through for 2 seconds and would have completely missed had I not made the choice to stop, un crouch, and look around. Most telling of all? I got three hours into the game and stopped playing because I could not have possibly cared less about anything going on in the story and the fighting had already gotten painfully repetitive and boring. Sometimes I wonder about the likely tens of thousands of man hours of work that were put into things I never got to or didn't even notice in the portion I did play.
Item 1 reminds me of the initial trailer for Kingdom Hearts III at E3 2013, showing Sora taking on a literal tidal wave of heartless. However, it was a pre-rendered proof of concept. But the idea did actually show up as the "Wave of Darkness" boss that served as the final boss in II.8 and was fought twice in III.
Also, I like how he talked about going nuts with the physics engine a few days after Tears of the Kingdom dropped a game that goes wild with its physics engine to a degree that would make Minecraft blush.
One of my favorite parts of Insomniac’s Spider-Man was the snippets of J Jonah Jameson’s radio show. I sunk probably 60-70 hours into that game and never heard a duplicate clip. I would love it if a game just had full audio podcasts or something like that that could play in the background
J.K Simmons isn't allowed to die. It's against the rules.
Always got ticked off when something interupted them playing and they didn't auto-resume :(
The funny thing is that, according to a quick search, that's only an hour and a half long. It's perfect for swinging around the city, but man I would kill for 5 hours of that.
I guess it's part of the physics engine bit but I want a return to pushing destruction physics, I remember playing things like Red Faction: Guerilla and marveling, wondering how amazing destruction engines would be in 10 years, well ten years later and no AAA game has come close to RF:G's destruction, I want some games focused on that. I know there's Teardown but it doesn't quite scratch the same itch that the widespread mayhem you could cause in RF:G did.
Wasn't that the point of Crackdown 3 which went through development hell and bombed?
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 What's most ridiculous to me is that the first Crackdown had way more stuff going on screen compared to the 3rd one, which was made for console multiple times more powerful
there is an old demo video for crackdown 3 that showcases incredible destruction, down the the most minute detail and all in multiplayer realtime. Apparently the company that owned the system the destruction was using was bought out, and crackdown 3 couldnt use it anymore, and that's apparently why the destruction sucked when it came out
As a Battlefield player, destruction is also something I adore in games. Which made it all the more infuriating when it took sa step back in 2042. Even when they advertised it as a next gen destruction experience. Sigh.
The Finals looks to have an incredible destruction system. Hopefully it gets used in a more interesting setting.
@@spartanB0292honestly destruction in Battlefield games has been disappointing for many years. I remember how cool it was to actually destroy buildings in Bad Company 2, yet they never went any bigger than that. 3 and 4 let you destroy sections of much bigger buildings, and 1 let you destroy buildings again since the maps mostly took place in villages like BC2.
I like that podcast idea. I was playing Kingdom Come Deliverance the other day and when you come across a point of interest you get a button prompt and can read a historical entry about Medieval burial customs or how Monastic Life was and there's hundreds of those types of entries ... but it'd be great if that was more of an ongoing narrator the function like listening to a medival history audio book. Also, with AI voices something like that could easily be implemented with a mod even.
That fact that back in 2007, we had the choice between using the quickly improving engine power to create awesome destruction, where you topple skyscrapers and carve holes into the very earth a-la red faction guerilla,
And the other option was realistically rendering the refraction of light glistening from a freshly squeezed pair of sweaty balls,
Finding out the video game market took the SECOND choice? Completely and utterly despicable if you ask me.
RDR2 illustrated that to a T, which had me questioning all the hype.
Thing is, even the AAA games coming out recently that have been doing really well recently haven't been graphical powerhouses.
Elden Ring looked spectacular because of its scale and art direction, not an insane polygon count. Same for the recent legend of zelda titles. You can find examples of this without even touching the indie game space which is filled with amazing games with stylised graphics that place their development emphasis on art design and gameplay or story rather than making sure that the main character's eyes reflect light at the exact angle they would from a light source in the room.
The breaking point for me was finding out about the rdr2 horse bollock physics which was so needlessly indulgent whilst only being noticed by anyone because news outlets mentioned it. Meanwhile the dev team were working absurd overtime and crunched to exhaustion to get it ready for release date. Anyone who can honestly tell me that nonsense was worth the time and cost to develop needs to be put on a watchlist
You're examples are ONS game every FOUR year's..in a sea of SHIT live service and broken day one nonsense, which needs a 1k graphics to run the empty soulless shell of a game
Horse balls were very important to my immersion of the game actually(I haven't played it)
Tears of the Kingdom is exactly what we need more of. Nintendo are advancing in how 3D games can function, while running it on practically ancient hardware.
@Andrew Nesterov He never said ER looked better than RDR2, only that ER looked amazing, without needing horse-balls physics. You, on the other hand, are saying that fromsoft don't care about the details? Maybe not the *graphical fidelity* ones, but they do care too
Elden Ring isn't really a great example to bring up when their developer has always been a bit behind in terms of "polygon count," as long as they can fulfill their core vision.
Zelda of course works because they do the whole "stylized graphics" thing more and more, as you said.
Personally though I thought Red Dead Redemption 2 was an excellent game where having that level of graphical fidelity actually was good for immersion. But they clearly had the resources and time to develop an actual "game" in addition to the graphics, which is where many AAA studios fall apart.
If a developer has to make a trade-off between graphical fidelity and actual gameplay, I will choose gameplay pretty much every time.
I actually think the drive to more realistic graphics is that graphics are the one 'objective' way to show improvement and its often 'easier' then just making a good game
And most importantly, it's faster and easier to sell and get money back from investment by advertising how pretty the game looks.
Correct. It's the only thing that AAA games can point at and call it "theirs". Long gone are the times where they were the spearheads of the industry. Presentation aside they have been eclipsed by indie games in every other aspect. And even there they are on a shaky leg. So that's why their marketing is all about bombast. It's all they have. And they successfully brainwashed the masses into buying into that lie. These days to their own detriment because they are no longer capable of actually delivering the one thing they told everyone only they could deliver.
UE5 is just another step towards the game industry imploding on itself.
Eventually it will get to the point where its 100% untenable to use meatbags and it will be all AI doing graphical work on games.
And it STILL won't cause game prices to drop because they're greedy fucking parasites.
@@simplysmiley4670 Yup. Easier to show flashy graphics. Improved AI? Not so much.
@@simplysmiley4670 the braindead consumer only looks at the outside and not the content
This is the reason gaming peaked on the PS2. Perfect level of power vs. price point to develop on it, full range of graphics from the blindingly cinematic Colossus to the cartoony Katamari and just as much variety of gameplay.
This is exactly why I love what Nintendo did with tears of the kingdom. The graphics are focused on style over realism and so it runs half decently, and the developers could instead create an absolutely nuts physics and crafting system that runs perfectly. Say what you will about frame rates, but that game never actually glitches out or crashes
The idea of quadrillion enemies at once is so simple but brilliant you wonder why nobody has tried that in AAA.
Show in a trailer a literally zombie tsunami and explosions of zombies and similar stuff and you got the shiniest keys in the market to dangle.
It seems like the first and only instance where somebody advertised this was Pikmin on the gamecube.
Left 4 Dead 2's marketing leaned fairly heavily on the 'hordes of zombies' aspect, iirc
days gone?
Dynasty Warriors and it's spinoffs would like to have a word with you...
There is something special about seeing this video right after finishing a 1 hour long dive into an insane Doom mod that was released recently and is absolutely bonkers.
myhouse.pk3?
@@Andy_ARBS Exactly. Shit is wild
The moment I heard the premise, I stop the vid and play it for myself. Can confirm it blows my mind so much even without knowing much of Doom modding history/tech.
I am not into Doom myself but i saw a youtube vid on it and it pulled me in. The .wad title and the house is just too weird. What a concept.
7:12 reminds me of The Long Drive where the radio is completely optional, but there's a LOT of it and turning it on, listening to some radio host speaking in a language I don't understand was actually incredibly immersive and one of my favourite things about the game.
This channel is absolutely amazing. You reminded me of grey goo too! Absolutely subbing.
Damn, those alternatives mentioned really opened my eyes on the matter.
I never really thought about what AAA could take advantage in place of it that only they can do.
If we wanna go all in on spectacle then we could also go big. A massive city where you have to loot and improvise weapons for 5 minutes before godzilla shows up and hopefully you stiched together a mech out of park benches and housewives capable of beating godzilla. repeat 12 times and slap a 40 bucks price on the front
@@BBP-OMOsounds like edf
Two things have happened since the this video was produced:
- The sales numbers for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have come out and it sold 10 million units in just 3 days. Proving that you don't need hyper-realistic graphics to sell a game.
- The trailer for Mortal Kombat 1 dropped. And it leans very heavily on the graphics and gore.
Zelda's going to be GOTY on most lists. Direct butthurt Devs and AAA CEOs here
10 millions??? That's incredible!
And Tears of the Kingdom is a crazy physics sandbox, just like Yahtzee suggested.
Didn't they say there won't be any MK anymore. Sh*t game.
Also Switch numbers overall proves that huge majority of players *do not care* about graphics. Do not care high fidelity. They care about gaming. Problem is that part of PC gaming audience - gamers, journalists and CEOs - have been strongly allured by that.
This is probably the strongest episode of Extra Punctuation I've ever seen to the point i just feel emotional.
Where the fuck did we go wrong?
I remember yatze talking about this before, and i used to agree. Now, with the AI monster barring down on us and every corpo creative somewhere between uneasy and terrified that some bean counter is going to one day decide thier job can be done by GTP-Chat's little sister, I'm not so worried about huge resources being put into AAA games. Either one of two things is going to happen. 1. Game scope ballons so astronomically that it becomes a kind of new quality all of its own, or 2. More resources can be put towards making AAA better in ways other than the ones Yatze highlights here. In practice, i think devs will do both to greator or lesser degrees.
There's something I rarely see mentioned in this discussion:
Higher-fidelity graphics = lower visual clarity.
My bedroom's a mess and sometimes if I drop something amongst the mess, it feels like it's lost forever, like the second it's out of sight it's literally disappeared... and the more realistic videogames become, the closer they get to being the visual equivalent of this effect.
it's why I was great at cod 4, but am absolutely pants at the latest cod games - i just can't distinguish which pixel is sniping me in the seconds between spawn and death
Agreed, especially when the game has realistic shading and everything is covered in shadows. Good example of it is RE4 original vs remake, interactive objects are distinguishable at the first sight, in the remake not so much
Clean your room
Probably the best example of this that I've seen is the art direction in Magic: The Gathering. Older cards tended to make use of simpler art styles and contrasting colors to make the art pop. These days the art is a lot more standardized and realistic in style, which makes most of it it look like a samey, smudgy mess because it's viewed on a frame way too small for the intended resolution.
Most of the recent games are kind of unpleasant to me for this reason. I prefer the PS3 era games because they just look cleaner. I don't have to strain my eyes to understand what is happening.
The thing that drives me nuts about most photo-realistic games is the generic and/or bad art design. Despite not being an anime fan, I find anime inspired games a lot more interesting because it feels like someone actually put a bit of thought into how things look, with something like Persona 5 blowing me out the water with the obvious abundance of thought that went into it.
Then you look at menus of upcoming stuff like Suicide Squad and it feels like zero thought was put into anything.
ya sure you're not an anime fan? :P
Art direction and style will always endure longer than photo-realistic graphics of the day.
I can appreciate photo-realistic graphics of course to an extent - they can help to immerse me. But unless they are partnered with a proper game, they are a waste of my time.
Never stop doing what you do, Yahtzee.
I played the original versions of GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas on PC last year and I had an utter blast getting them all to 100% for the first time in years.
They might not have cutting edge graphics, but they all still have their charm, in their own way, and more importantly, they were fun to play.
I blame Crisis for this. It wasn’t the game that started it all, far from it, but I think it left a mark on a generation. People from that time remember it acting as a benchmark for years to come from how demanding it was to give such high graphics. It almost became a badge of pride. It’s hard to back down from that after creating a rod like that for yourself in the realistic graphics space.
Crysis had a good physics engine with destructible environment. Now games don't have any form of destruction or interactivity at all
@@histhoryk2648 Yeah, I don't blame Crysis. I blame gamers' reaction to Crysis. "PC Gaming Dick-Slurp All-Stars", as it were.
@@sportsjefe That's sort of the point. The gaming industry and press had built up such a culture of graphics it all came out as an explosion around that particular game. It isn't this single game's fault, heck since the 8-bit era onwards this has been a thing, but I feel like it captured and created a cultural mark on realistic graphics well passed the initial 3dification.
Going back through and watching the original gameplay trailer graphics aren't pushed but rewatching reviews at the time graphics (and how good they are) features heavy.
I've been playing so much Shadows of Doubt recently and the fact that it even fucking works is astounding to me.
600 individual people with lives and daily routines, every room in every building enterable, full of random stuff to *ahem* acquire, and honestly the graphics look perfectly fine for what it is.
It's just Oblivion's radiant AI on steroids and I love it for that.
It's genuinely the kind of game I've been waiting for ever since I played GTA 3 and tried following an NPC back to their house, only to find they just walked in circles forever much to my childish disappointment.
All this talk of "living worlds" over the years and honestly, Shadows of Doubt is the fist game I've come across where that isn't just some marketing buzz-term.
Just got sod yesterday as well and im hooked. Its so cool to see a game with an actual interesting premise that delivers a unique and immersive experience. All the triple A studios need to get their heads out of their ass and look at games like this to see what the medium is actually capable of
I think this entire video sells why Tears of the Kingdom, despite the hardware limitations and graphical limitations, will be Game of the Year in most peoples' minds for sure. It takes Idea #2 to the insane extreme with no insane Bethesda jank, no insane crashes or bugs, it all just WORKS and I honestly believe that the stylized look will age SO much better than its competition.
There was a HALO game set on Earth (ODST) which had a really interesting narrative structure (Graphics were decent but nothing exceptional) the main part of the game was just the player slinking about the city at night with Covenant forces but here and there you played different characters in a series of flashbacks that progressively were set closer and closer to the present time (game takes place over the course of 24 hours). You also had optional audio stations that played back the narrative of a young civilian as she tried to find her family and flee the city.
i looove the idea of a comfy video game that's perfect to play while listening to something else to come with its own diagetic podcast. we finally found the type of game where audio logs would actually be a perfect addition
Everything (yes, that’s the name of the game) is the closest I’ve found to something like that
Elite: Dangerous explorations + scifi podcast = 😍
Truck sims like euro truck simulator or hunting games like the hunter classic come to mind.
The biggest problem I have with the ultra realistic graphics is focused around lighting. Back in the day you would go into a room with 3 or 4 key features and was always drawn to the 1 with the light source, and in modern games everything is so well lit that you enter a room and are overwhelmed with stuff, yet all of it is pointless and doesn't do anything except for that one part that used to be the well lit area that progresses, so instead of getting on with the game you're in a room not knowing where to go until someone shouts you over or the game assumes that you've come across a sudden case of brain damage and need to press the idiot button for an adult to come and hold your hand. I always want innovation and would like things to advance from the tricks of 20 years ago but the new methods should add to the experience and make things feel more free-flowing and not replace the old methods to make them redundant or more confusing.
TL;DR new lighting systems are stupid and makes game design less innovative because they're not working on newer ways to convey information but instead make the tried and tested methods worse.
I don't think that's a problem of lighting improvements, it's a problem of developers being lazier about "showing, not telling" when it comes to visual design.
You can make something look beautiful with modern lighting and shadows, without making it so difficult to read or comprehend.
Modern games though often ignore actually innovating in this space, and instead just add a million map markers and hints to make things idiot-proof.
All the while ensuring people like me will never be able to stay immersed.
@@echomjp For the most part I agree, it shouldn't be difficult to present the player with information for them to grasp instantly and I don't think it's laziness. I think it comes down to a lack of communication between parts of the design team and the lighting artists, and sometimes the storyboard artists too, especially in more open games where the player has more options for content at one time.
Some games hit the nail on the head such as Breath of the Wild (and I'm sure TOTK too but I've not played that yet) where from each landmark you can spot a bunch of stuff to explore. Dark Souls has item descriptions and NPCs that'll say something in passing that'll be important 20 hours later as you stumble across it. Silent Hill has the map that's used like a checklist of rooms to tick off and old boomer shooters like Doom used the breadcrumb trail of dead bodies to let you know where you've already been, or more obscure The Getaway that has no UI or map stuff at all and tells the player where to go based on where the car's indicators are blinking and you don't need to be an expert in navigating London to understand that.
Compare that to Spider-Man PS4 where your map is filled with clutter as the world is trying to be too realistic and we're supposed to go "wow, this is just like real New York" without thinking of the practicality of "go to objective here" if we as the player are not from New York ourselves. It would make sense for Spider-Man to know where to go, being a local, not us. And to circle that back around into lighting, if it's an open world with a day/night cycle then everything has to be lit the same meaning nothing stands out.
Sorry for the long reply.
5:13 The battle of a thousand heartless remains one of the most memorable moments of the Kingdom Hearts series, more stuff in that vein would rule.
Man, the physics point here makes me want to cry. Red Faction Guerilla was the absolute pinnacle of the 7th gen, and nothing has ever made me quite so happy since.
In a perfect world, all of this new tech would be used to make the most bonkers Karamari game possible.
Another thing I'd like to see more with the better hardware is stylization. We see it already with games like Hi Fi Rush and many *many* Japanese/Chinese games (real time 3D anime lookin real good nowadays). Like it was mentioned in the video, Wind Waker still looks good today BECAUSE it wasn't trying to be realistic. Imagine a new Spider-man game rendered using the same rendering style as Into The Spider-verse
A Across Spider-Verse style game for Spider Man would make me go nuts...
There is potential and I believe in that.
Don't have to imagine, they have a cel shaded costume in both games for Spider-Man and Miles.
@@Degalon Not nearly good enough when you could have the entire game in that style.
I'd love to see a comic-book looking Spider-Man game.
A Spider Man game styled after Hi Fi Rush tho...
The podcast one is great, I loved just driving around in Los Santos with the radio talkshows, they were my favorites.
I really like the podcast idea where you pay various talents (including those already popular on CZcams and Twitch, or humorous celebrities), to play radio hosts in your fictional game world.
I really enjoyed those radio stations in games like Grand Theft Auto, with their hilarious commercials as well.
I can see that being a great addition to a more stylized power-wash/ship-breakers game.
The timing for this vid could not have been more perfect, as TotK 's release shows just how far you can get by not prioritizing graphics and instead focusing on innovating and pushing boundaries with the physics engine and gameplay. As a result the devs created an AAA title with a gameplay loop better than what other companies could only hope to achieve! And all of this on a piece of underpowered hardware that's 7 years old. No modern top-of-the-line tech required.
What is TotK?
@@gelu_4499 Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
@@gelu_4499 Tears of the Kingdom, the new Zelda.
Which runs at 20fps 😅
@@DawnwalkerUK on 6-year-old hardware. Fantastic game crippled by an exclusive launch on outdated and underpowered hardware. Such is the Nintendo way...
Honestly my response to realistic graphics has been the same for years.
If I want realism, I'll look out the window.
As an artist, that's exactly what I say to anyone complaining about unrealistic proportions.
I actually get both sides of the argument. Realistic graphics can be a great way to create mood for your experience. Not everyone's cup of tea. But if you want realism and simultaneously go slay a bunch of naughty peasants with a halberd, then sucks for you cos nobody's made that game yet. Where was I?
At least we're largely over the "Realism Is Brown" phase.
Remember to touch some grass
One of the most memorable gaming experiences I've had was in Legend of Grimrock 2. I forget the details, but there was this one point in the game where you go into this portal and you're teleported into this massive desert that was absolutely crawling with zombies. There were so many that at first I thought it must be some kind of backdrop, but no, every one of those zombies was an individual enemy that you had to fight. Clearing out that area was crazy. So yeah, idea 1 is a very good one, and I wish more games did it.
I'm sick of every game I play having prestine ground textures and foliage and whatnot right in front of you, but then 20 paces in front of you it just abruptly switches to the lower quality assets. Creating this distracting, ever-present seam in the terrain that moves when you do drawing attention to itself.
Like id rather just forgo the fancy grass entirely and have the "bad" texture the whole way so it'd be more consistent.
Been saying this since like 2014. I don't want better-looking games. I want better games.
Like, I also can't believe it helps sales either. With the rising costs of living and (throughly unjustified) increase in the base price of games to 70 dollars, realizing I need to swap my 3 year old video card to have a semblance of normal experience in the newest games will leave me very unlikely to be open to spending anything close to that full asking price to obtain said game.
Part of why I like Indies is that they are never really over $20 (even the high profile ones on sale). I might actually pick up more AAA games if they had some unique offerings for around $30.
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 Yeah the only way I ever buy a triple A game these days is either I'm really really really looking forward to it and save money specifically for it (and the last time I did that, it was when Elden Ring came out) or I just... wait for a sale. I recently picked up Jedi Fallen Order, which I consider a pretty new game, for like 5 dollars (converted from my local currency)
it does, it really does. if a big game comes out with dated graphics it'll get hate and the casual crowd won't buy it. people can make youtube videos about this till the cows come home, but the biggest and best graphics *sell.* Mainstream lowest common denominator audiences dont want stylized games, they want realistic games. No matter how much money, crunch, bloat, is put into making hyper-realistic graphics, it will always make more profit than any other art style.
@@nonuvurbeeznus795 It's like new consoles coming out. Nobody wants to be left behind. So people "invest" for the latest greatest.
And while we're at it, bring back AI directors like the one we saw in the Left 4 Dead series.
So you can run around smashing fully-destructible environments, wonder where the bajillion monsters went, and immediately drop a brick between the pants because *there they are.*
5:15 - i vaguely remember the advertising for one of the older gears of war games emphasizing the number of enemies they could render at once, with like a whole bunch of locusts marching. i have no idea what came of that. i think a few other games did it, too?
The analogy between AAA Game Publishers and Cold War era superpowers is surprisingly accurate
Mutually Assured *Distraction* ? :-D
It's the hardware industry being hand in glove with AAA game dev. Flashy graphics sell expensive games and hardware to a premium paying market.
A suggestion for utilizing all that power in new hardware that you didn't list but I think slots in nicely is "audio".
It sounds weird at first but if raytracing cores were repurposed for realistic audio bounces and passing through objects, then suddenly we have something that could make about a thousand different types of games more intense.
Horror? Check
Stealth Action? Check
Regular Action? Check
Racing Games? Throw in the program that realistically models car engines and Double Check
Thank you for writing this so that I didn't have to. Why should someone walking one floor above me in a parking garage sound the same as someone walking one floor above me in a townhome?
Returnal does this in the PC version, pretty neat
There is already a research paper or two abt this actually. Let's hope Dolby or any major sound hardware company jump on it
Another idea would be turning spectacle into gameplay, ie make cinematic events more hands on than the usual QTE "DDR: Staying Alive Edition" that it generally devolves into. We see some of that in games like Devil May Cry, Asura's Wrath and, based on the Eikon gameplay videos, FF16.
One of my favorite parts of RDR 1 and 2 is it's use of the euphoria engine, were it's amplifying a badass moment, making fights feel more real, or just something to mess around with and experiment with. That's an example of the type of realism I enjoy in games.
In general the realism of RDR 2 really does add to the experience. The environments and views are so beautiful, just looking at them is enjoyable. Not every game has to be like that, but that rock star managed to do this with RDR 2 is great.
But I'm happy to know that generative AI will give the developers of future hyperrealistic games considerable relief.
Insufferable AAA Industry Apoligists: "BuT GaEmS CoSt ToO MuCh ToO MaEk!!!"
Those of us with brains: THIS IS WHY!!!
Though to be fair, graphics are easier to sell then a game nowadays. And people don't seem to learn at all that the pretty graphics in the trailer don't mean the game will be worth the pre-order, or even on a discount.
They also tend to only build a game to run on the newest shiniest graphic card rather than those cards that most can afford. I don't care how the 69XX RTX card handles the fucking game, just let me play it on my older "handy behind the K-Mart" card that came out two years ago.
To be honest, it's not that games costing more is the issue, it's that they don't justify the cost. If $70 led to a notable increase in the quality of games, I wouldn't mind, but they don't. 2023 alone has had some of the worst PC ports for a lot of games that cost $70, cough cough Star Wars CPU Survivor. And now there's stiff competition from the indie scene that not only have cheaper and lower resource-intensive games, they also have excellent game design, are more innovative, more fun to play, and way better optimized.
Idea Number Five: Instead of chasing realistic graphics, let developers chase what they'd genuinely have fun with. When you're looking at it, that's how a lot of earlier studios started out; people made the things they thought they would enjoy, and it was Great.
This is the kind of thing that I expect corner-cutting game engines like UE5 to solve. Let the game developer spend their time more wisely working on the bones of the game and the actual gameplay. Let the game engine do the visual scut-work.
Though the big caveat here is that file size optimization is gonna take a backseat. Meshes, textures, you name it. Update patches are gonna explode. I think the day will come very soon that we have 1TB+ games. It's nice that the game engine can make such a massive game run on hardware that mere mortals can afford, but you also gotta pour one out for our storage drives.
I would love to see AI/machine learning bulk content generation come in clutch here. Allowing a game engine to make up certain assets on the fly is gonna be sorely needed for reducing file sizes. "Make some grass textures" and it makes some basic grass textures. "Scatter some rocks and random ground clutter here" and it fills it in with mesh data. All temp files that can easily disappear and be remade when you open the game, so they're not clogging up our SSD. Then the game developers can make their big, epic, cinematic monstrosities without killing users' data caps every single patch.
@Pirojf Mifhghek 100% percent. I wanna live in a world where Game Developers get to have fun making games, but also have more than one game on my console at a time, lmao
Fun isn't allowed
It's bit harder to accomplish now, simply because the focus has changed. Back then, the people making games were people who made games _about_ the things they had learned about in their studies, or their careers, or even just their hobbies. A greater percentage of game devs today are people who went to school _to be game devs_ so the drive and source of that inspiration is very different and often more narrow.
Of course, people still have hobbies and passionate interests, and at least some likely still have other professional experiences, but it's a massive shift in the overall workforce and expectations on what games are made, and why. And that's all assuming the devs are the ones driving development choices rather than the management who views game creation as an industrial process driven by market forces.
@@JosephDavies Most definitely. Game designers really need to go back to their roots more.
I think the latest Zelda selling like gangbusters is a solid reminder to the industry that what people want most in their games is _a game._ Hire a crapton of puzzle builders and you're 80% of the way towards making a solid ass game. And that's always been the soul of classic Nintendo games like Zelda, Mario, and Metroid, going all the way back to the beginning. It ain't about the cinematics.
Though I bet most AAA studio execs are probably scratching their heads right now thinking "damn, if only we had that Zorldo IP we'd be selling millions of copies too!" and completely missing the point.
yahtzee i wrote a paper on this topic using Oblivion as my major example and you more effectively made the point I did in that whole essay with just two sentences about the characters looking like ham
Realistic graphics should be a conscious choice, not necessity. I think photorealistic visuals absolutely enhance some games, for example The Last Of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War or Red Dead Redemption 2. Not every game needs this though. I wish we had more triple-A games with unique art styles. Stuff like Dishonored, Sea of Thieves or Deathloop. There are so many interesting ideas that devs can experiment with to make their games unique! I think that fixation on realistic graphics is a temporary fad. We're basically living in the first decade when truly realistic visuals are even possible, so game studios and publishers obviously want to show off the new technical improvements. I predict that in 10 years, when photorealistic graphics have been perfected and they are no longer impressive, a lot of developers will try to mix things up. We're seeing a similar trend with the CG movies. When Toy Story came out, a lot of studios started making those semi-realistic 3D animations that have a lot of details, you can see single hairs (like in The Incredibles 2) on people's heads etc. Sure, it's impressive but it's also a massive drain on resources that could be used more effectively + people are getting sick of seeing the same quasi-realistic style everywhere. This is why we're getting more movies like Into the Spider-Verse or Puss in Boots 2 - movies that take more liberties with the art direction and style. And I'm all for it.
I find this funny that this came out the day after Tears of the Kingdom was announced to have 10 million sales in 3 days basically adhering to the main idea of this video where a game on a 7 year old handheld that looks good artistically but not technically while being mostly focused on physics based sandboxing
True, but it's also a continuation of one of the most beloved and well-established video games IP's out there - hardly a statement of how 'originality' sells.
The worst part is that, despite the set dressing, a lot of modern AAA games are stuck in the PS3/360 era of complexity. Little to no advancements in persistent destructible environments, NPC AI, world/physics interactivity, etc. And with the wild goose chase that is ray tracing, you need a render farm to play freaking Minecraft at a playable framerate...
I'd say it's gone backwards since then, I recently played Halo 3 for the first time and was amazed by the size of the set pieces, it's nearly 2 decades since then and now every other AAA game has the player having to squeeze through a small crevice for a hidden loading screen into a small room with pretty foliage.
it isnt a wild goose chase, not at all. it's the next step in graphics. Either way, you think that something with a fully destructible environment is gonna do well without raytracing, or a game with great water physics but no refraction? Raytracing IS the next step, and we are slowly but surely moving towards it, only a few games now have it (Cyberpunk PT mode, portal RTX, Half-life Raytraced mod) but soon...
I know he hated it, but the "loads of enemies" point is perfectly demonstrated in Days Gone. The horde mechanic in that game was terrifyingly awesome.
yeah but the audio in that game was so bad
please tell me you've played left 4 dead
I'm totally with you.
What I'm mostly missing now is the lack of random extra modes like some random vs multiplayer.
But I suppose you can't just implement that now when everything has to look so pristine.
There's also more simple things such as more types of enemies which would take a whole lot less time to create if making new models and animations wouldn't be demanded to have literally thousands of times the fidelity that early 3D games had.
I am now expecting Starstruck Vagabond to have a secret radio that plays Slightly Something Else non-stop now.
I could live with 360/PS3 era graphics forever. Can look realistic enough, but also can be incredibly stylized.
everything looked too muddy and grey for most of that era imo
@@jgal7979 ikr, I've been playing a bunch of games from that era that I missed out on and the games at the end of that period that start to have an actual color palette look damn good for their time. Good example is going from GoW 2 to 3.
@@jgal7979 Yeah, but I'd say a lot of that was more the style of the time than an issue with the hardware itself.
@@jgal7979 It was just style of that time, but it was still a golden age in gaming
This makes me feel impossibly retro, in that I started arguing this around 2001 that the pursuit of better graphics in MMOs post-EverQuest drastically cut back the gameplay options that made Ultimate Online so much fun.
This is scary, I've recently been thinking about this EXACT topic and here comes Yatzhee talking about it.
Looking at the insanely advanced (especially for the time) A.I. for F.E.A.R made me wonder what we'd be capable of if we toned down the graphics and just went ballistic with an A.I. system. Just imagining the Nemesis System without the need to worry about rendering realistic graphics.