Biggest Graphical Evolution in a gen for a franchise

[Mr Puggsly]

Pemalite said:

Mr Puggsly said:

SMB is basically just improved sprites. While Halo 4 is much better lighting, they added realistic motion capture faces, higher poly models, etc.

I see greater gains in 3D games over 2D games. However, Phantasy Star saw huge improvements throughout the Sega Genesis's life.

Not all models were higher quality in Halo 4 (I.E. Environment stuff weren't always.). And in some aspects Halo 3's lighting was actually superior, albeit more expensive, Halo 4 relied on a ton of baked, cheap details.
In general though... Halo 4 was a significant step up over Halo 3 visually if you account for the *entire* presentation on offer.

In general, the 7th gen probably takes the cake for most of these "graphics evolution" comparisons due to how long that console generation was and how creative developers had to get to one-up their previous efforts on the visual front.

There are benefits to baked lighting though, while its cheaper on resources it can deliver an overall more polished presentation. Halo 3 even sacrificed on resolution so the game has pixelated and blurry presentation compared to Halo 4. Overall Halo 4 is a much better looking game and the superior assets is most evident in MCC.

While previous gens didn't get the same treatment of AAA software as long, I'd argue 7th gen saw massive improvements in just a few years. For example, games like Gears of War, Bioshock, CoD4, Mass Effect 2, AC, UT3, GTAIV and others showed amazing use of the hardware just a few years into the generation.