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[The artful mincer]

It's not just purely about the graphics. The graphics being as good as they are, with what the game has on offer, is what makes it so impressive

The game is literally bigger than both of those games combined.

It has everything they offer and then more.

Gotta look at the bigger picture here.

Flying vehicles, way larger scale battles, actual towns and cities (Does Shadows even have towns?), physics, more impressive crowds, you can destroy entire towns and cities from above,

fuck it here just look at this

You could add Devil May Cry, Dynasty Warriors, Witcher 3, Spiderman and Shadow of the Coloussus to that picture and I'm not even kidding.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

Film grain is cancer.

Another "let's implement physical defects of film industry into games to enrage players!"

CA, Film Grain, Vingette, Radial Blur, piss filter etc. Even Ai agrees:

"human vision" - First Person Perspective is all about seeing the world through eyes of the character not some fucking old school camera. For third person we can debate but I doubt they had film cameras in medieval fantasy setting.

Dof and motion blur are only effects I can tolerate (depending on how well they are implemented), and those are actually part of the human vision.

What you said is opinion, what I said is fact. Artistic intent is artistic intent.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

ehhhhh, tasteful grain is artistic, this game's case is way too exaggerated, they wouldn't have rushed their asses to add a toggle for launch if the feedback was positive.

Two things can be true at once...

 

[Bojji]

Fortunately for you they are all slowly dying out. Unfortunate for me, because I enjoyed most of these effects when done right artistically during the late PS3/Early PS4 times. And the key term here is 'when done right' because unfortunately for me, too many devs screwed up and utilized them incorrectly, which has lead us to where we are today, PC gamers turning all of it off and dictating the terms of how most games should look.

All this should be optional, both for fans of those effects and antifans. Everyone would be happy.

Yet we still have games with forced film grain for example (RE9), even on PC.

True, but that doesn't stop Hellblade 2 from being the best looking game? ( , two things can be true at once...

What you said is opinion, what I said is fact. Artistic intent is just that...

Artistic intent... ok. But artists are often morons it seems, many times turning off shit like that improves how the game looks, and they are just doing copy-paste from other games even if those effects doesn't have any fucking sense in their games. For example I can understand chromatic aberration in Alien Isolation - totally suits the game with 80s asthetics. But for something like BloodBorne? Nah...

Radial blur is probably the worst offender, it destroys image quality around the edges in all Ubisoft games:

And those artists think this looks good?

 

[March Climber]

All this should be optional, both for fans of those effects and antifans. Everyone would be happy.

The issue is that 9 times out of 10 they are not optional for console, thus PC gamers dictate the terms because these things should be optional from their point of view, and that's also where some devs get data from to see how many people are turning these things off.

The more that do, the less devs that bother using them in the first place, thus the less unique and filmic non-stylized games will look.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

All this should be optional, both for fans of those effects and antifans. Everyone would be happy.

Yet we still have games with forced film grain for example (RE9), even on PC.



Artistic intent... ok. But artists are often morons it seems, many times turning off shit like that improves how the game looks, and they are just doing copy-paste from other games even if those effects doesn't have any fucking sense in their games. For example I can understand chromatic aberration in Alien Isolation - totally suits the game with 80s asthetics. But for something like BloodBorne? Nah...

Radial blur is probably the worst offender, it destroys image quality around the edges in all Ubisoft games:

And those artists think this looks good?

Two things can be true at once, Your opinion isn't fact, If it is the artistic intent, then it's artistic intent. Are some effects horribly implemented OR intrusive? Yes.

 

[Bojji]

The issue is that 9 times out of 10 they are not optional for console, thus PC gamers dictate the terms because these things should be optional from their point of view, and that's also where some devs get data from to see how many people are turning these things off.

The more that do, the less devs that bother using them in the first place, thus the less unique and filmic non-stylized games will look.

To be honest I don't see it. Most modern games are still bombarded by those effects.

And what's so hard about adding those options to consoles? Those effects make some people feel bad physically, it should be in accessibility options in every game (or even console level settings).

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

To be honest I don't see it. Most modern games are still bombarded by those effects.

And what's so hard about adding those options to consoles? Those effects make some people feel bad physically, it should be in accessibility options in every game (or even console level settings).

When artists implement certain effects they expect for everyone to get the same experience, kind of like why video equipment is calibrated by professionals to give consistent results and standards are made or how warm color filters are put over certain movies to give a certain vibe. Having a cool color temperature vs a warm color temperature can change to whole vibe and intention in something, the problem is that sometimes certain effects are too intrusive and can cause health issues, these effect toggles should be put under accessibility options.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

The more that do, the less devs that bother using them in the first place, thus the less unique and filmic non-stylized games will look.

This.

 

[March Climber]

To be honest I don't see it. Most modern games are still bombarded by those effects.

That's...not fully true. I'm not saying it's completely gone, I'm saying there have been less and less games using those effects. The loss of certain effects is why gamers keep saying 'games today don't look as good' because the devs are implementing other things to compensate or simply not including the post-processing effects at all that used to be in games of last gen...this stuff:

I think gaming is slowly going through what movies have been going through in the past decade, which is that presentation on the AAA side is looking cleaner, more saturated, and sharper, to the point where things are looking too clean and too 'studio-like'. There have been talks and videos showcasing this issue, and this is one of them:



I still remember how PC players here and elsewhere were convinced in multiple threads (including this one) that their own super saturated, all effects turned off-version of Starfield was the better looking game, and they saw no issue at all with how bad that change looked artistically. That is worrying to me.

And what's so hard about adding those options to consoles? Those effects make some people feel bad physically, it should be in accessibility options in every game (or even console level settings).

I agree that consoles should have more options. People still use the odd reasoning of console players being too confused about too many setting toggles. Idk.

 

[The artful mincer]

Their impressions are very, very positive, even with PSSR1 (PSSR2 is due out by launch).


Starting to think this game might be a legitimate GOTY contender.

This video shows why the 60fps crowd can go fuck themselves.

We see with absolute clarity that it's the ambitious GAMEPLAY sections featuring dozens of dynamic NPCS and huge battles that cause the 60fps to dip.

The same sections have no problem holding rock solid 30 or 40fps with even higher graphics settings and we wonder why this generation only feels like a minor upgrade.

Congratulations 60fps fanboys your obsession with "Muh smoothness" held back entire generation.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

This video shows why the 60fps crowd can go fuck themselves.

We see with absolute clarity that it's the ambitious GAMEPLAY sections featuring dozens of dynamic NPCS and huge battles that cause the 60fps to dip.

The same sections have no problem holding rock solid 30 or 40fps with even higher graphics settings and we wonder why this generation only feels like a minor upgrade.

Congratulations 60fps fanboys your obsession with "Muh smoothness" held back entire generation.

TLOU 2 was 30fps until the PS5 patch...

 

[March Climber]

This video shows why the 60fps crowd can go fuck themselves.

We see with absolute clarity that it's the ambitious GAMEPLAY sections featuring dozens of dynamic NPCS and huge battles that cause the 60fps to dip.

The same sections have no problem holding rock solid 30 or 40fps with even higher graphics settings and we wonder why this generation only feels like a minor upgrade.

Congratulations 60fps fanboys your obsession with "Muh smoothness" held back entire generation.

The battle for 60fps will be fully worth it on next gen consoles (or mid-next gen). You will see.

 

[Killer8]

Forza Horizon 6: We forgot to add atmosphere Edition. I've never seen a game this bland before.

Imagine having 12 teraflops of power and the power of ray-tracing but still getting absolutely mogged by the visual charisma of a nearly 20 year old game:

 

[Bojji]

That's...not fully true. I'm not saying it's completely gone, I'm saying there have been less and less games using those effects. The loss of certain effects is why gamers keep saying 'games today don't look as good' because the devs are implementing other things to compensate or simply not including the post-processing effects at all that used to be in games of last gen...this stuff:




I think gaming is slowly going through what movies have been going through in the past decade, which is that presentation on the AAA side is looking cleaner, more saturated, and sharper, to the point where things are looking too clean and too 'studio-like'. There have been talks and videos showcasing this issue, and this is one of them:



I still remember how PC players here and elsewhere were convinced in multiple threads (including this one) that their own super saturated, all effects turned off-version of Starfield was the better looking game, and they saw no issue at all with how bad that change looked artistically. That is worrying to me.


I agree that consoles should have more options. People still use the odd reasoning of console players being too confused about too many setting toggles. Idk.

God, I can't stand image quality in the order. It looks like shit to me, hahaha.

I agree about movies having this problem but movies don't have the issue of having low internal resolutions and bad anti aliasing. They can do whatever they want with pristine 4k footage (or high quality film in the 90s). And in gaming this was the problem since dawn of 3d graphics. Adding image smearing effects on top doesn't help games to look any better, in facts it can make something look like a compete mess.

With The Order my almost perfect visions turns to "where are my glasses?" Simulator.

 

[March Climber]

I agree about movies having this problem but movies don't have the issue of having low internal resolutions and bad anti aliasing. And in gaming this was the problem since dawn of 3d graphics. Adding image smearing effects on top doesn't help games to look any better, in facts it can make something look like compete mess.

This is fair, but we are one or two generations away from a time where this stuff won't matter anymore. That doesn't mean gaming should simply drop all of these effects since the graphical fidelity is now up to par. They should instead be used artistically.

God, I can't stand image quality in the order. It looks like shit to me, hahaha.

With Order my almost perfect visions turns to "where are my glasses?" Simulator.

What are your thoughts on the other games I posted?

 

[Bojji]

This is fair, but we are one or two generations away from a time where this stuff won't matter anymore. That doesn't mean gaming should simply drop all of these effects since the graphical fidelity is now up to par. They should instead be used artistically.


What are your thoughts on the other games I posted?

I think Ryse and Killzone had this under control and I actually loved all the DOF and object motion blur user there (especially in KZ2). Both also can look sharp when they need to (so you can see high quality textures). The Order is a blurry mess everywhere, same story with Hell blade 2.

And I think in the time of Killzone 2 chromatic aberration wasn't commonly used in games, I can be wrong of course...

 

[GymWolf]

God, I can't stand image quality in the order. It looks like shit to me, hahaha.

I agree about movies having this problem but movies don't have the issue of having low internal resolutions and bad anti aliasing. They can do whatever they want with pristine 4k footage (or high quality film in the 90s). And in gaming this was the problem since dawn of 3d graphics. Adding image smearing effects on top doesn't help games to look any better, in facts it can make something look like a compete mess.

With The Order my almost perfect visions turns to "where are my glasses?" Simulator.

They literally used all the tricks in the shit book:

lower res
black bars
aggressive blur
film grain
CA

The game would sing on a pc with decent IQ.

 

[SlimySnake]

Film grain is cancer.

Another "let's implement physical defects of film industry into games to enrage players!"

CA, Film Grain, Vingette, Radial Blur, piss filter etc. Even Ai agrees:

"human vision" - First Person Perspective is all about seeing the world through eyes of the character not some fucking old school camera. For third person we can debate but I doubt they had film cameras in medieval fantasy setting.

Dof and motion blur are only effects I can tolerate (depending on how well they are implemented), and those are actually part of the human vision.

human vision is boring. i have access to photorealistic graphics every day and im bored to death. i turn to movies and games for escapism, for stuff i cant get when i walk outside.

These post processing effects have been in movies for decades now. they are tried and true. im ok with devs giving people an option to remove them but i want what movie cinematographers have been doing for close to a century. give me something more than just photorealism.

i can promise you France during world war 2 in saving private ryan did not look like a ww2 documentary. Spielberg went with that look because he's a genius who knew you cant just shoot the movie on location as is.

if anything, i wish more and more hollywood cinematographers were hired by games to give them that filmic look. The order still holds up today because they shot everything like a movie. Killzone 2 also went all in on post processing effects and that resulted in a 183 ms input lag. but it looked glorious. these effects also help with the cg look we all want so bad.

give me this next gen and i will die happy.

 

[SlimySnake]

I think gaming is slowly going through what movies have been going through in the past decade, which is that presentation on the AAA side is looking cleaner, more saturated, and sharper, to the point where things are looking too clean and too 'studio-like'. There have been talks and videos showcasing this issue, and this is one of them:



I still remember how PC players here and elsewhere were convinced in multiple threads (including this one) that their own super saturated, all effects turned off-version of Starfield was the better looking game, and they saw no issue at all with how bad that change looked artistically. That is worrying to me.

This is a good post and I agree. I hate the way movies look nowadays and not just the green screened ones. Everything looks too clean. Even the most expensive ones look like a soap opera. Part of it is because they are making so much tv and movies nowadays because of streaming so a lot of is being made by talentless hacks. But that doesnt mean gaming has to go through the same thing. Games take forever to make nowadays and we finally have tech (at least in UE5) that lets them use film quality assets and lighting effects. USE THEM. We spent 40 fucking years getting to this point, lets not handicap ourselves because some people dont like them in games. make it a toggle.

Gamers understimate the power of post processing effects. When used correctly you have games like Callisto, Hellblade 2, Alan Wake 2 add depth that makes them look next gen. Remove them and its just not the same anymore.

 

[Msamy]

This video shows why the 60fps crowd can go fuck themselves.

We see with absolute clarity that it's the ambitious GAMEPLAY sections featuring dozens of dynamic NPCS and huge battles that cause the 60fps to dip.

The same sections have no problem holding rock solid 30 or 40fps with even higher graphics settings and we wonder why this generation only feels like a minor upgrade.

Congratulations 60fps fanboys your obsession with "Muh smoothness" held back entire generation.

Yes fuck them

 

[analog_future]

human vision is boring. i have access to photorealistic graphics every day and im bored to death. i turn to movies and games for escapism, for stuff i cant get when i walk outside.

These post processing effects have been in movies for decades now. they are tried and true. im ok with devs giving people an option to remove them but i want what movie cinematographers have been doing for close to a century. give me something more than just photorealism.

i can promise you France during world war 2 in saving private ryan did not look like a ww2 documentary. Spielberg went with that look because he's a genius who knew you cant just shoot the movie on location as is.

if anything, i wish more and more hollywood cinematographers were hired by games to give them that filmic look. The order still holds up today because they shot everything like a movie. Killzone 2 also went all in on post processing effects and that resulted in a 183 ms input lag. but it looked glorious. these effects also help with the cg look we all want so bad.

give me this next gen and i will die happy.

I do mostly agree with you. I have no problem with film grain/bloom/lens flare/etc... and they can often add to the immersion. The only one I pretty much never jive with is chromatic aberration. I can't even really think of any implementations in movies/film where I've liked CA (I know some of it occurs naturally in a film lens as well).

 

[BlownUpRich]

Crimson Desert is interesting. I still feel a lot of suspicion towards it, there might be a big catch with it.

What's with all these systems & mechanics they're introducing? Will its world design & gameplay systems be able to handle themselves better with convincing enough congruency? I feel like they're just putting any and everything into the game "because why not" kind of reasoning, we'll see.

 

[GermanZepp]

Guerrilla games biggest graphics competitior this gen lol

Look good and interesting. I read that is made by one dude.

 

[CowboyLou]

MLB The Show 26 is coming out either this week or next week and it still has the last gen visuals they have been pumping out since the start of this gen. That's six years now. They are charging $70 for it. Not $60. Thanks to going multiplatform, they are selling more than ever and make the top 10 or top 20 every single year on NPD charts. And yet they refuse to upgrade the visuals.

EA, voted the worst company in America, had next gen hair on day one in Fifa. They had upgraded lighting and character in Fifa by year 2. RTGI in their first College Football game. Upgraded lighting in Madden by year 4.

Konami a company that left gaming last gen, made Professional Baseball spirits on UE5 with next gen visuals. Amazing lighting, character models, and stadium details. just for the small japanese baseball market.

In this particular scenario, are we blaming the devs? The budgets? Time constraints? Is six years not enough time?

I think good devs somehow manage to get things done. Ubisoft has been gutted and literally sold to tencent. Their devs went out of their way to implement ray tracing, virtualized geometry, hair strands, and all kinds of next gen effects we dont see in Sony first party games that cost $200 million, 5-6 years to make, sold millions, and have all kinds of support for internal and external sony first party support studios that others cant even dream of. SSM had bluepoint of all devs helping make GOW Ragnorak. Who should we blame for Sony's complete lack of graphics focus this gen? Budgets? Time constraints? Project Management? For $200 million 6 year dev cycle games? nah.

Setting aside most of the "lazy devs" rhetoric (which is a relatively recent phenomenon), with gaming, there's always been the tendency to blame "management" or "the publisher" and leave it at that. You don't see this in other creative or technical fields. In other creative and technical fields it's simply accepted that certain individuals and teams are outstanding at what they do, a lot are merely average, and some are certainly below average. Many people seem to think that given enough "time" and "resources", any dev team can create outstanding results. This is ridiculous and untrue, but it's almost universal belief in gaming spheres. Once you start seeing how pervasive this attitude is, you can't unsee it. It permeates almost every space that games are discussed. The idea that devs can do no wrong and aren't to blame for mediocrity.

Yeah, having great management and relaxed timeframes will probably improve most projects, but a team of "average" devs could have literally infinite time and resources and they won't touch R* or ND quality. Obviously there's other factors like general workplace culture, geographical culture, the people you're surrounded with in general....but the way it so often gets boiled down to "bad management and not enough resources" has gotten way out of hand. There is no need to lionize game developers like this. Like you said: we know the budgets, team sizes, and development timelines of these games. And we've seen plenty of devs - often from unexpected places - do a lot more with a lot less - because they're hungry. Blaming the evil suits for everything under the sun is a fantasy. Plenty of masterpieces have been made under terrible conditions. The suits never get credit for anything going right, of course - that's always the devs!

Of course....there's virtually no way of KNOWING in any given situation why a game ended up the way it did. I'm obviously not advocating for going out and blaming devs for everything. But we shouldn't be blindly giving the benefit of the doubt in every situation either.

If anyone reading this thinks I'm targeting them specifically, I'm not. It's just something I've been noticing and thinking about for a really long time.

 

[SlimySnake]

Crimson Desert is interesting. I still feel a lot of suspicion towards it, there might be a big catch with it.

What's with all these systems & mechanics they're introducing? Will its world design & gameplay systems be able to handle themselves better with convincing enough congruency? I feel like they're just putting any and everything into the game "because why not" kind of reasoning, we'll see.

I used to watch a lot of street food videos on youtube from other countries, and the south korean ones were the first to go viral. The first thing i noticed was how they just love to add everything on their sandwiches. Here in the states, if you want an egg and cheese sandwich, you get just that. Egg and Cheese on a crossaint, bread, english muffion or bagel. Maybe some bacon or sausage and thats it. Same goes for a cheeseburger. Some patties, cheese slices, and maybe some bacon or lettuce and onions.

In these korean clips, these guys put on like five different sauces, meats, and cabbage. they fucking love cabbage. a sandwich isnt a sandwich until its the size of a Gamecube. They just love their condiments, their toppings and love to drown out the taste of the actual beef in a burger or egg in a breakfast sandwich.

It's a weird cultural thing. They just want more. In the western world, developers throw away ideas and levels they had worked on for months because they didnt think they worked in the context of pacing or didnt meet a quality bar. I dont think korean developers, especially these mobile and MMO guys give a shit. They want ketchup, mayo, mustard, ranch dressing, hot sauce, white sauce, soy sauce, bbq sauce all in one sandwich until it turns into the fucking frankensteins monster.

That said, i do appreciate these guys trying new mechanics that western developers have pretty much given up innovating on. Chinese developers are content with copying souls games. Western developers are still making copy pasta PS360 games. But these guys are trying something different. They are copying RDR2, Shadow of the Collosus, God of War, Assassins Creed, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kindgom, Witcher 3, all in one game, and then have their own unique combat system with moves we just dont see in those games they are copying.

I've never had those sandwiches but they apparently sell out in an hour. They must be doing something right.

 

[SlimySnake]

Setting aside most of the "lazy devs" rhetoric (which is a relatively recent phenomenon), with gaming, there's always been the tendency to blame "management" or "the publisher" and leave it at that. You don't see this in other creative or technical fields. In other creative and technical fields it's simply accepted that certain individuals and teams are outstanding at what they do, a lot are merely average, and some are certainly below average. Many people seem to think that given enough "time" and "resources", any dev team can create outstanding results. This is ridiculous and untrue, but it's almost universal belief in gaming spheres. Once you start seeing how pervasive this attitude is, you can't unsee it. It permeates almost every space that games are discussed. The idea that devs can do no wrong and aren't to blame for mediocrity.

Yeah, having great management and relaxed timeframes will probably improve most projects, but a team of "average" devs could have literally infinite time and resources and they won't touch R* or ND quality. Obviously there's other factors like general workplace culture, geographical culture, the people you're surrounded with in general....but the way it so often gets boiled down to "bad management and not enough resources" has gotten way out of hand. There is no need to lionize game developers like this. Like you said: we know the budgets, team sizes, and development timelines of these games. And we've seen plenty of devs - often from unexpected places - do a lot more with a lot less - because they're hungry. Blaming the evil suits for everything under the sun is a fantasy. Plenty of masterpieces have been made under terrible conditions. The suits never get credit for anything going right, of course - that's always the devs!

Of course....there's virtually no way of KNOWING in any given situation why a game ended up the way it did. I'm obviously not advocating for going out and blaming devs for everything. But we shouldn't be blindly giving the benefit of the doubt in every situation either.

If anyone reading this thinks I'm targeting them specifically, I'm not. It's just something I've been noticing and thinking about for a really long time.

Definitely a video game thing. Probably has to do with fanboyism. People love these studios. Meanwhile in the movie business, if ridley scott makes a bad movie, people blame him and not the movie studio that funded it despite several of his movies becoming cult hits after the directors cut release. If anything, movie execs butcher movies all the time, but people mostly just trash the directors.

In this particular scenario, we are blaming the publisher and the leadership. It's not like devs are free to float around and choose to add a new physics system or rebuild the lighting from scratch or create whatever new assets they want. These companies are structured, budgeted, managed, and staffed so that devs are working on very specific tasks assigned directly from management. This goes double on something licensed (and therefore very tightly structured) like MLB The Show.


It has quite literally nothing to do with the devs being "lazy" and instead has everything to do with the devs completing exactly what's asked of them by management (who are in turn answering to the publisher).

But i pointed out other devs who have worse leadership than Sony who were able to get games out every year and still invest in incrementally improving tech.

And this isnt the first time we have had a generational leap. We are in our 9th generation. Every single sports studio has been able to upgrade their engine for the past 30+ years with each generation. Some take longer than others, but they eventually get there. This particular studio is the exception in the sports genre.

You said time and budget. Well, is 6 years not enough? They gave Kojima 6 years to make Death Stranding 2. They gave Sucker Punch 5+ years to make Ghost 2. They gave Insomniac 5 years and $300 million to make Spiderman 2. I dont think Sony the publisher is as evil as you are making it out to be. We have quotes from their own developers saying they took the easy way out. Lets just take their word for it instead of assuming Sony didnt give them the time or the budget.

 

[CowboyLou]

Definitely a video game thing. Probably has to do with fanboyism. People love these studios. Meanwhile in the movie business, if ridley scott makes a bad movie, people blame him and not the movie studio that funded it despite several of his movies becoming cult hits after the directors cut release. If anything, movie execs butcher movies all the time, but people mostly just trash the directors.

People definitely trash studio interference and meddling execs in the movie industry, there's endless stories about it happening, but since movies are inherently more top-down productions than big games are, directors and producers are still seen as fair game. Blaming the actual film crew makes less sense than blaming the actual game devs because we know how films are made and we know how games are made, and a film director is much more capable of dominating a production and asserting a vision all the way down than most game directors are, especially with how massive and distributed these AAA studios have gotten. Not that film productions aren't also massive, but they're more driven from the top.

What I was really getting at was that nobody thinks Joe Filmschool is gonna become Ridley Scott if he's given a blank check, nobody thinks Joe Garageband is gonna record Dark Side of the Moon if you locked him in a studio for thirty years, and nobody thinks Joe Hack Writer is gonna give us the next LotR even if he worked his entire life on it. Yet with disappointing and mediocre games it's so often "man, if only they had more resources and time!"

 

[ChiefDada]