I miss the days of pushing raw graphics

[Borghir]

I think games are still pushing graphical boundaries both on consoles and PC. RDR2 looks absolutely fantastic on PS4 and PC games now often have HD res texture packs for the people with high end graphic cards. In my opinion graphics are not the major selling points anymore. We're getting to a point where everything looks good already. Most games have motion blur, ambient occlusion, real-time shadows and lighting etc. by default. I remember seeing the trailer for the first Splinter Cell where they were showing off real time shadows being cast on the character. I was blown away!
The same thing happened with physics. When Half-Life 2 showed of their physics engine people went bonkers, but now it's common. it's like diminishing returns where it becomes more and more difficult to reach true realism.

[Aidy]

The other thing to bear in mind is that in the distant past the coders did all the graphics too. They would have a model (a spaceship or whatever) and would have to apply a transformation matrix to that model to move it's vertices to the right orientation and distance, then it needs to work out what faces were visible and what should be culled,

then more transformations were needed to convert the points in 3d space to 2d space for display

. That's your "Elite" level graphics. As PCs got more powerful they were then able to fill the faces with a colour where the colour could change depending on it's relation to a light source. As PCs got even more powerful they were able to additionally transform 2d textures onto the faces of the models, and with even more power additional transformations\mappers\shaders could be applied to those textures for dynamic lighting.

These days all of that work is done by graphics cards which aren't programmed against directly, instead games use APIs like Direct3D or OpenGL and the graphics cards then realise those APIs, so there isn't a lot games devs *can* do to push the hardware. They need to wait for the next iteration of graphics card and APIs and see what features it has and how those features can be leveraged for better graphics, and I think the likes of nvidia allow development of custom shaders etc giving games devs the ability to get a more custom look to their game.

[isturbo1984]

Said the anime avatar. I played and beat 42 games this year. None of them, I'd consider "shitty." Only a handful were mediocre. Most of them I'd describe as good, great or sublime. How many games did you beat this year, just curious?

[isturbo1984]

When the market is dominated by two Japanese systems, one console and one handheld... the emphasis on graphics tends to be toned down.

[Aerrae]

I miss the days when I was excited for more than one or two games a year. Because they were GOOD.

Lots of pretty games are boring as hell. Oh sure. I can walk around the world for a while and enjoy it but I'm not DOING anything. Things are happening to people I don't care about because they're poorly developed, the world isn't built, and the plot is so cliche and dry I could find fresher material from a desiccated Egyptian Pharaoh.

[Garrett]

I couldn't care less about pushing the boundaries of graphics as long as basic boundaries of tech remain unbroken for the sake of graphics. If it's a choice between increasing graphical quality and eliminating loading zones when moving from an open world into an indoor location, the latter is the only choice. True 3d open world games have existed for two decades and they still haven't gotten past this. If it's a choice between increasing the visual quality of lighting and the elimination of static pre-baked light maps in exchange for full dynamic lighting, then full dynamic it is. There really is no excuse for invulnerable light bulbs in AAA anymore. When these things that have been done over a decade ago in very few games have been implemented and optimized, then you can start pushing other graphical boundaries.

There is one choice that is between graphics, and gameplay+graphics and developers seem to insist on choosing only the graphics because it's much easier. AAA games need to start attempting to seamlessly tie player control to dynamic animations with the visuals having no influence over the control. Animations need to be there to add flavor to what the player is doing, they shouldn't be there to narrowly dictate what actions are possible with the player desperately trying to work around them to make the character do vaguely what they want.

For example the Assassin's Creed games are just animation showcases where the player can give broad suggestions as to what the character maybe should attempt to do and the game then makes a guess as to what the player actually wants. -Which ends up being right about 60% of the time. No success ends up being the player's accomplishment and every failure ends up being the game's fault. It's like the opposite of entertainment. Half-Life has no movement animations, so every frame of character action corresponds to precise player input. You can congratulate yourself for a job well done and laugh at yourself for making stupid mistakes. Then there's F.E.A.R, which has precise player input, but with dynamic animations attempting to follow. Works pretty good. Every game should do this.

[Ma Ma G47]

I agree. 'Realistic' graphics can only come so close to reality before we can't tell the difference, but artistically creative graphics do not have limits on how beautiful they can be. That and decent gameplay is a necessity.

[Ma Ma G47]

I can recall around the time I built my first PC, a game called Crysis was the big fish that everybody strove to be able to play even on moderate detail on their PCs. One of the great things about Crysis was that it had the fun gameplay to back it up when you finally got it running, which made the satisfaction of completing a rig that much sweeter. There was definitely a special sense of accomplishment from witnessing a PC you built push the boundaries of graphics.

On the same token however, I think good gameplay needs to go hand-in-hand with superb graphics, as graphics alone do not maketh the game. I can't update my nVidia drivers these days without getting blasted my promos for ray tracing in Battlefield V, a game with pretty good graphics for today's standards, but the fun-factor is mediocre at best for me.

Meanwhile, this discussion reminds me of this snippet from Nintendo Power on a comparison of graphics between Castlevania for N64 and Symphony of the Night for PS1. The N64 version, though it was cutting-edge full 3D at the time, has been largely forgotten; meanwhile SotN has gone on to become one of the greatest games of all time.

[Saskia]

I think back in those days when game developers were constantly trying to push graphical boundaries was a time when video games were mostly played by actual gamers and computer nerds who usually upgraded their hardware fairly often.
Now that video gaming has become so mainstream and 'accessible', I think game developers are shifting their priorities to the average consumer who most likely don't have a beastly gaming machine.

Personally though, I'll take good gameplay over good graphics anyday. Games that have more artfully stylised graphics, rather than realistic graphics, tend to age better as well.

[Phabe Jewell]

As for me, I'm more concerned with consistent animated movements than Realistic Graphics these days, just seeing stiff animation like the mass effect series and the Fallout series really bother me.

[R.U.S.E]

I think a simple answer to this is that because we pushed so hard for so long, It's become easier (and cheaper) to sell a game through other methods such as soundtrack and gameplay.

[Inkdipper]

Shadow of the Tomb Raider did a pretty decent job at pushing my hardware. Has a great benchmarking tool baked into the game that I frequently reference for stress testing. Monster Hunter World looks pretty good (CPU hog), but I wish they would have released a high res texture pack to go with it. But yeah really any game where you can crank up the foliage and LOD is gona get me full immersed. There's a place for both stylized graphics and AAA world building. I love my indie games and love to see devs make a beautiful game on a shoestring budget. I think, more importantly, it comes down to the game itself and whether the art fits the tone and theme properly.

[fenrif]

There are some very graphically intensive games being released now - Red Dead, God of War, and - despite its flaws - Battlefield 5.

We even have a console on the market that's regularly pushed as "the most powerful console ever."

You don't see as much of the "graphics wars" anymore, though, simply because we've reached the law of diminishing returns.

I don't think you can really call console exclusives graphics intensive.

I agree about the diminishing returns though. It's long gone past the point of graphics actually mattering to the gameplay, so they're no longer relevant to me anymore. In fact with certain games I'm left wishing for slightly less good graphics if only to avoid the uncanney valley effect with the characters. It's often said (and indeed has been in this very thread) that limitations induce creativity. But it's also true that limitations can cover up deficiencies. Programmers often aren't the best artists, and some games are better with no art rather than bad art.

[Matcam89]

Graphics are nice and do provide some enjoyment the first time you boot up a graphically stunning game and your mesmerized by every blade of grass and gravel piece you can pick out fades quickly when the gameplay and story is lacking.

my favorite game of all time “Super Power2” is essentially a map of earth and a UI hiding what is probably some excel document lol but what made that game great was the gameplay with a community of good gamers that role played their nation. Such a great time

[PriestTroit]

I never really put much stock into graphics. For me it's only a real bonus when the graphics allow better details in things like the gun you're using or whatever. Never much cared about how realistic the characters look.

Meh.