Anyone else think that older games look better than newer ones...

Anyone else think that older games look better than newer ones? Newer games aim for a more realistic look that results in a more convuluted and uninteresting aesthetic.
Post proof that older games still look really good

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Really depends on the game, but in general? I agree.

It's not exactly because modern games try to look "more realistic", it's just that they have shitty art directing in general. Combine this with outsourced visual assets and over-doze of shitty screen filters, and you got yourself an eye-cancer mess.

>tfw this 13 years old PS2 game looks better than most AAA shit today.

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>TW1
>2007
how's that an "older game" exactly? Jesus.

Nearly 10 years old senpai

Motherfucka you just answered your own question. That's a fucking decade ago.

Barely nothing's changed after 2007.

How about some 15 years old titles?

>tfw people talk about "ten years ago", you still think of late 1990s
>tfw 7th console gen's soon considered "retro"

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I do miss games like Medievil and crash.

SH games are one of the few good examples where older graphics actually can add to the experience.

It's still the amazing audio-work of Akira Yamaoka that really creates the haunting atmosphere. The well done visual art just compliments it further.

Totally. Witcher 3 is a particularly grim example of this. They went for the style of sober realism that admittedly looks great but is ultimately boring. If you create a realistic windblown hellhole where people canonically hate being that isn't going to be a fun place for a game.

The new expansion sort of rectified this by taking a bit more fantastical approach and making a zone where people can live without wishing they could just die already.

If you think that game looks better than newer games you are retarded. That looks like I am playing a modern game without my glasses on while spinning.

>he's talking about the quality of the screenshot instead of the quality of the game
lol
I agree, OP. I remember back in 2008 when I couldn't run Oblivion on my laptop but could run Jedi Knight perfectly fine, and Jedi Knight was more visually pleasing anyway. Made me wonder why the 7th gen was so focused on overcomplicating graphics without adding to the experience

>sunset makes the world orange

when will this meme die

Stylized unrealistic games are timeless but I don't know why you'd pick W1. Although a fantasy setting it was still going for realistic graphics for its time and everything in it just looks ugly in current year.

>he's talking about the quality of the screenshot instead of the quality of the game
Literally what? This thread is about visuals, not "muh good old gaems".

There is too much clutter in some games today, that feels really tiring for my eyes sometimes.

>Newer games aim for a more realistic look that results in a more convoluted and uninteresting aesthetic

Whereas older games...?

that retards criticism of the OP pic has nothing to do with the artistic design or the technical competence of the game but rather the clarity of the screenshot. he is retarded
when god changes the color of the sun IRL

Older games look better because they look like games, new shit just looks too real.

older games look like video games and they're damn good at doing it
Quake III Engine/Source games I think were the peak of this

Cryengine is what started the realism fad, then Unreal Engine III produced almost nothing but ugly games and it's been downhill ever since

>older games didn't try to look realistic

user...

10 years from now people are going to say the same about Witcher 3 and how their holodeck is just too realistic.

>Anyone else think that older games look better than newer ones?
Literally what the OP said. Anyone who agrees with OP is a moron. and denies reality because muh nostalgia.

I dont know if I'd consider TW3 realistic visually. In my eyes it looks exaggerated and cartoonish due to stuff like it's excessive use of strong lighting and how the wind blowing stuff like trees is exaggerated. My issue with the game however is that it's visually inconsistent in that it feels like cdpr couldn't decide on what aesthetic the game should embody. Compare this screenshot to another I'll upload

early to mid-00s had the best game visuals, in terms of tech:aestetics ratio.

Source, UT2.5 and ID Tech 4 are still some of the most pleasing to look at AND use engines out there.

Quality texturing > a gazillion shaders and post FX on top of garbage textures running at a silky smooth 23fps

What is this, a thread for ants?

well I am impressed

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this, disregarding technical achievement, is more visually pleasing than thisI do agree that Witcher 3 is not "realistic" but it attempts just a hair too much to be IMO.
I think it'll age better than things like GTA V which has an air of cartoonyness about it too

>still playing at ancient 16:9
bitch please...

While I understand that games should aim to express different aesthetics in different areas, TW3 doesn't do it well imo. This screenshot is so different from the other that the aesthetic difference is jarring.
Tw1 is a game that demonstrates a good way to express different aesthetics throughout the game. For example. The lakeside in chapter 4 feels magical and haunting despite the fact that it embodies the "dark and gritty" aesthetic embodied throughout the entire game

I want to lick that floor.

Am I the only person that just doesn't give much of a shit about textures?

Polygon count > lighting >>> fancy visual effects > textures

Please explain what you meant by a convoluted aesthetic. I'm really trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here but I think you might not understand what that word means. What about the aesthetic in TW3 is unnecessarily complex and difficult to follow.

> visually pleasing
That is a nostalgic descriptor. The thread is about old games looking "better". This is wrong, as better describes something as superior and modern games look objectively superior. The OP is a moron and should have said " Does anyone else enjoy the look/style of older games more than modern ones?", see this asks a question of subjective opinions which would 90% be fueled by a nostalgic bias. I like 1st gen Pokemon more than any other gen, but I am not retarded nor am I uneducated enough to claim that it is better than all the other gens. Sorry this took such a serious turn for a thread that SHOULD have been about art, but he was objectively incorrect in his statement and apparently a few of you do not understand how words work and couldn't see this.

I hope you are.
Good textures + normalmaps can make even simplest models look superb, and real-time dynamic lighting only enhances the experience.

Polycount is one of the things modern devs should learn some discipline. Some PS2 era characters with < 5000 tris can look better than many modern ones with 15000+ QUADS.

Basically what I mean is that more details are thrown in than what's necessary, causing all sorts of visual clutter. When playing most modern games I can't tell what the artists want me to focus on in many scenes as a result. In my experience something like SH2 is much more convincing visually as it manages to use meaningful detail that stands out like in without causing visual clutter

I see. I think some modern games can be a bit busy, but others are fine. Just like some old games were too busy and others were fine. You might be right about the overall trend though.

I think Bloodborne is an example of great modern design. I noticed what they probably wanted me to notice on my first playthrough, but on subsequent playthroughs I keep noticing more and more details in the design that are really great.

But the point of Silent Hill WAS to get you to focus on certain areas. The point of a game like withcer 3 was to make you feel like you are in a living breathing world. This is why you need the "clutter", because the real world is cluttered

m8 I've been saying this for yonks. Realism is not pretty. Realistic graphics are shit compared to graphics made to look spectacular, regardless of graphics technology. For instance Quake 2 (1998) is more pleasing to the eye than any realism shooter ever made.

Older games are more visually pleasing to me. I like when the world looks sharp and everything is easily identifiable. Nowadays I find games tend to be oversaturated with details, colors, effects, and go way overboard on the lighting.

I don't know why people think more realistic means the game looks better. It's about art style which is pure subjective.

I disagree. I think that Witcher 3 did a really good job in making smooth transitions in their environments. That's because most things are on a gradient. That second image is what looks like Novigrad or Oxenfurt, which is in the relatively peaceable area North of the river. The first image is in the creepy southern swamp, where horror shenanigans happen. Side by side, the images clash a bit, but to encounter it in game you would need to go from the nice, basically peacetime region of Novigrad, through the tense, military filled region of Oxenfurt, through a Fort, and past areas devastated by war until you finally reach the creepy horror swamp. There's a natural build up from one place to another. If the horror swamp were right next to peaceful Novigrad, that would be pretty bad.

There's also a fair bit of exaggeration in the art, which I think makes the game remain pretty good looking despite the grim gritty grimdark. There's a lot of color in the game, especially in clothing and armor, and people are sporting weird ahistorical fashions like the Novigrad penchant for silver studs and nose pieces that help differentiate the world from real history and add a bit of visual flare. The Witcher series as a whole has pretty solid art direction.

Misinfiromed narrowminded neet gamer who always thinks he's right and loves to talk about things he doesn't understand the post

>For instance Quake 2 (1998) is more pleasing to the eye than any realism shooter ever made.

You have got to be shitting me...

You are talking about the pioneer of brown and grey.

>For instance Quake 2 (1998) is more pleasing to the eye than any realism shooter ever made.
What? imgur.com/Vb7L021 You might have something wrong with your eyes. Like those people that find the sound of scratching a chalk board to be pleasing and shit.

>fell for the ultrawide meme

Must feel bad once you realize 90% of games are incompatible.

>tank slit monitor
disgusting.

Not him, but I love not being able to see the whole scoreboard in every game ever.

For me the texture setting is the one that I always try to keep at the highest available even at the cost of other settings.

It's the main difference between something looking photorealistic or super mario 64.

I dont think thats the right way to go about it. It's better to achieve this feeling through the writing than by causing pointless visual clutter. Something like TW3 feels far more cluttered than real life (to me, at least) since in real life, you focus only on what you consider important. You're likely to miss out on other miscellaneous details as a result. Whereas in tw3 all the miscellaneous details are thrown at you and you're forced to be able to distinguish between them and decide what's important, which never works for me as i tend to end up focusing on something different from what was intended to be focused on. I can't recall any specific moments since I played TW3 a while ago, but I remember some moments where I got confused after something I didn't focus on triggered a cutscene

I see where he's coming from. It has it's own style

Quake 1 had a better artstyle t b h.

Sounds like you either have DAE or ADD. Games are made for large audiences so it is unlikely you will ever get the barren wasteland of a game that you seem to want.

Btw if it is DAE you might want to get that looked into, it is very common in people with assburgers.

>It's the main difference between something looking photorealistic or super mario 64.
it's a shame that even it barely does anything this day and age, thanks to console-oriented multiplat releases.

CS:GO, Far Cry 3 and up, and Crysis 3 of all things are good examples of most settings barely doing jack shit to visuals, but still helping fps.

Yeah I can understand that. I felt like the map wasn't scaled well though, the transition you described happens very quick.
I also really like the game's general art direction and how it represents all of the different cultures presented in the game in a believable manner that doesn't clash

Sounds like you never figured out how to play it in OpenGL. Otherwise you'd barely even see the grey with all the over the top coloured lighting throughout the game.

This is a software mode screenshot. Frankly it's not even the real Quake 2 in software mode.

This is the difference I'm talking about. Software mode doesn't even count.

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Can't find anything for "dae" but I've been tested negative for both add and aspergers.
I also play games extremely slowly, it took me ~220 hours to play through tw3 and hos and ~100 hours for tw1

I'm sorry, was the piss colored lighting supposed to make the aesthetics better?

Just looks like a bad attempt at giving that yellow light on the wall actual projection vs ignoring that the light is even there. They both look horrible too so the point still stands.

Fair enough. I tended to take a very meandering path through the game and got sucked right in to the atmosphere, so I never really noticed an issue. With the speed of travel, especially with quick travel, you might run into some issues. Going directly from a nice coastline on one side of the map to a battlefield full of bodies, for instance, or going from the house racing track to the murder swamp in only a few minutes of travel.

if there is one area where modern games gfx regressed, it would be the lack of proper mirrors.

For me, it's more that I'm not terribly concerned about graphics. I appreciate them when they're there, but lower-quality graphics won't stop me from buying a game (though the art style might). Hell, I still like playing NWN1.

>ITT a bunch of Nostalgia fags confuse aesthetic and art styles with looking better.

It seemed to get confused in the very first reply, but I think that is because the OP wasn't even trying to say what he said.

>current year
>look down and don't see your feet
>look at a mirror and don't see your reflection
>stab a wall and it leaves a bullet hole

These are solved problems why do games keep repeating them regardless?

blatant laziness by console-focused AAA devs.

Timeless

The light is from the sky, not that thing on the wall. The sky is bright orange and shines on all outdoor areas. Slime glows greed, lava glows red. The lighting is really overdone and gives the game a surreal look.

My point was that you don't see any of that at all in software mode and that complaints about the game being all grey and brown are invalid, because anyone who experienced it that way was playing in poverty mode.

Well what do you think i meant to say?