I think it's more the fact that games like Witcher 3 and Bloodborne are still discussed so much despite being a decade old now. Just kind of crazy 10 years have passed already.

[–] caut_R 19 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It‘s also crazy how they‘ve aged. Do top games nowadays look better? Yes. Do they look a decade better, though?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's the diminishing returns on additional processing power enabling them to look better, e.g. instead of unlocking entirely new effects that were obviously missing from games before, they're just getting slightly more accurate. Also gpu prices inflated by crypto and AI mean top of the line gpus are less available in both PC and consoles, so it's not worth it to develop a game that mainly targets top end hardware.

[–] bassomitron 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Agreed for the most part, but that's not really the gaming industry's fault. I will say environmental graphics (e.g. ambient details, texture depth, lighting, amount of miscellaneous background and ground clutter density) have gotten much better. If you play The original W3 (before the official "remake" and/or mods), it definitely looks very aged versus something like Black Myth Wukong or Cyberpunk 2077. Bloodborne even more so (although, I'd argue that game's graphics were never its strong point to begin with, but it did have excellent art direction, as From's games always tend to have).

That being said, they all have aged pretty well for the most part. And the difference between a game made in 2000 vs 2010 is definitely a way bigger difference than something made in 2010 vs 2020.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

It's significant because in those 10 short years, a significant portion of the talent left the industry for greener pastures. When you mix genius level IQ people, definitely in the spectrum, with corporate types pushing line go up mentality and career drones using thought police tactics to progress their careers, while having 0 creativity, you get the current brand of AAA games from Western developers, aka, trash. They are more worried with the game's response on xitter than if the game is fun...

[–] Renacles 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You do realize we got Baldurs Gate 3 in the last few years, right?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Baldur's Gate 3 is a AA game from Larian, a Belgian developer which is private and not a public company traded in the stock market.

[–] bassomitron 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

BG3 is not an AA game, lol. The A's simply mean budget, and BG3 had a budget of over $100 million.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Yes, it's totally normal for AAA (and Ubi AAAA) games to enter early access before full release to finance development post ACT I... Yes, BG3 is totally a AAA game and Larian a AAA studio... FML! One can't look exclusively at budget, especially when most of it went into development and not marketing.

[–] bassomitron 2 points 2 days ago

That's literally what AAA means...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry)

And to think Larian is some small company is also silly. It has over 400 employees and 7 offices. It's privately owned, yes, but it hasn't been an AA studio since the success of Divinity Original Sin 2 and most definitely not since the massive success of BG3.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larian_Studios