State of the Art Graphics - But at What Cost?

[Wools]

I was listening to one of the latest Retro Asylum Podcasts where they revisit the original version of Resident Evil and while discussing the differences between Resident Evil and the GameCube remake, one of the hosts presented some food for thought; Their is a 6 year gap between the PlayStation original and the GameCube remake. The difference in graphics is astonishing and for many, still represents one of the biggest leaps in video game graphics. By way of comparison, the RA Podcast host said that it is 7 years since Horizon Zero Dawn was released on the PlayStation 4. If you remove any bias around what's now possible on the latest generation of PC GPU's, Mac M Series of Processors or the latest Consoles, it's fair to say the average player see's little change between games released back in 2017 to where we are now, at the arse end of 2024.

Considering this, you do wonder why Developers bother; It takes a team of hundreds to really get the best out of a modern games engine on Unity or Unreal 5, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. And when the game you're making has to return double that to even be considered a financial success, before the inevitable closure of the studio, it makes me question if the public want games that are dripping with art and high end resolution and texture quality, when the pay off is now lost on almost everyone.

I feel that Podcast really made me sit up and think in this age where not much shocks us graphically anymore as the returns are now minimal, when was the last time a game stunned me with its graphics? And considering that we're now losing AAA Studios at a shocking rate as the industry can't sustain that level of quality, is it fair to say graphics are no longer the draw? Would we all be happy if AAA team sizes reduced to accommodate more variety like we used to see in game development, with games like RoboCop Rogue City and Death Stranding seemingly reaping the rewards of smaller teams, shared Engines and more focus?

Over the past 2 decades in the home market, I was genuinely stunned with the graphics jump in Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, Metal Gear Solid 2, Resident Evil, Half Life 2, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Gran Turismo 5, Uncharted 2, Super Mario 3D Land and Super Hot VR. I have been impressed by countless other games over the past 10 - 20 years, but they were very much for refinement, technical improvements and optimisation reasons. Those games above represent those leaps that used to be so prevalent in the 2D / 3D era.

And for the game development question, I would rather a small team design and iterate upon cool gameplay concepts which are more fun and unique, than a £300 Million project that feels like an interactive story, with little interaction. For me, although Nintendo are constrained by the horsepower of the Switch, in some ways it feels like a blessing, as they are one of the few AAA Developers who use the limited palette and skew it to their advantage, as the stunning environments in Mario 3D World and Zelda: BOTW attest to.

When was the last time a game made that visual jump for you, and do you love the current AAA Studio output pushing for somewhat diminishing visual returns, or would you like a return to the era of innovation and strong design, at the possible sacrifice of game visual and audio quality?

[Neon Ignition]

The entire industry has pretty much disappeared up its own backside when it comes to this issue.

The honest truth is that I don't think the majority of gamers care for the most part. I feel like most of the excitement for the Switch 2 rests more on the 2 in its title than anticipation that its games will present themselves as a quantum leap visually. There's definitely still an expectation that a sequel should look better than its predecessor but even then public understanding of the relationship between hardware and software feels much more limited than first parties fear it is.

Tears of the Kingdom looks visually identical to Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild was and is held up as a stunning example of what the Switch is capable of.
It's not a Switch game though - it's a stunning example of what the WiiU is capable of.

Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered is benchmarked to hell against the visual benchmark of the sequel game, lauded for improving the visuals to be brought in line with the advancements the second entry brought visually. Horizon II is a PS4 game.

It's similar with God of War: Ragnarok, it's a great looking game but it's a last gen title which underlines that sense that the game buying audience wants pretty looking games but the need for hardware to be the driving force behind it isn't really a requirement anymore. Many of the best games in the past 12 months haven't been visual powerhouses, they've looked good but you can see the areas where they definitely still straddle last gen, something that is backed up by how we're nearing 12 years of last gen still seeing new releases which in the old days would be considered insane.

You see Microsoft floundering around on hardware and releasing games that are often not the best look looking in town from a technical, visual stand point and then look at Nintendo who are capable of making lovely looking games but on hardware that is considered to be very old tech now and you think to yourself - why is Sony spending so much making these tent pole titles?

Let's be honest, if they cut budgets and focused on delivering a wider mix of lower budgeted titles more frequently like they used to do they'd likely see zero impact on their sales because the market conditions don't even necessitate the level of one up manship that was required two gens ago. Instead they, and some others, are spending insane amounts of money on game budgets that then become high risk make or break releases.

If the reports are correct then for how much Sony spent making Spider-Man 2 they could have made six Stellar Blades. Ironically, Spider-Man 2 looks nice but to be honest I don't think it's a stunning looker. The last truly great looking game I played that comes to mind is Alan Wake 2, it cost a quarter of God of War: Ragnarok to make and even then art direction is much more of an important factor with it.

If you're making a game and its hard baked in that you need at least 10m sales to break even, then your approach is broken.

Similar with big hits - Red Dead Redemption II is considered a massive title that is a massive hit with 55m units sold. To an extent though the issue there is that those sales are accrued over eight full years of release now. That breaks down as 6.8m per year averaged out. Still sounds great but when you factor in that the studio hasn't released a single title since then it's easy to see how a single mistake or weaker receieved release could be devastating despite a title scoring strong sales in of itself, the profits being required to carry studios too hard because budgets and dev cycles have become laughably long.

Partially I think live service games played into it, seen by too many short sighted companies as a magic cash cow where you can have constant revenue with minimal dev costs moving forward. Capcom are probably one of the best at balancing their release schedules and content delivery (though why DMC6 is taking so long who knows).

It's also why Game Pass was always hobbled. A content era focus when you can't get content out the gate is stupid.

Studios need to start reusing more assets, stop being so averse to the idea of knocking out iterative sequels - christ, it's not like most super belated sequels are a quantum revolution over the predecessors anyway. In a generation where the number of XSX/PS5 exclusives is embarrassingly low, and the number of those that actually make use of the hardware and aren't plainly not on last-gen consoles for commercial reasons is even lower - companies need to really take stock and steer back to 3-4 year cycles.

[charlesr]

Halo is an interesting one to look at graphics progression. Basically it hasn't progressed much. All clean and polished, higher resolution etc. But if you squint, it's the same.
Call of Duty seems to have progressed massively in comparison (to my mind).

Now, was this because Halo was ahead if it's time originally? Or because it made less progress?

[wakka]

Really interesting post. And, like Neon, yes, I would say the industry has absolutely disappeared up in its own backside on this.

When was the last time a game made that visual jump for you, and do you love the current AAA Studio output pushing for somewhat diminishing visual returns, or would you like a return to the era of innovation and strong design, at the possible sacrifice of game visual and audio quality?

In answer to your first question, I think your example of Horizon: Zero Dawn, probably. Before that, Witcher 3. They felt like a real step up over what had been possible on the PS3/360. Since then, not an awful lot. Which is not to say games don't look good. They look amazing.

But, for me, we have now long passed the magic line of 'Good enough' and game console technology has matured. Like the video quality on Netflix, or the experience of using a smartphone. It's basically done for the time being and improvements for the foreseeable will be very slow and incremental.

This is why there's so much endless discussion in the specialist press and enthusiast forums of the minutiae of frame rate versus resolution. There is really not that much else to talk about in terms of graphics at this point.

I don't think gamers at large really care any more. I'd suspect that for people aged <20 the way videogames look now is how they've always looked and they've always looked good. The idea that every five years you get an absolutely gigantic quantum leap in graphics, as was the case between 1990 and 2010, would be an alien to one them.

At this point I would honestly be very happy for the visual ambition of a lot of games to be dialled back to accommodate more frequent releases and more experimental releases at the mid-budget level. Bring back extreme sports games, futuristic or arcade drift racers, more abstract arcade-style concepts, etc. There are a raft of genres that are now seemingly deemed unviable for anything other than a micro-team 'tribute' game by an indie, since they wouldn't support the sales required to justify a 500 person team effort. And the fact is, the technology is at a point where you could scale back visually and the games would still look fantastic.

[Dogg Thang]

I recently bought a PS5, having totally skipped the PS4. I've had the Switch but that's been it for a long time, so I feel like I skipped at least one full generation in terms of the more powerful consoles. Do I feel that jump now that I've got a PS5? Not really. Now admittedly I'm dealing with a very small selection of games so far but there is something about them that feels more similar. Yes, the graphics are better technically but maybe pushed more towards the middle as a result.

The last time I was wowed by a leap in graphics was Dead Rising on the 360. Seeing all those zombies. It simply couldn't have been done to that level previously and that changed what was possible in the game itself, not just in terms of how it looked. I haven't felt that change since. And while I do like pretty graphics, I certainly don't need them. Strong design trumps technical advancements every time for me.

[Neon Ignition]

The big tentpoles getting the focus on remakes and remasters colours things a little as well, grabbing any old walkthrough vid of TLOU:

https://youtu.be/7KXq9C5h8pQ

The remasters look better but going back to the original - that is two generations old now. That's like having a comparable version of GTAV running on the PS1. TLOU2 is a better looking game by being on more powerful hardware but you still have that base example of how much progression in visuals has slowed and even then it took seven years to get a sequel out the doors.

[Dogg Thang]

TLOU2 is a better looking game by being on more powerful hardware but you still have that base example of how much progression in visuals has slowed and even then it took seven years to get a sequel out the doors.

Yep. And yes, it's better but not in any way that even slightly changes the experience. And maybe that's just too much to expect now. Once we hit a certain threshold, graphical improvements probably couldn't ever make leaps the way they once did. They're just a tiny bit more detailed and (sometimes) more polished now.

Maybe that's okay and it's all we can expect now.

[wakka]

I honestly think it's fine and not something to fret over. What I do find dispiriting is the endless discussion of technical factors in specialist media - when everything basically looks good anyway - and the enormous quantities of resources expended on what are by and large pretty straightforward action adventures with extremely, some would say unnecessarily, detailed environments.

We've never had it so good in many ways, though.

[kellog7]

Digital Foundry have a lot to answer for - they've become the go-to source for pixel peepers anxious to know if that game they want is running at a full 60 fps, or, heaven forbid, an inexcusable 59.999 fps in spots.

[fuse]

Yeah, I absolutely feel it's the case that technological advancements have tapered off and are no longer serving the games industry in a positive way. The pursuit of photo realism and what's next in the AAA space is so expensive (financial and human cost) that inevitably studios are nervous about taking gambles with mechanically or artistically innovative titles. This is not a veiled "burn down Digital Foundry" comment - I get what they do - but I find the prominence of technical discussion in gaming conversations is exhausting, and I genuinely feel like it holds back the medium.

It is all good and well for me to just ignore these games, but when these gambles of these proportions go bad, the ripple effect it has on the industry as a whole are gigantic. Going further with this idea into slightly more controversial territory, their presence also speaks to some folks in an unfortunate way that sets an unrealistic expectation of "what a PS5 game looks like", how many hours of filler guff they should come with, and turns them away from things that are shorter, more thoughtful, and more fun.

Per the famous tweet:

I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding

[wakka]

Yeah, I absolutely feel it's the case that technological advancements have tapered off and are no longer serving the games industry in a positive way. The pursuit of photo realism and what's next in the AAA space is so expensive (financial and human cost) that inevitably studios are nervous about taking gambles with mechanically or artistically innovative titles. This is not a veiled "burn down Digital Foundry" comment - I get what they do - but I find the prominence of technical discussion in gaming conversations is exhausting, and I genuinely feel like it holds back the medium.

It is all good and well for me to just ignore these games, but when these gambles of these proportions go bad, the ripple effect it has on the industry as a whole are gigantic. Going further with this idea into slightly more controversial territory, their presence also speaks to some folks in an unfortunate way that sets an unrealistic expectation of "what a PS5 game looks like", how many hours of filler guff they should come with, and turns them away from things that are shorter, more thoughtful, and more fun.

Per the famous tweet:

Agreed with all of this. And you put it a lot more succinctly than I managed!

[QualityChimp]

Love those moments in gaming where you're stopped in your tracks at how gorgeous the game is. Elden Ring, Spider-Man and RDR2 all spring to mind (PS4).

However, I'm just as happy shooting 1000 low-poly giant hornets and ants.

Same as Dogg Thang, the Xbox 360 wasn't sold to me by better graphics, it was sold with the image of Frank West atop a truck, surrounded by zombies.
Straight away you're wondering how did this happen and how are you going to escape so many enemies?

[fishbowlhead]

Digital Foundry have a lot to answer for - they've become the go-to source for pixel peepers anxious to know if that game they want is running at a full 60 fps, or, heaven forbid, an inexcusable 59.999 fps in spots.

I disagree, they save people like myself who have become sensitive to fps in games, massive amounts of money & time wasted on technically shoddy titles, which is almost all modern releases, (30fps to me on a 4k screen is a 1920's slide show and completely unplayable).

Devs NEED to stop chasing 4k, its that simple, and need to start prioritising Art direction & 60fps performance first, they will find their titles are way better off for it long term, not to mention cheaper to produce using less resources chasing 4k artwork all the time.

[dataDave]

I was never a graphics whore until Cyberpunk came along.



Four years on my attempts at properly playing the game are always thwarted by me instead squatting around wet piles of garbage bags which are reflecting animated OLED advertisements from across the road, or watching NPCs walk by in the reflections of a shiny car. Watching a video is one thing, but when you have control of the camera in real-time it's another thing entirely.

I don't think we'll see another implementation of the entire RTX suite quite like this one for some time yet.

[Asura]

Halo is an interesting one to look at graphics progression. Basically it hasn't progressed much. All clean and polished, higher resolution etc. But if you squint, it's the same.
Call of Duty seems to have progressed massively in comparison (to my mind).

Now, was this because Halo was ahead if it's time originally? Or because it made less progress?

To be clear on Halo, though, if you're comparing Halo Infinite to earlier titles - Infinite is an open-world game. Its environment is massive. The old games just kinda "felt" big.