Can graphics keep evolving? How? For how long?

[HoloDust]

IcaroRibeiro said:

zeldaring said:

That's crazy as kids we don't tend to be picky or over analyze things. Any game in Nes was fun as long as it had cool characters from my favorite cartoons. I was blown away by n64 it was the first 3d system I saw. I was blown away by street fighter alpha on playstation I was in country where we didn't have access to n64 or playstation. When I saw golden eye, wave race, and Mario 64 I was blown away like never before.  I got a dreamcast but it didn't blow me away until mgs2 and gt3 they blew me away with the lighting it looked like movie, then the last game was resident evil 4. Graphics are stunning now but you get to 37-40 nothing really blows you away anymore .

You don't need to over-analyze things to perceive quality. I was 7 to 12 years old when I played 5th and 6th gen consoles. By that time I watched Harry Potter movies, X Men movies and Star War movies. Computer generated Imagery was mainstream already, and after watching a movie the models in videogames definitely looked uglier to my kids eyes

I still played and enjoyed games, but I can't remember having any sort wow factor with graphics until 7th gen 

I find that, at least for me, it is combination of gameplay and actual graphics - as someone who grew up playing quite a few of actual 3D games at home, starting with C64 (which where all usually wireframe "rendered", with often atrocious frame rates in single digits), then Amiga 500 (which were usually flat-shaded, with, more often than not, bad framerates), seeing first textured games on PC in early 90s was a massive jump in buying into those worlds. The thing that is common for all those games was their first person nature - whether you were fighter pilot, space pirate or adventurer exploring ancient pyramid.

On the other side you had first person RPGs that had prerendered "3D" graphics (that were not 3D at all) that looked much, much nicer, but with fixed grid, which translated into "slide show" world, instead of continuous one of properly rendered 3D worlds. Seeing the two combined for the first time in Ultima Underworld was a mindblowing experience, as well as shooting Nazis in Wolfenstein 3D after that, all the way to TES Arena for full open world 3D RPG - that freedom of movement from first person POV, with visuals that finally started to resemble, however primitively, actual world, instead of colored polygons, was a real gamechanger.

But fast forward to somewhere around 2000, and give me isometric fully 3D real-time rendered RPG like Soulbringer, or even 2 years later, Neverwinter Nights, which was Bioware's next big thing, and I am utterly disappointed with their real-time 3D visuals compared to something like prerendered 3D Baldur's Gate 1/2, cause gameplay in those games is not dependent on having absolute 3D freedom, thus making those primitive real-time 3D visuals only detrimental to overall experience.

Last edited by HoloDust - on 08 August 2024