Hopefully the rise of this feature doesn’t mean people accidentally have 8 DVRs running on their gameplay through various gaming apps (not to mention Windows’ Xbox Game Bar does this too)
Most Source engine game trailers, like Half-Life 2, are “pre-rendered”. If you record a sequence of gameplay as a “demo” (kb-level file that records player movement in a level) then you can record that demo into a video at a much slower rate than the gameplay, capturing every frame; as well as add camera motions to it. There are guides for individuals to do this using the “startmovie” command.
It’s just a logical way to ensure the video is seamlessly presented, especially since framerate optimization comes late in development.
I mean…I think yes, at some point a marketing department made that claim, which is unfortunate because that’s ultimately far from reality and most people know it. The claims made of the Series X and PS5 are also usually exaggerated, because most salespeople can get away with prefixing any claim with the words “up to”.
What I want out of romance in games is to have it take you by surprise, which often means it’s not a “romance option”. Some of the best character scenes I’ve seen wrapped some other major plot point into the fact that one person cares a bit too deeply about another, and processes it all very suddenly.
So I’m fine with this removal. All those romance choices in RPGs like Fallout and Skyrim felt ultra shallow to me. Even BG3 just seems like raw wish fulfillment from a horny cast.
Similar to how the PS5 had “8K” on the box; it’s only technically capable of that for the sake of videos, but most games tend to go a bit smaller resolution for practical rendering.
Xbox has a packaged release system designed for that. Since the Series S isn’t really meant to go over 1080p, developers are encouraged to only include smaller versions of textures since anything too detailed would be wasted.
PS5, by contrast, tends to have simplified video settings panels so gamers can prioritize what they want - be that raytracing, 4K, or 60fps. Often, just having the extra power doesn’t necessarily matter if the game is coded against taking advantage of it. (I think Bloodborne is infamous for this - it hasn’t gotten an update, so even on PS5, everyone must play it locked at 30fps).
The thing is, if a game releases on Series X without any bonus bells and whistles like (pick one) 4K, 60fps, or ray tracing, it’s kind of failed the move to next gen. If it then cannot scale any of those things back for the Series S, then it’s failed at designing scalability.
The new consoles do not exist to serve programmer inefficiency.
There’s a game with pre-rendered backgrounds called Alisa. I always really enjoyed the pre-render look. The excitement of reaching a “cinematic FMV” that moves the story in a PS1 game is very different from standard cutscenes.