Gaming

What I don't understand is why games look prettier but things like NPC AI (which is really path-finding and decision trees, not actual AI), interactivity of the game world, destructability of game objects - all those things are objectively worse than they have been in a game of 10-15 years ago (with some exceptions like RDR2).

How can a game like Starfield still have all the Bethesda jank but now the NPCs lack any kind of daily routine?

Most enemies in modern shooters barely know how to flank, compare that to something like F.E.A.R. which came out in 2006!

from the image it seems like you're expecting a fourth dimension in games now? I don't think you'd like the development cycle on that. miegakure is still on the way is it?

The problem as I see it is that there is an upper limit on how good any game can look graphically. You can't make a game that looks more realistic than literal reality, so any improvement is going to just approach that limit. (Barring direct brain interfacing that gives better info than the optical nerve)

Before, we started from a point that was so far removed from reality than practically anything would be an improvement. Like say "reality" is 10,000. Early games started at 10, then when we switched to 3D it was 1,000. That an enormous relative improvement, even if it's far from the max. But now your improvements are going from 8,000 to 8,500 and while it's still a big absolute improvement, it's relatively minor -- and you're never going to get a perfect 10,000 so the amount you can improve by gets smaller and smaller.

All that to say, the days of huge graphical leaps are over, but the marketing for video games acts like that's not the case. Hence all the buzzwords around new tech without much to show for it.

I don't mind the graphics that much, what really pisses me off is the lack of optimization and heavy reliance on frame gen.

I don't understand why developers and publishers aren't prioritizing spectacle games with simple graphics like TABS, mount and blade, or similar. Use modern processing power to just throw tons of shit on screen, make it totally chaotic and confusing. Huge battles are super entertaining.

There's no better generational leap than Monster Hunter Wilds, which looks like a PS2 game on its lowest settings and still chugs at 24fps on my PC.

This is what a remaster used to look like.

To be fair there isn't just graphics.

Something like Zelda Twilight princess HHD to Zelda Breath of the wild was a huge leap in just gameplay. (And also in graphics but that's not my point)

The question is whether "realism" was ever a good target. The best games are not the most realistic ones.

I would argue that late SNES era games look far better than their early 3d era follow ups

Let's compare two completely separate games to a game and a remaster.

Generational leaps then:

Good lord.

EDIT: That isn't even the Zero Dawn remaster. That is literally two still-image screenshots of Forbidden West on both platforms.

Good. Lord.

I mean, how much more photorealistic can you get? Regardless, the same game would look very different in 4K (real, not what consoles do) vs 1080p.

Kind of like smartphones. They all kind of blew up into this rectangular slab, and...

Nothing. It's all the same shit. I'm using a OnePlus 6T from 2018, and I think I'll have it easily for another 3 years. Things eventually just stagnate.

This is true of literally any technology. There are so many things that can be improved in the early stages that progress seems very fast. Over time, the industry finds most of the optimal ways of doing things and starts hitting diminishing returns on research & development.

The only way to break out of this cycle is to discover a paradigm shift that changes the overall structure of the industry and forces a rethinking of existing solutions.

The automobile is a very mature technology and is thus a great example of these trends. Cars have achieved optimal design and slowed to incremental progress multiple times, only to have the cycle broken by paradigm shifts. The most recent one is electrification.

Eventually we hit a limit to how round we could make car tires.

Games did teach me about diminishing returns though

Ironically, Zelda Link to the Past ran at 60fps, and Ocarina of Time ran at 20fps.

The same framerates are probably in the Horizon pictures below lol.

Now, Ocarina of Time had to run at 20fps because it had one of the biggest draw distances of any N64 game at the time. This was so the player could see to the other end of Hyrule Field, or other large spaces. They had to sacrifice framerate, but for the time it was totally worth the sacrifice.

Modern games sacrifice performance for an improvement so tiny that most people would not be able to tell unless they are sitting 2 feet from a large 4k screen.