Often times better graphics make a game worse because they're at the expense of everything else, while also making the community smaller because most people can't run it.

Yes, I'm still slightly salty about the train wreck that KSP 2 turned out to be.

Hi-Fi Rush is a perfect example of how a game should be It had all the details you want in a game to make it look awesome but the style and art was paid close detail

(https://store.steampowered.com/app/1817230/HiFi_RUSH/)

I think I'll still be fuming about KSP2 for a long time. I don't know why I let myself have any hope it'd be good given the development history but I still bought (and returned) it on launch.

KSP didn't deserve that.

Yeah. In contrast to the creativity applied to Tears of the Kingdom that took the framework of Breath of the Wild and extended it majestically, KSP2 is a brazen & soulless cash grab that under delivers under the guise of "Early Access".

It never fails to amaze me how quickly the hate train starts or how fast it gets going when it comes time to blame technical artists for the shortcoming of others, even though they are arguably the best in the industry at reliably accomplishing amazing deeply technical feats that deliver joy.

I'm glad I figured this out before spending much time going down that path, but I still know people who did, they're the smartest people I know, and it always frustrates me to watch critics line up around the block to take a shit on them, blaming them for problems they didn't cause and snubbing them for accomplishments that they did.

To be fair, I don't think anybody is undermining the effort/ingenuity some of these technical artists/engineers have. Its moreso the overwhelming focus of AAA game studios on this over gameplay.

These artists/engineers have accomplished absolutely amazing things and really pushed the limits. But somewhat ironically... gameplay/story is still king when it comes to 'games.

I will say, when a game does blend the two, they are usually highly applauded, it just rarely happens nowadays that a game has both very good graphics, and very good gameplay.

You're not being fair, you're making excuses. I was responding to a post that literally said "better graphics make a game worse."

Bad writing and bad mechanics can absolutely ruin a game far beyond the ability of art to compensate -- but it's both absurd and cruel to blame this on art.

I don't think you are representing the original fairly, they said

"often ... because they're at the expense of everything else,"

Which seems plausible although "often" may be harsh. Too high a proportion of your budget on art is rarely going to end up somewhere good, unless the art is the main point. There does seem to be a bit of a AAA arms race here, which isn't necessarily a net gain.

I think you're forgetting what actually makes a game at its core. What separates the medium from others are roughly these things: interaction, objectives, mechanics, feedback, challenge.

The art department can make the feedback better, the objectives clearer, the interaction easier, but fundamentally you can have a game without any art at all (see dwarf fortress, zork, etc.) and have it be a game, whereas a bunch of art assets by themselves don't a game make.

Nowadays it's all about marketing material and lying to people, so having good game art is prerequisite for great prerendered trailers that will drive preorders. But when you allocate all your budget to art, you don't end up with a game, you end up with false promises.

I think it is odd too. Why do people care?

It seems like the reasonable response to a product you dont like is to not buy it and then ignore it. Why do people get fixated, angry, and shit on products they dont like.

It's not odd, it's the result of false marketing and frankly very much the direct fault of publishers. They spend an untold amount on promotional campaigns showing prerendered footage, gameplay running on workstations with unrealistic specs, and buy endorsements. All together that makes people invested and makes them expect too much. It's very easy to feel lied to and betrayed when the final result doesn't even closely live up to the promises. It's even worse for sequels, as they inevitably get compared to the original by its fans.

If the promotion wasn't false advertising there would be no backlash and people would act rationally, as you say. Nobody hates on something they've never seen before unless somebody tells them to expect more than they'll get.

Thanks for adding some clarity. I can understand a complain about false advertising. I thought a major part of the complaint was game development focusing on graphics opposed to gameplay, which makes less sense to me.

I still don't get buying a game primarily for the graphics without looking at representative gameplay. I thought it was generally understood that promos and ads would show the best.

To be fair, KSP2 landed in early access only very recently. No one has claimed it is a finished and polished game.

KSP2 is at about the same point KSP was at this point in the development cycle.

KSP ended up being great, but it was a buggy, feature-incomplete mess at the beginning. When first entered early access, getting into space was one of two major accomplishments, the other being getting into orbit without the game crashing.

typical industry cycles. money is dumb and spending money is the first lever they trigger.. causing inflation and then complaints.

life, art .. is complex and you need to cultivate, nurture people caring about making beautiful complex subtle things.

Good graphics don't save a lame game. It at most improves an already good one.

A great game on the other hand cam have outdated graphics no problem. People will still love it.

The budget and scale of totk is triple A. Also the amount of art in totk is triple A levels.

Totk is your classic AAA game it just was programmed for older hardware.

>more detail doesn't make a game better

Have you played red dead redemption 2? The detail elevates the game to one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.

> > more detail doesn't make a game better

> Have you played red dead redemption 2? The detail elevates the game to one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.

Absolutely. Graphics do have their place, but most games don’t need to be that extreme level of detail. For one, I played RDR2 on a stock PS4 and the level of detail and immersion was incredible, despite the hardware already being underpowered by the time RDR2 was released. Ie you can achieve the level of immersion and masterpiece without pushing the limits of graphics.

And the most successful game ever is still minecraft.

As someone that first played it on a PS4 and then again recently on a maxed out PC, I can confidently say the immersion was superior on the better machine. In fact, I was salty that I first experienced it on such a gimped device.

Yeah, I have a bit of regret first playing the Witness on an hd520 then PS4 then rtx2060 :/.

I have the exact opposite experience when I get to play a game again with better graphics. It's like I get to experience it all over again, which is great

Good for you if have the time to replay the same game with different graphics. I don't, which sucks and which is why I'd rather play if first with best graphics.

Yes, RDR2 is closer to a simulation than a game, and fidelity matters.

Rockstar knows their community. They spent around $1 in marketing for every $1 spent on the development of the game itself, totalling around $500mil, and the game paid for itself opening weekend with over $700mil in sales.

The studio has managed to master this sort of high-fidelity development while fully recuperating all costs, and fostering an incredibly loyal fan base. (Personal data point; replayed every single Rockstar title last year)

You cannot criticize such a company for delivering high-fidelity projects and pushing the edge. (You can criticize their working environment, however)

And without such companies blazing ahead, we wouldn't be currently undergoing a revolutionary phase in tech history as we explore the power of massively-parallel, computationally-intensive AI algorithms.

Superior, sure. I’m not saying that better graphics aren’t, well, better.

But I am saying that it’s unnecessary for a deep immersive experience. I was equally immersed 20 years ago playing Gothic and Oblivion as I am playing recent games, graphically speaking. IMHO the differences only become apparent if you play the same game with different visuals, as you did playing RDR2 on PS4 and again on PC.

It’s also worth remembering that the vast majority of players also don’t have access to a maxed out PC.

No video game has made it to the other side of the uncanny Valley. That's the trouble with realism.

There is one coming out I think called Unrecorded which to me looks quiet uncanny and close to actual body cam footage / realism. It's in dev anyways.

And the control schemes drag it back down into the quagmire of unplayable mess despite all that work. An excellent example of the broader point about development focus.

I've never noticed this, but I also play on the PC.

The only control stuff I don't like is fabricating arrows, notching ammo, cooking food, etc. But that's not clunky, it's just time consuming. It's also optional, so I just don't bother.

The clunky controls of rockstar games is intentional! They think it's "more immersive" for your character to just not do what you want it to do.

Saints Row 4 is better than GTA 5, change my mind.

Fundamentally different games, Saints Row 4 is silly sci-fi. I personally enjoyed it more.

I felt the actual game flowed better, GTA is all about playing in a sandbox and seeing all the various things you can do.

Saints Row is more of a straight up action game.

At some point they reacted to the "murder simulator" hysteria by pivoting from action games to sims.

I played on PC. Mouse and keyboard. The controls were excellent.

We're just not going to agree on that. I don't think it's a good game and a lot of it comes down to controls, but it isn't just that.

I picked up that game and put it down an hour later because the detail of the character movement and how tedious it is to climb a ladder or do anything killed the fun.

I played Demon Souls and Dark Souls and Elden Ring. The controls of RDR2 are like the opposite of those games, clunky and imprecise and full of unneeded animation. Souls has very tight mechanics in comparison

Not really.

Aiming and shooting is far more precise in red dead. Combat controls are instantaneous. You fire your gun, the bullet comes out and goes in a straight line towards an enemy on every click. You can headshot an entire gang of people no issue in red dead if you used PC controls.

Dark souls has delay. Not precision at all. Every movement is unresponsive and the point of those games is to get used to the delays and imprecision. You rapidly press hit 3 times in dark souls your character hits maybe once. In red dead that's 3 shots with the pistol.

Rdr2 movement outside of combat is built for immersion. As in the delays are variable based realistically off the environment. The combat however is by far significantly more precise then any dark souls game and as a result is actually the easier game.

What initially "wow"s me about a game is how beautiful it is. What keeps me coming back to it time and time again, is how well put together it is as a whole.

Not only are games with movie-like graphics expensive to make, they are often hardly playable. Even less replayable.

Often, you can't tell what is that you're supposed to be looking at in order to advance or understand a gameplay mechanic.

I want to play a game. If I wanted to watch a movie, I would buy or stream a movie.

I'm not sure what your point is other than complaining.

It is impressive to make a great game with broad appeal. It isn't easy or trivial to do and companies that get it right should be recognized with good reputation and customers. I haven't heard other Studios whine and cry, but if they do it's not my problem so I don't care or mind if they do.

Nobody is forced to buy bad games, so I don't really understand the complaint there.

I agree with your general point but I don't think Tears of the Kingdom is a good example of it.

They have clearly poured a mountain of design and engineering effort into squeezing every last drop of graphic fidelity and art out of the Switch. It looks really really good. Some of that is having the wisdom to choose an art style that works well on the Switch—a little cel-shaded, not a ton of texture detail. But, also, they really are getting as much detail and graphic complexity as they possibly can out of that little machine.

This isn't some cheap 2D pixel art game that spent their whole budget on game mechanics. It's a AAA game that maxed out their budget along every single axis. They just happened to target hardware with lower specs.

Yeah honestly they’ve exceeded what the Switch can do at this point and areas of the game drop to 20 fps. The game wouldn’t be worse at 60. 30 is widely viewed as the bare minimum.

Nintendo is a deeply Japanese company, and in Japanese animation, frame rate can be heavily deprioritized. If they have a limited budget, and have to choose between better art/design, or better frame rate, they'll choose the art every time.

Nintendo also clings closely to its roots as a toy manufacturer - their primary goal is to build games that are fun to play.

It shouldn't be surprising that their focus on creating beautiful, fun games resonates deeply with the wider populace. I do notice the framerate occasionally dip during complex scenes, but it's such a wonderfully designed game that I don't really care.

The sales agree with you, but none of the art or design choices get worse by having hardware that won't drop frames to that degree. I realize they do this every console generation, but since they're no longer passing along the savings to the consumer, I'm not going to keep apologizing for them.

I expect new hardware from Nintendo in 2024 or 2025. The immense sales of the Switch and the pandemic have kept it around longer than it probably was originally planned for.

It just keeps selling though. Sales have dipped, but not so much that Nintendo is in any hurry.

I expect new hardware in 2023, not because of how powerful the current chipset is or is not, but because Nintendo is very likely losing a massive percentage of sales to emulators now.

How many units would the game have sold if Yuzu/Ryujinx didn’t exist? It’s even more jarring when you’re a paying consumer running the game at 720p20 and someone else can quite easily download switch games for “free” and play a much better 4K60 unofficial PC version.

Those videos are all over YouTube and have been for a couple of years now. I’d always assumed Nintendo was just trying to get TOTK out the door, give it time to sell, then announce the new system with a new Mario later in the year.

Emulators are for a very small niche audience of players, most of whom simply wouldn't buy the Switch.

Also, their own quarterly reports and expectations confirm they aren't launching new hardware anytime soon.

Sales are probably because they've sold so many switches and people don't have a choice. What could be considered a AAA game come out rarely on the switch Nintendo's biggest win was allowing indie games on the platform, without them people would realise how few games Nintendo actually makes.

They sold so many switches because of nostalgia and convenience/form factor reasons - switch is the only console in that form factor

They also squeeze every single drop from the switch. Look at the new cloud particle system for example, missing in botw but adding gorgeous atmosphere in this one. That is coded by people who deeply care about performance and memory usage. Not the ones slinging about electron and building apps like Slack.

Games aren't anime. Having a lower framerate means you will be making more mistakes, especially in combat. Besides, a sudden drop in frames just looks bad.

No. Mario Kart, Splatoon, Yoshi, Smash, Metroid Dread etc. are optimized for 60FPS. It's just they can't do the same with an open world game, so it stops becoming a priority.

But that's literally just the lifecycle of every console pretty much ever. Gets released and devs don't focus on optimising since it has more power than previous generation. Then by the end of the gen, devs know the console inside out and are using all sorts of crazy tricks to improve performance. Devs build on top of what we've built before.

> not play the exact game they bought a decade ago with more detailed scenes, and more detail doesn't make a game better

Except in the case of this Zelda sequel you sort of are playing the exact same game you bought 5 years ago, and with little/no improvement to detail, for an even higher price (69.99)... While I've bought it and am enjoying it, its hardly some huge shift in any way (technical, gameplay or story) from BOTW, and virtually all the mechanics are identical. I still think it worthy of great reviews to be clear, but it is not some genre shaking release.

> While I've bought it and am enjoying it, its hardly some huge shift in any way (technical, gameplay or story)

You have got to be kidding.

The ability to build machines by connecting basically anything to anything is a very impressive mechanic both from a gameplay perspective and from a technical perspective. The fact that they built this to run this nicely on an 8 year old tablet is frankly incredible.

The fact you can jump from the sky and dive to the underworld without pause is impressive as heck too.

Even the little ability to jump through a ceiling to travel upwards to the nearest place to stand is incredible, considering you can do it anywhere that has a ceiling in range. That mechanic is honestly mind blowing from a technical perspective imo.

> You have got to be kidding.

Why? play the two games side by side - there is a truly enormous amount of gameplay and visual overlap.

> The ability to build machines by connecting basically anything to anything is a very impressive mechanic both from a gameplay perspective and from a technical perspective. The fact that they built this to run this nicely on an 8 year old tablet is frankly incredible.

Many reviews (and myself!) find this addition to be cool but shallow? Also, while cool, its not technically mega avant garde here- "Banjo Kazooie nuts and bolts" attempted similar thing back in 2008.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjo-Kazooie:_Nuts_%26_Bolts

> Even the little ability to jump through a ceiling to travel upwards to the nearest place to stand is incredible, considering you can do it anywhere that has a ceiling in range. That mechanic is honestly mind blowing from a technical perspective imo.

I found this to be the least impressive of all Link's new abilities personally, and fail to see it in terms of being some unreal technical breakthrough? It's literally just a jump through the surface directly above the player's head.

> I found this to be the least impressive of all Link's new abilities personally, and fail to see it in terms of being some unreal technical breakthrough? It's literally just a jump through the surface directly above the player's head.

Implementing Jumping through one-way platforms is easy.

Implementing Jumping through anything, no matter how deep, and detecting the first safe place for him to stand, as well as having the ability to back out at any time to return to your original position, especially in a huge open world game like this? I'd say it's pretty technically impressive. Especially how fast it loads when showing the little upwards swimming animation.

You can use this ability in the underground in some places to pop up anywhere on the overworld. From the bottom of the world to the highest mountain. It's way more impressive than just jumping through things.

> Many reviews (and myself!) find this addition to be cool but shallow? Also, while cool, its not technically mega avant garde here- "Banjo Kazooie nuts and bolts" attempted similar thing back in 2008.

I never said it was some unique thing no one has ever done before. But it's definitely not shallow, you only have to look for videos showing the crazy things people are building to see how it's mechanically super deep. I never played Banjo Kazooie but Im guessing it didn't have nearly the level of physics simulation, or the number of parts that are usable, or anywhere near the size of world that Zelda has. That's why it is technically impressive. Not just the mechanic, but the context that the mechanic is in.

> Implementing Jumping through anything, no matter how deep, and detecting the first safe place for him to stand, as well as having the ability to back out at any time to return to your original position, especially in a huge open world game like this? I'd say it's pretty technically impressive. Especially how fast it loads when showing the little upwards swimming animation.

Its 2023, if this blows you away wait until you see what else even 8 year old computers can do...

> But it's definitely not shallow, you only have to look for videos showing the crazy things people are building to see how it's mechanically super deep.

Building things for the sake of building is not really adding depth to the "game" as such, the mechanic contributes very little to the gameplay of the game. Indeed, you can almost completely avoid it save for a handful of mandatory sections. IMO, the best mechanics add depth to the gameplay and make the whole game richer, which this feature doesn't really do, its a very ancillary feature to the game.

FWIW, the part list on nuts and bolts was pretty good, and had great physics while being a core conceit of the game.

> https://banjokazooie.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_parts

> Its 2023, if this blows you away wait until you see what else even 8 year old computers can do...

Like what? Another generic Sony open world game? If this sort of thing was so easy, why don't other AAA studios make anything remotely as interesting?

> which this feature doesn't really do, its a very ancillary feature to the game

This is honestly not even close to true. I'm not even sure you're playing the same game as me.

You can't solve 90% of the puzzles in this game without engaging heavily with the new mechanic. Hell, there's honestly large parts of the world you cannot traverse without it either. You can't reach large parts of the Sky without it for instance.

I genuinely don't know how you could play this game and come away thinking it doesn't do anything very interesting mechanically or technically.

That’s the secret, they haven’t played it. If someone like that cannot see the technical wizardry done to make Tears run this smoothly with its exquisite set of parlour tricks, and has the gall to believe the game is the same as Breath, it’s because they haven’t really paid attention and think the reused map is the whole story.

And the whole thing about Kazooie having done it before, keep in mind that game was a giant failure. It wasn’t fun. Nintendo managed to make building vehicles and contraptions fun!

I'm literally playing it on my couch right now, but ok! With 10m copies sold, half this thread has probably played it.

> It wasn’t fun.

Banjo is sitting pretty sweet on a metacritic score of 79, so some folks certainly did like it.

Generally speaking, a lot of Nintendo's IP games are rehashing the same play concepts/stories in different ways over the last 3 decades. There's nothing wrong with that, just pointing out that this is their MO. They are in a "forever" business for gaming, company has been around since 1889.

So the new Zelda game being similar to the N-1 Zelda game is exactly what they do. I remember defeating similar enemies in the original Zelda game, finding shrines to build health up, wandering a forest looking for hidden stuff. Its fun but the game concepts haven't changed much.

> spending a billion dollars on a thousand artists so that every tree can have ten times as many polygons and each texture is 16kX16k

Absolute realism is a tedious goal.

Recently I found good stuff actually sell the most in game industry, you have stuff like Elden Ring and Legend of Zelda, in indie space you have stuff like Pizza Tower, all selling huge. I wonder if big studios that makes safe copy 3As will actually think about innovation as an element to maximize profit.

Also realistic graphic != good graphics, we need more stylized graphics like these recent 2 Zelda titles! It's a shame we already lost the great graphics of the 3ds era Pokemon (which I think is peak cell shading aesthetics) to a generic 3d look of recent titles.

Graphics don't impact gameplay, but this game really does look flat-out bad on a full-sized TV or monitor. Using FSR1 upscaling the realtime shadows (required for dynamic time of day) all "crawl", like a constant flicker in any motion, and it's really distracting. Level of detail "clicks" in when you're 20 feet away from objects, also extremely noticeable. And beyond the visual issues, it also suffers from a poor framerate in many areas. It can't even hit 30fps all the time.

It's true that gameplay trumps all, and it definitely didn't push me off the (excellent) game, but the Switch hardware really _substantially_ impacts the experience.

I play ToTK on an emulator at 60fps ultrawide, and the experience is night and day vs the Switch. Definitely an incredible game but I think the Switch is its biggest flaw

This is a false dichotomy. Many games “focus on game design” and do not achieve success.

The other day I was playing Super Mario World, I didn't play since the nineties, and wow, they where capable to do so much with so little, from the graphics to the sound, the game feels so good, I was in love

I just wiped the dust of the SNES and an old tube tv today and played Super Mario World. It is such a masterpiece!

Imagine AAA studios investing all their energy on creative ideas, gameplay innovation and fun experiences for a second. What would that do to indie developers and small studios?

Sure graphics gives diminishing returns, but I've played ToTK @ 60fps on an emulator. It's significantly better than a Switch @ 30fps, and personally I think the Switch's hardware is ToTK's biggest flaw