and the improvement is barely noticeable
maybe, just maybe, it's time to stop chasing productrion values till the bitter end?
Yeah let's all go back to Nes graphics !
Those takes...
Then you see people whine about graphics of Rise of the Ronin while they're perfectly acceptable, even pretty to me. There is a middle ground but it's still cost a FUCKING LOT.
What I don't understand is the need to make cinematic games from AA developers. Like, they know that their production values is not good, but they still try to take the "cinematic game with production value" route. What you get in the end is a boring game with bad cinematics, bad gameplay (because most of the $$$ have been spent on cinematic, and made by western dev so it's bad most of the time) and subpar graphics.
Last offender : Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
Next : Alone in the Dark.
Take a hint at From Soft : they don't care about cinematics, they don't animate dialogues and guess what, they're still some of the most immersive games out there. Similarly, NioH has more cutscenes/dialogue but nobody cares about them, we're here for the gameplay, so cutscenes with dialogues are a complete waste. At least Rise of the Ronin seems better in that department, but the gameplay is still the primary focus.
Gameplay / Game design > Art style > Level design > Graphics. All of those are important but the developers must know what matters the most (of course in an action / aventure / RPG / stealth game, the order would be different for a racing game. Still, gameplay is first.
Storytelling and the means to achieve it should not be a priority, because most of it is trash in videogames. There's so many ways to tell a story in cheap ways, but some of them still spend millions in "production values" for bad results.
We don't get guys like Yasumi Matsuno anymore. So don't bother.