So many retro games are replayable and fun to this day, but I struggle to return to games whose art style relied on being “cutting edge realistic” 20 years ago.
Really? Cause I don't know, I can play Shadow of the Colossus, Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 3, Ninja Gaiden Black, God of War, Burnout Revenge and GTA San Andreas just fine.
And yes, those are all 20 years ago. You are now dead and I made it happen.
As a side note, man, 2005 was a YEAR in gaming. That list gives 1998 a run for its money.
Absolutely they went for realism. That was the absolute peak of graphics tech in 2004, are you kidding me? I gawked at the fur in Shadow of the Colossus, GTA was insane for detail and size for an open world at the time. Resi 4 was one of the best looking games that gen and when the 360 came out later that year it absolutely was the "last gen still looked good" game people pointed at.
I only went for that year because I wanted the round number, but before that Silent Hill 2 came out in 2001 and that was such a ridiculous step up in lighting tech I didn't believe it was real time when the first screenshots came out. It still looks great, it still plays... well, like Silent Hill, and it's still a fantastic game I can get back into, even with the modern remake in place.
This isn't a zero sum game. You don't trade gameplay or artistry for rendering features or photorealism. Those happen in parallel.
They clearly balanced the more detailed art design with the game play.
GTA didn’t have detail on cars to the level of a racing game, and didn’t have characters with as much detail as Resident Evil, so that it could have a larger world for example. Colossus had fewer objects on screen so it could put more detail on what was there.
Nothing was going harder for visuals, so by default that's what was happening. They were pushing visuals as hard as they would go with the tech that they had.
The big change isn't that they balanced visuals and gameplay. If anything the big change is that visuals were capped by performance rather than budget (well, short of offline CG cutscenes and VO, I suppose).
If anything they were pushing visuals harder than now. There is no way you'd see a pixel art deck building game on GOTY lists in 2005, it was all AAA as far as the eye could see. We pay less attention to technological escalation now, by some margin.
Except for the ones that don’t do a good job of balancing the two things. Like the games that have incredible detail but shit performance and/or awful gameplay.
Well, yeah, but again, that's not new, and it's something every game has to do, better or worse.
I'm aging myself here, but if you must know, the time that stands out most to me in the "graphics over gameplay" debate is actually... 8 bit micros, weirdly.
There was a time where people mostly just looked at how much of a screen a character filled, or whether the backgrounds scrolled and just bought that, while a subset of the userbase and press was pleading to them to pay at least some consideration to whether the game... you know, could be played at all.
I would say GoW and SotC at least take realism as inspiration, but aren’t realistic. They’re like an idealized version of realism. They’re detailed, but they’re absolutely stylized. SotC landscapes, for example, look more like paintings you’d see rather than places you’d see in real life.
Realism is a bad goal because you end up making every game look the same. Taking our world as inspiration is fine, but it should almost always be expanded on. Know what your game is and make the art style enhance it. Don’t just replicate realism because that’s “what you’re supposed to do.”
Look, don't take it personally, but I disagree as hard as humanly possible.
Claiming that realism "makes every game look the same" is a shocking statement, and I don't think you mean it like it sounds. That's like saying that every movie looks the same because they all use photographing people as a core technique.
If anything, I don't know what "realism" is supposed to mean. What is more realistic? Yakuza because it does these harsh, photo-based textures meant to highlight all the pores or, say, a Pixar movie where everything is built on this insanely accurate light transfer, path traced simulation?
At any rate, the idea that taking photorealism as a target means you give up on aesthetics or artistic intent is baffling. That's not even a little bit how it works.
On the other point, I think you're blending technical limitations with intent in ways that are a bit fallacious. SotC is stylized, for sure, in that... well, there are kaijus running around and you sometimes get teleported by black tendrils back to your sleeping beauty girlfirend.
But is it aiming at photorealism? Hell yeah. That approach to faking dynamic range, the deliberate crushing of exteriors from interiors, the way the sky gets treated, the outright visible air adding spacing and scale when you look at the colossi from a distance, the desaturated take on natural spaces... That game is meant to look like it was shot by a camera all the way. They worked SO hard to make a PS2 look like it has aperture and grain and a piece of celluloid capturing light. Harder than the newer remake, arguably.
Some of that applies to GoW, too, except they are trying to make things look like Jason and the Argonauts more than Saving Private Ryan. But still, the references are filmic.
I guess we're back to the problem of establishing what people mean by "realism" and how it makes no sense. In what world does Cyberpunk look similar to Indiana Jones or Wukong? It just has no real meaning as a statement.
If anything, I don’t know what “realism” is supposed to mean. What is more realistic? Yakuza because it does these harsh, photo-based textures meant to highlight all the pores or, say, a Pixar movie where everything is built on this insanely accurate light transfer, path traced simulation?
The former is more realistic, but not for that reason. The lighting techniques are techniques, not a style. Realism is trying to recreate the look of the real world. Pixar is not doing that. They’re using advanced lighting techniques to enhance their stylized worlds.
Some of that applies to GoW, too, except they are trying to make things look like Jason and the Argonauts more than Saving Private Ryan. But still, the references are filmic.
Being inspired by film is not the same as trying to replicate the real world. (I’d argue it’s antithetical to it to an extent.) Usually film is trying to be more than realistic. Sure, it’s taking images from the real world, but they use lighting, perspective, and all kinds of other tools to enhance the film. They don’t just put some actors in place in the real environment and film it without thought. There’s intent behind everything shown.
I guess we’re back to the problem of establishing what people mean by “realism” and how it makes no sense. In what world does Cyberpunk look similar to Indiana Jones or Wukong? It just has no real meaning as a statement.
Cyberpunk looks more like Indiana Jones than Persona 5. Sure, they stand out from each other, but it’s mostly due to environments.
I think there’s plenty of games that benefit from realism, but not all of them do. There are many games that could do better with stylized graphics instead. For example, Cyberpunk is represented incredibly well in both the game and the anime. They both have different things they do better, and the anime’s style is an advantage for the show at least. The graphics style should be chosen to enhance the game. It shouldn’t just be realistic because it can be. If realism is the goal, fine. If it’s supposed to be more (or different) than realism, maybe try a different style that improves the game.
Realism is incredibly hard to create assets for, so it costs more money, and usually takes more system resources. For the games that are improved by it, that’s fine. There’s a lot of games that could be made on a smaller budget, faster, run better, and look more visually interesting if they chose a different style though. I think it should be a consideration that developers are allowed to make, but most are just told to do realism because it’s the “premium” style. They aren’t allowed to do things that are better suited for their game. I think this is bad, and also leads to a lack in diversity of styles.
I don't understand what you're saying. Or, I do, but if I do, then you don't.
I think you're mixing up technique with style, in fact. And really confusing a rendering technique with an aesthetic. But beyond that, you're ignoring so many games. So many. Just last year, how do you look at Balatro and Penny's Big Breakaway and Indiana Jones and go "ah, yes, games all look the same now". The list of GOTY nominees in the TGAs was Astro Bot, Balatro, Wukong, Metaphor, Elden Ring and Final Fantasy VII R. How do you look at that list of games and go "ah, yes, same old, same old".
Whenever I see takes like these I can't help but think that people who like to talk about games don't play enough games, or just think of a handful of high profile releases as all of gaming. Because man, there's so much stuff and it goes from grungy, chunky pixel art to lofi PS1-era jank to pitch-perfect anime cel shading to naturalistic light simulation. If you're out there thinking games look samey you have more of a need to switch genres than devs to switch approach, I think.
By “all games look the same” I’m being hyperbolic. I mean nearly all AAA games and the majority of AA games (and not an insignificant number of indies even).
Whenever I see takes like these I can’t help but think that people who like to talk about games don’t play enough games, or just think of a handful of high profile releases as all of gaming.
Lol. No. Again, I was being hyperbolic and talking mostly about the AAA and AA space. I personally almost exclusively play indies who know what they’re trying to make and use a style appropriate to it. I play probably too many games. I also occasionally make games myself, I was the officer in a game development club in college, and I have friends in the industry. I’m not just some person who doesn’t understand video games.
Well, then don't be hyperbolic, let's see where that takes us.
That video is still nonsensical, just eloquently nonsensical. Makes me think he hasn't been to Bilbao, for one thing, but talking about games, not architecture, he caveats the crap out of a tautology just to end up in a tautology: AAA games look like this because a AAA game is a game that looks like this, whatever "like this" means.
For one thing, man, do I wish Detroit had never existed. It's amazing that for a while there we had this little cottage industry of doomsters that used Detroit to show how bad anything ranging from David Cage's games to Sony to graphics, apparently turn out to be. To such a degree that I have very rarely seen a defense of Detroit, I've never played Detroit, the game seems to not have done that well and Cage has never published another game. It's a consensus entirely predicated on opposing a fanbase of defenders that seemingly never existed.
All the while this guy argues that AAA games have a look (then caveats that some don't) while showing clips from, if you're keeping track, a game about robot dinosaurs set in a lush jungle full of red plants (which is shocking imagery pulling inspiration from super nerdy, niche illustration work), a bleak but beautiful zombie apocalypse made out of grungy rural clothing, a superhero game and a gorgeousely unique take on norse mythology. None of those games look alike in any way that makes sense. Not more than Spider-Man 2, Transformers, A Quiet Place and The Northman look alike. Photographing people as a technique is not an aesthetic, and it certainly isn't an aesthetic limitation. That's like saying that only animation is creative while photography isn't. It's such a disservice to creativity.
But even from a 2020 video, things have moved in the direction he wants, if only because the games industry is unraveling, I suppose. If you peek at game awards in the interim, the games that got most attention in those five years include The Last of Us II, but also Hades, Elden Ring, Balatro, Astro Bot, Animal Crossing, It Takes Two, Baldur's Gate III, Alan Wake 2 and Tears of the Kingdom. In the recent batch of first party events there was a genuine splash of discourse about which rendition of fake stop motion looked better between the Louisiana fantasy Wizard of Oz reimagining and the creepy claymation... horror FPS thing? What are we talking about again?
Let me drop the pretense for a moment and make a case for what I think we're talking about: this narrative is part of the problem, if there is a problem. These contrarian takes are being tautological for the sake of affecting elevated taste and elitist insight others lack. The truth is games look all sorts of ways and explore wildly different art styles, scopes and concepts. But the discourse is antagonistic and narrow. People latch on to games not to praise them and explore them but to complain and wear them down, and so gaming gets reduced to whatever we don't like, with whatever we do like being passed as a secret hidden gem or an outlier even when it's wildly popular. It's why there's more discourse about Concord, which is a game that looked bad, wasn't great and nobody played, than about Marvel Rivals, which is a game that is just as expensive but looks bright and colorful and cartoony and is extremely popular. In the games industry people sometimes refer to that look as a "mainstream look", because so many popular games look like that. It's the look of Fortnite and The Sims and World of Warcraft and Team Fortress, and it's gradually going more anime as mainstream games pivot to Asia, becoming the look of Genshin Impact, and Zenless Zone Zero and Marvel Rivals.
This is a talking point people like to drop to feel fancy and elevated that implies that we're somehow still living in an industry circa 2008 when home console single player action adventure games dominated the sales charts and smaller games were a dying breed barely kept alive by a group of plucky indies. For better and worse, we haven't lived in that world for a while. If anything, I miss the mid 2000s AAA approach to gaming. Nobody is doing it outside of Sony and a couple weirdos like Sam Lake, and it was a comforting, creative, interesting approach that has unfortunately run out of runway while presumptuous commentators keep beating a dead horse because either they didn't get the memo or because it's perhaps too depressing to look at the real state of the industry.
Did I drop the Socratic pretense too hard? Got too real? We can go back to pretending we don't know what we're talking about if that makes everybody feel better.
Well, then don’t be hyperbolic, let’s see where that takes us.
Dude, we aren’t in a court room. Informal language is the expectation in a casual online forum. Get out of here.
… but talking about games, not architecture…
Are you going to come here and imply there’s no similarities between different forms of art? Should I not have used painting as an example earlier because we must only discuss video games?
I never played that game, but it’s amazing that for a while there we had this little cottage industry of doomsters that used Detroit to show how bad anything ranging from David Cage’s games to Sony to graphics, apparently turn out to be. To such a degree that I have very rarely seen a defense of Detroit, I’ve never played Detroit, the game seems to not have done that well and Cage has never published another game. It’s a consensus entirely predicated on opposing a fanbase of defenders that seemingly never existed.
I haven’t either, but that was a tiny part of the video and doesn’t matter. However, I want to point out that you haven’t played it so have no basis to judge. Then you claim the dissent must only be to fight the defenders and not just because it was a bad game? How to you make that judgment. You’re speaking out of your ass just because you want to say something, but you don’t have anything meaningful to say about it.
All the while this guy argues that AAA games have a look (then caveats that some don’t) while showing clips from, if you’re keeping track, a game about robot dinosaurs set in a lush jungle full of red plants (which is shocking imagery pulling inspiration from super nerdy, niche illustration work), a bleak but beautiful zombie apocalypse made out of grungy rural clothing, a superhero game and a gorgeousely unique take on norse mythology.
Setting and style are two different things. They all have the same style, though different settings. Compare Monet to Van Gogh to Corbet. Even when they’re painting similar settings their styles are wildly different. If you take the style of Horizon and plug it into the Indiana Jones game it’d look almost identical.
I don’t think you’re understanding this distinction. You’re constantly on the offense saying I’m the one who doesn’t understand, but it’s you who isn’t getting it. Look at the game Sable as an example. They could have rendered it realistically, but the style they chose turns it into something totally unique while also supporting the game and improving usage of development resources. The style is not realistic, even if the setting could be. These are very different things, and I’m speaking about style and have been the entire time.
Those quotes are all asides or insubstantial to the point being made. I have nothing to add beyond pointing you back to my previous post. Except perhaps that the points about Detroit and architecture are both directly responding to statements on the video you linked (he mentions Detroit defenders and gets super stuck on using the Bilbao Guggenheim as a proxy for samey architecture as a proxy for game visuals).
Oh, and that I'm not confusing setting and style, I'm saying that you can take the idea of leaning towards a photoreal treatment of light transfer to go along with leaning into performance capture and still have style around that choice. The statement that the retrofuturistic aesthetic of Horizon is somehow "almost identical" to the 80s movie homage of Indiana Jones is baffling. I will keep repeating this until it lands: nobody would argue that Raiders of the Lost Ark looks "almost identical" to... I don't even know anything that looks like Horizon... let's go Conan the Barbarian just because they both point cameras at people. Technique does not dictate style (or what in movies you'd call production design). That is a purely videogame-y hangup from the historical misunderstanding that technology is the main driver for aesthetics. If that ever made sense, it certainly stopped fifteen years ago.
I suppose that's at the core of the meme in the OP. Growing up in an era where going from beautiful pixel art to ugly lo-fi 3D was seen as the natural evolution of game aesthetics and never having figured out to distinguish the tech from the art as separate concepts.
I just finished STALKER 2. It’s a fucking mess and was unplayably broken for half a month at one point for me, and I fucking love it. It took me 80 hours of mostly focusing on advancing the story to reach the end, and I feel like I only saw maybe 30% of what’s out there. I can already tell that this is going to be my new Skyrim, tooling around with 500 hours in the game and still finding new situations. I’m SO FUCKING PUMPED for anomaly 2-- a lot of the same modders that worked on anomaly are already putting out modpacks for Stalker 2.
Like cgi and other visual effects, realism has some applications that can massively improve the experience in some games. Just like how lighting has a massive impact, or sound design, etc.
Chasing it at the expense of game play or art design is a negative though.
It’s the right choice for some games and not for others. Just like cinematography, there’s different styles and creators need to pick which works best for what they’re trying to convey. Would HZD look better styled like Hi-Fi Rush? I don’t really think so. GOW? That one I could definitely see working more stylized.
Idk, I’d say that pursuing realism is worthy, but you get diminishing returns pretty quick when all the advances are strictly in one (or I guess two, with audio) sense. Graphical improvements massively improved the experience of the game moving from NES or Gameboy to SNES and again to PS1 and N64. I’d say that the most impressive leap, imo, was PS1/N64 to PS2/XBox/GameCube. After that, I’d say we got 3/4 of the return from improvements to the PS3 generation, 1/2 the improvement to PS4 gen, 1/5 the improvement to PS5, and 1/8 the improvement when we move on to PS5 Pro. I’d guess if you plotted out the value add, with the perceived value on the Y and the time series or compute ability or texture density or whatever on the x, it’d probably look a bit like a square root curve.
I do think that there’s an (understandably, don’t get me wrong) untapped frontier in gaming realism in that games don’t really engage your sense of touch or any of the subsets thereof. The first step in this direction is probably vibrating controllers, and I find that it definitely does make the game feel more immersive. Likewise, few games engage your proprioception (that is, your knowledge of your body position in space), though there’ve been attempts to engage it via the Switch, Wii, and VR. There’s, of course, enormous technical barriers, but I think there’s very clearly a good reason why a brain interface is sort of thought of as the holy grail of gaming.
Having a direct brain interface game, that’s realistic enough to overcome the Uncanny Valley, would destroy peoples lives. People would, inevitably, prefer their virtual environment to the real one. They’d end up wasting away, plugged into some machine. It would lend serious credence to the idea of a simulated universe, and reduce the human experience by replacing it with an improved one. Shit, give me a universe wherein I can double-jump, fly, or communicate with animals, and I’d have a hard time returning to this version.
We could probably get close with a haptic feedback suit, a mechanism that allows you to run/jump in any direction, and a VR headset, but there would always be something tethering you to reality. But a direct brain to machine interaction would have none of that, it would essentially be hijacking our own electrical neural network to run simulations. Much like Humans trying to play Doom on literally everything. It would be as amazing as it was destructive, finally realizing the warnings from so many parents before its time: “that thing’ll fry your brain.”
Tbf, it’s kinda bullshit that we can’t double jump IRL. Double jumping just feels right, like it’s something we should be able to do.
Yeah, no, it’d likely be really awful for us. I mean, can you imagine what porn would be like on that? That’s a fermi paradox solution right there. I could see the tech having a lot of really great applications, too, like training simulations for example, but the video game use case is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.
People would, inevitably, prefer their virtual environment to the real one. They’d end up wasting away, plugged into some machine. It would lend serious credence to the idea of a simulated universe, and reduce the human experience by replacing it with an improved one.
I agree generally, but I have to offer a counterpoint with Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I only just got back into it after bouncing off in 2019, and I wish I hadn’t stopped playing. I have a decent-ish PC and it still blows my entire mind when I go roaming around the countryside.
Like Picard said above, in due time this too will look aged, but even 7 years on, it looks and plays incredible even at less-than-highest settings. IMHO the most visually impressive game ever created (disclaimer: I haven’t seen or played Horizon). Can’t wait to play KC:D 2!
Couldn’t disagree more. Immersion comes from the details, not the fidelity. I was told to expect this incredibly immersive experience form RDR2 and then I got:
carving up animals is frequently wonky
gun cleaning is just autopilot wiping the exterior of a gun
shaving might as well be done off-screen
you transport things on your horse without tying them down
Visual fidelity isn’t the same as realism. RDR2 is trying to replicate a real experience, so I mostly agree with you. However, it does step away from realism sometimes to create something more.
Take a look at impressionist art, for example. It starts at realism, but it isn’t realistic. It has more style to it that enhances what the artist saw (or wanted to highlight).
A game should focus on the experience it’s tying to create, and it’s art style should enhance that experience. It shouldn’t just be realistic because that’s the “premium” style.
For an example, Mirror’s Edge has a high amount of fidelity (for its time), but it’s highly stylized in order to create the experience they wanted out of it. The game would be far worse if they tried to make the graphics realistic. This is true for most games, though some do try to simulate being a part of this world, and it’s fine for them to try to replicate it because it suits what their game is.
I had way more fun in GTA 3 than GTA 5. RDR2 isn’t a success because the horse has realistic balls.
To put another nail in the coffin, ARMA’s latest incarnation isn’t the most realistic shooter ever made. No amount of wavy grass and moon phases can beat realistic weapon handling in the fps sim space. (And no ARMA’s weapon handling is not realistic, it’s what a bunch of keyboard warriors decided was realistic because it made them feel superior.) Hilariously the most realistic shooter was a recruiting game made by the US Army with half the graphics.
I see, and yeah graphics can help a lot. But how much do we actually need? At what point is the gain not enough to justify forcing everyone to buy another generation of GPUs?
i think as it advances the old ones will inevitably look dated, dont think there will be a limit short of photorealism, its just slowed down a bunch now. imagine if we had a game like rdr but actually photorealistic. shit with vr you imagine any photorealistic and immersive world, that would be so cool.
sadly, the profit motive makes it difficult for a given studio to want to optimize their games making them heavier and heavier, and gpus turned out to be super profitable for AI making them more and more expensive. i think things will definetly stagnate for a bit but not before they find a way to put that ray tracing hardware we have now to good use, so well see about that.
We should be looking at more particles, more dynamic lighting, effects, realism is forsure a goal just not in the way you think, pixar movies have realistic lighting and shadows but arent “realistic”
After I started messing with cycles on blender I went back to wanting more “realistic” graphics, its better for stylized games too
But yeah I want the focus to shift towards procedural generation (I like how houdini and unreal approach it right now), more physics based interactions, elemental interactions, realtime fire, smoke, fluid, etc. Destruction is the biggest dissapointment, was really hoping for a fps that let me spend hours bulldozing and blowing up the map.
Never said I bought it. Why would I buy a 70€ game without running the benchmark tool first?
I just still find it ridiculous that it looks and runs like ass when MH World looks and runs way better on the same PC. Makes me wonder what’s really behind whatever ‘technological advancements’ have been put into Wilds. It’s like it’s an actual scam to make people buy new hardware with no actual benefit.
The problem as I see it is that there is an upper limit on how good any game can look graphically. You can’t make a game that looks more realistic than literal reality, so any improvement is going to just approach that limit. (Barring direct brain interfacing that gives better info than the optical nerve)
Before, we started from a point that was so far removed from reality than practically anything would be an improvement. Like say “reality” is 10,000. Early games started at 10, then when we switched to 3D it was 1,000. That an enormous relative improvement, even if it’s far from the max. But now your improvements are going from 8,000 to 8,500 and while it’s still a big absolute improvement, it’s relatively minor – and you’re never going to get a perfect 10,000 so the amount you can improve by gets smaller and smaller.
All that to say, the days of huge graphical leaps are over, but the marketing for video games acts like that’s not the case. Hence all the buzzwords around new tech without much to show for it.
Well you can get to a perfect 10k hypothetically, you can have more geometric/texture/lighting detail than the eye could process. From a technical perspective.
Of course you have the technical capabilities, and that’s part of the equation. The other part is the human effort to create the environments. Now the tech sometimes makes it easier on the artist (for example, better light modeling in the engine at run time means less effort to bake lighting in, and ability for author to basically “etc…” to more detail, by smoothing or some machine learning extrapolations). Despite this, more detail does mean more man hours to try to make the most of that, and this has caused massive cost increases as models got more detailed and more models and environments became feasible. The level of artwork that goes into the whole have of pacman is less than a single model in a modern game.
Graphics are only part of it, with the power that is there I am disappointed in the low quality put to rrlease. I loved Jedi survivor, a brilliant game but it was terribly optimised. I booted it today and had nothing but those assest loading flashes as walls and structures in my immediate vicinity and eyeline flashed white into existence.
Good games arent solely reliant om graphics but christ if they dont waste what they have. Programmers used to push everything to the max, now they get away with pushing beta releases to print.
Seems like I should give Junk-Store another shot I had installed it back when I was on beta branch and it was… funky. It had me sign in to Epic and then the frame / overlay wouldn’t go away, I had to force restart my Deck just to make it usable again.
I tried a few times here and there and ran into the same issue, so it’s just been sitting installed as a spooky button.
It’s definitely more polished and complete now! The dev also works hard, especially if a user has any little issues, they have a Discord and Git page all where help and previous issues are detailed and worked out step-by-step on a fix. There’s also a huge list on games which work via Legendary, and any tweaks users have reported to make games work are listed there on the Discord, too.
I’d be curious how you find it, after so much time has passed between the beta and now! Do update how you go! (I’ve shared that people have written comments here about Junk-Store, with Eben the dev (hi Eben), so I know he’ll be lurking here)
Hahaha you were correct we are lurking. Eben told me you posted on here so I thought I’d check it out. Your posts have always been amazing! We both thank you for the shout out and I must say I have missed you!
Hey sorry you had issues early on. This sounds like these issues could be flatpak related instead of Junk Store related. But yes back then it was in beta so there would have been issues. If you’re willing, give it another go as it’s pretty solid these days. If you have any issues you can find us here or on discord.
I meant that I was on the beta branch for SteamOS / Decky Loader, thoygh perhaps Junk Store too. I figured it was likely a conflict with another plugin (probably something in CSS Loader) but hadn’t bothered to diagnose which.
I’ll totally be giving it another shot since it seems awesome :)
I’m still cross (not really tho) that when I reached out to you all last year, you never wanted me to interview you!!!
RetroDECK has been my one true emulation love for so long now, and I’ve adored all your recent updates. You should all be so proud! I went into a little more detail for the users here on RetroDECK on my latest news post here on Lemmy too!
Thanks for the newsletter! I am not good with fediverse how do I like and subscribe… Your talk of emulation on the deck awoke something in me. I checked and yes, it appears you can emulate 360 on it too.
I was interested in the rest, but this has driven every other thought out of my head. I don’t even know how to make breakfast in this state. I’m a wreck.
from the image it seems like you’re expecting a fourth dimension in games now? I don’t think you’d like the development cycle on that. miegakure is still on the way is it?
That mission was one of the best in all of Halo. Where you really feel how dire and ruined everything is. Mixed with running around actual civilian places contrasted to the numerous forerunner built, bunkers, or nature locations or the other games and it really hits home.
(Outskirts and New Mom asa got close, but with the graphics of the time and mostly being outside it didn’t quite hit the same)
Something like Zelda Twilight princess HHD to Zelda Breath of the wild was a huge leap in just gameplay. (And also in graphics but that’s not my point)
Idk. Breath of the Wild felt more like a tech demo than a full game. Tears of the Kingdom felt more fleshed out, but even then… the wideness of the world belied its shallowness in a lot of places. Ocarina of Time had a smaller overall map, but ever region had this very bespokely crafted setting and culture and strategy. By the time you got to Twilight Princess, you had this history to the setting and this weight to this iteration of the Zelda setting.
What could you really do in BotW that you couldn’t do in Twilight? The graphics got a tweak. The amount of running around you did went way up. But the game itself? Zelda really peaked with Majorem’s Mask. So much of this new stuff is more fluff than substance.
What? Botw was awesome! There was so much to explore, the world was interesting, the NPCs are good, and so on. Oot and Majora’s Mask are both amazing too of course, but botw is a modern masterpiece.
lemmy.world
Aktywne