I tend to prefer early 2000s 3D graphics over the modern stuff anyway. There was plenty of capability to work with, and it seemed like the game designers did a much better job of giving a game a "feel." There was also much more done creatively with lighting and darkness and my favorite how many games liked to make things like breakables and loose objects. Think something like Half-Life 2 or F.E.A.R. where you walk around carelessly and bump into things and it goes flying off a shelf etc.
Now, they just go crazy with their ugly character models and realistic frizzy hair movement but the world is always so "same" feeling and very rigid.
Yeah, obviously it would be great to have my cake and eat it too, but in my opinion it is better to have decent graphics but spend the lion's share of budget on other things than to have amazing state of the art graphics and skimp on other shit.
One of the reasons I like anime-stylized RPG games so much. Anime paperdolls are super-cheap to make, require minimal animation budget, and yet are also highly expressive and descriptive of how the character "should" look.
Cost-benefit-wise, they're such an obvious choice to make, that it makes you wonder about the games that choose to NOT do them. Why waste that much budget?
Every gamer: "go back! Go back! It was better before!"
And that's why everyone if they're not playing indie, are playing older games.
I tend to prefer early 2000s 3D graphics over the modern stuff anyway. There was plenty of capability to work with, and it seemed like the game designers did a much better job of giving a game a "feel." There was also much more done creatively with lighting and darkness and my favorite how many games liked to make things like breakables and loose objects. Think something like Half-Life 2 or F.E.A.R. where you walk around carelessly and bump into things and it goes flying off a shelf etc.
Now, they just go crazy with their ugly character models and realistic frizzy hair movement but the world is always so "same" feeling and very rigid.
Yeah, obviously it would be great to have my cake and eat it too, but in my opinion it is better to have decent graphics but spend the lion's share of budget on other things than to have amazing state of the art graphics and skimp on other shit.
Yup. I love excellent graphics, but if the game is good, as long as the graphics aren't ass, that's better than a bland game with top notch graphics.
But imagine if the heart that went into older games was still going into modern AAA games. We really could be having our cake and eating it too.
One of the reasons I like anime-stylized RPG games so much. Anime paperdolls are super-cheap to make, require minimal animation budget, and yet are also highly expressive and descriptive of how the character "should" look.
Cost-benefit-wise, they're such an obvious choice to make, that it makes you wonder about the games that choose to NOT do them. Why waste that much budget?