Comment by Ntrails

Comment by Ntrails 3 days ago

>aren't enough to deliver smooth immersive graphics

I'm just not sold.

Do I really think that BG3 being slightly prettier than, say, Dragon Age / Skyrim / etc made it a more enticing game? Not to me certainly. Was cyberpunk prettier than Witcher 3? Did it need to be for me to play it?

My query isn't about whether you can get people to upgrade to play new stuff (always true). But whether they'd still upgrade if they could play on the old console with worse graphics.

I also don't think anyone is going to suddenly start playing video games because the graphics improve further.

rafaelmn 3 days ago

> Do I really think that BG3 being slightly prettier than, say, Dragon Age / Skyrim / etc made it a more enticing game?

Absolutely - graphical improvements make the game more immersive for me and I don't want to go back and replay the games I spent hundreds of hours in mid two thousands, like say NVN or Icewind Dale (never played BG 2). It's just not the same feeling now that I've played games with incomparable graphics, polished mechanics and movie level voice acting/mocap cutscenes. I even picked up Mass Effect recently out of nostalgia but gave up fast because it just isn't as captivating as it was back when it was peak graphics.

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adlpz 3 days ago

Well this goes to show that, as some other commenter said, the gamer community (whatever that is) is indeed very fragmented.
I routinely re-play games like Diablo 2 or BG1/2 and I couldn't care less about graphics, voice acting or motion capture.

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BolexNOLA 3 days ago

> Absolutely - graphical improvements make the game more immersive for me
Exactly. Graphics are not the end all be all for assessing games, but it’s odd how quickly people handwave away graphics in a visual medium.

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- badsectoracula 2 days ago
  
  > it’s odd how quickly people handwave away graphics in a visual medium.
  There is a difference between graphics as in rendering (i.e. the technical side, how something gets rendered) and graphics as in aesthetics (i.e. visual styles, presentation, etc).
  The latter is important for games because it can be used to evoke some feel to the player (e.g. cartoony Mario games or dreadful Silent Hill games). The former however is not important by itself, its importance only comes as means to achieve the latter. When people handwave away graphics in games they handwave the misplaced focus on graphics-as-in-tech, not on graphics-as-in-aesthetics.
  
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- kbolino 3 days ago
  
  Maximal "realism" is neither the only nor even necessarily the best use of that medium.
  
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  BolexNOLA 3 days ago
  
  When did I say anything like that? When did anybody in this thread?
  
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badpun 3 days ago

For me, the better graphics, mocap etc., the stroger the uncanny valley feeling - i.e. I stop perceiving it as a video game, but instead see it as an incredibly bad movie.

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theshackleford 2 days ago

> I don't want to go back and replay the games I spent hundreds of hours in mid two thousands, like say NVN or Icewind Dale (never played BG 2). It's just not the same feeling now that I've played games with incomparable graphics, polished mechanics and movie level voice acting/mocap cutscenes. I even picked up Mass Effect recently out of nostalgia but gave up fast because it just isn't as captivating as it was back when it was peak graphics.
And yet many more have no such issue doing exactly this. Despite having a machine capable of the best graphics at the best resolution, I have exactly zero issues going back and playing older games.
Just in the past month alone with some time off for surgery I played and completed Quake, Heretic and Blood. All easily as good, fun and as compelling as modern titles, if not in some ways better.

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keyringlight 3 days ago

Two aspects I keep thinking about:

-How difficult it must be for the art/technical teams at game studios to figure out for all the detail they are capable of putting on screen how much of it will be appreciated by gamers. Essentially making sure that anything they're going to be budgeting significant amount of worker time to creating, gamers aren't going to run right past it and ignore or doesn't contribute meaningfully to 'more than the sum of its parts'.

-As much as technology is an enabler for art, alongside the install base issue how well does pursuing new methods fit how their studio is used to working, and is the payoff there if they spend time adapting. A lot of gaming business is about shipping product, and the studios concern is primarily about getting content to gamers than chasing tech as that is what lets their business continue, selling GPUs/consoles is another company's business.

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