I Want Better Games With Worse Graphics And I'm Not Kidding - Aftermath
I know the saying starts with 'shorter' games, but this is about one game in particular
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I want better games with better graphics. The two are not mutually exclusive, games like Elden Ring prove it is possible to have both.
The problem this writer had with CoD wasn't even really the game. Its the same problem plaguing nearly all entertainment media at the moment: the writing just sucks. Its bad. Bad writing will make even a game with great gameplay turn sour.
Elden Ring had great art direction, but I wouldn't say it had great graphics.
It had great graphics, and its art direction elevated the graphics. It looks equally as good as any other game that released the same year.
Elden Ring certainly is a long leap from King's Field compared to other games when that launched. For as fun as King's Field was, its graphics were bad, even for the time.
It looks equally as good as any other game that released the same year.
Elden Ring is pretty, but this simply isn't true.
When it comes to applying advanced modeling and rendering tech, fromsoft are amateurs.
Most famously, they have no clue what they are doing with shell texturing.
And the reason Elden Ring was a stuttery mess at launch on windows, was that they couldn't figure out that doing directx shader compilation on the fly without caching, is a terrible, terrible idea.
I totally agree with you, while Elden ring looks very nice, it is far from state of the art graphics, demons Souls PS5 show what it should look like if it went that way. I am happy they didn't and instead focus on gameplay and game zones. I really think a lot of game producers go for the extra graphical fidelity instead of focusing on game contents. Dragons dogma 2 recently is stunning production wise, but as much as I adore the game, I wish they went the Elden ring road and had a huge world with tons of stuff to do.
Certainly looks better than the average indie game. And before you come at me for saying that.
Indie is often touted as "better than AAA". But in order for that to be the case, they need to at least offer something similar first. But most indie games are so far removed from even the average AAA game, that its basically apples and oranges.
AA, or mid-tier, is really where its at. Some of the best games in recent years have all been from the AA space. Even ones that launched rough like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk.
They are still leagues above the average indie game that most people here and "the site that shall not be named" tend to list off as their favourites.
So yes, Elden Ring indeed does have great graphics. Not the most cutting edge, but at least it looks like it belongs in the same generation as its competitors.
The "worse graphics" stands for less photorealism. I could tell you about the times when someone wasn't pushing graphical limits, it was ditched by games journalists for postponing the time when they can finally put on a VR headset to relive the battle of Normandy in first person.
I will never understand how limited someone's imagination has to be to require first person and photorealism to be immersed.
To each their own? Like I'm not going to judge someone because they want a very specific piece of media. I want very specific things too. Just because the things I want don't overlap with the things they want doesn't mean either is absurd.
VR can be great without photorealism too. We can apply OP's concept to VR games and find numerous fun games that will run well on lower-powered systems. Dragon Fist VR for example - it's basically Tekken in VR and you fight life-size NPC opponents with your own Kung Fu skills, and the graphics are decent but not photorealistic by any stretch of imagination.
I get that, but a lot of times, people's main (and seemingly only problem) is that they can't (instantly) soyface over what they imagine "games as art" will be.
Better graphics means much bigger budget and that means you'll get writing for lowest common denominator of consumers as well as microtransactions to extract every last cent from them.
Trepang2 looks amazing and it was made by like five people. I think a lot of these big budget games waste a ton of money on details that have seriously diminishing returns.