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I don't want realism, I want plausibility.

So, are we just going to pretend that this isn't a repackaging of an episode of Extra Punctuation?

We dont want things to be realistic. Internal consistency and game play with a good visual style.

I deal with realism 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I don't want fucking realism when I'm playing videogames.

I do really enjoy it when a game looks amazing, but I tend to find they’re overstuffed to pad out the game to give it “value”. When you’re spending £60+ on a game, you want it to last, so it ends up being hours and hours of fetch quests. Honestly, some of the most enjoyable games I’ve played lately have been indie games like Tunic and Dave the Diver.

We've officially reached the era of diminishing returns when it comes to graphics.

This honestly reminds me of something an old friend told me about the problem with the push for realism in a game's graphics: "A game with amazing graphics but horrible gameplay is just a polished turd."

Cutting-edge graphics always used to excite me until the advent of the PS4 generation, because that was the first time that the graphical leap between generations felt fairly minimal. Now, it can just be expected as a baseline that the vast majority of games will at least look "good," and "good" is frankly "good enough" most of the time. It's cool that Hellblade 2 looks so pretty, but I have zero interest whatsoever in playing it. If graphics are the main thing holding big games back from releasing for years, then yeah, it's probably time to just let the visuals go a little bit.

I don't want an endless stream of the same game repackaged 16x different times. I don't want games that cost as much as portable video game systems used to. I want these buisnesses to remember, I buy games to experience worlds far removed from the one I live in, for fantasy and for fun; not for messages they care about, or how they would have the world be. Quickly return to what worked, or lose it all.

I agree. For years AAA game developers have focused on realistic graphics and the gameplay has suffered for it. Now there are AAA title being released with amazing looking graphics and hundreds of millions of dollars spent to make them, but the game is nearly unplayable because of bugs and missing features. It's ridiculous and unsustainable. I also agree that AAA game companies are unwilling to take risks and release creatively bankrupt games. We see the same thing in Hollywood with the constant sequel/prequel releases.

IMO, "realism" is just a subset of fidelity. Pushing for higher fidelity (including realism) is what drives up cost. Even highly stylized non-realistic art can be expensive and time consuming to produce if the fidelity requirements are high.

I would be perfectly happy with ps2 graphics if the games were good

I missed the days of AAA games taking risk anyone remember games like naughty bear or the xbox 360 days there were new ips left and right that never got to see another light of day spilt that 100M between 4 small games instead of putting it in all or nothing then having to kill the studio to make the money back if the game is bad. Gameplay is key.

Absolutely agree with you that the chase for realism is one of the reasons for a decline in AAA gaming quality (ironic). But as you mentioned, behind that decision is the chase for profits - AAA studios or papa publishers can't settle for a good game that does well enough in sales. It must always be the next big cash cow with years of (financial) growth ahead. This leads to terrible decisions like games-as-a-service, predatory monetization schemes, and exploitative player engagement design patterns

It's hilarious seeing a video about corporate people being greedy and mismanaging their best properties, on The Escapist channel of all places. 😂

Sony and Microsoft trying to convince people they need the next ultra mega hyper 8K TERAFLOPS machine that will be discontinued in 4 years. Nintendo with a console with the power of a 2014 tablet. 1 2 3 dancing on your grave 1 2 3 dancing on your grave 1 2 3 dancing on your grave

Thank you. I have been saying this for years. My favourite game of lately has been Tomb Raider Remastered, who's original games come from the late 90's. Even with a remaster the graphics aren't that spectacular, but it reminded me how absurdly fun and imaginative games used to be. You can blow up yetis with grenade launchers, fight dragons, mutants and T-rexes, break into Area 51 and go into the UFO and run over bad guys with a snow scooter with machineguns and it's FRIGGIN' AWESOME!

making games for "modern audiences" is what is killing them not realism or lack of.

Even Mark Cerny said that he designed the PS5 to help developers get games out faster, but devs take the extra resources to devote to ultra realism and other things that bloat development schedules. Personally, I'm fine with how games looked at the end of last gen.

2:04 the skip sponsor

They say Elden Ring has average graphics but the draw distance on that sucker looking over scenery is incredible

The realism of Gotham in AK killed the mood for me. Everything was just too shiny and polished. God, miss Kevin Conroy so much. He was perfect. I got a voice acting background and have to say that his voice has been such an inspiration for me since the Batman the Animated Series. The vocal training was really tough, sometimes without noticeable results for months but actors like him are a great impulse to not give up. You almost saw me as Leon in those new RE games :)

I wish games would go more for stylized graphics instead of realistic ones because in the long run they age better and don't break the bank, mechanics should always be the most important

Why all hyperrealistic games need to be starred by humans in mo-cap suits? Sorry, Marvel, I think you forgot this one.

I always tell my friends, graphics is just a bonus. I don’t need it. I’d rather play a game like UnderTale or Another Crab’s Treasure then a hyper-realistic game. Horizon for example is a bit disappointing to me.

I don't care about realistic graphics when it comes to video games. When I play a video game the most important thing to me is. 1. Storytelling 2. Gameplay 3. Sound / Music 4. Graphics. Another great video Erica

I laugh when people complain about graphics in Pokémon.

I'm literally incapable of discerning any differences about the meme's games. The AAA label is a repellant for me, I know I'll not like the gameplay, so good thing they're making it easier for me to NOT buy them!

Tango Gameworks getting shut down right after Hi Fi Rush really may have been the greatest travesty in gaming recently.

I couldn't agree more with Steller Blade. I think we are in one of the best era in gaming. This summer announcements proves it. We have a game for every single gamer out there. Rts is back. We have furry games. We have turn based rpg. We have action games, shooting games, farm sims, and etc. I get a game that plays like punch out. We have a bike game that is similar to crazy taxi. I am so happy with this year and future year announcements. I understand we have lay offs and games cost more than ever. The truth is we also have more games than ever. So many choices and prices come down faster. So your choice to enjoy games is up to you. Not everything has to be 10 out 10 which is why movies are struggling too. Shoutout to my 7 out 10 games for trying new things.

Nice video but i think using The Last of Us 2 is a bad example. That game was also amazing from a gameplay perspective (imo!). The stealth was intense in all the right ways! But I get the meaning behind the video for sure.

I think it depends on the game. Like a survival game benefits from realistic graphics. A racing game profits from it. Etc, but sci Fi shooter, action games in general don't need high end graphics at all. The mechanics are far more important than graphics

you made an excellent point about Nintendo not being obsessed with high fidelity graphisms and respecting their employees. I wish they respected their die-hard fans a little bit more : lazy remastered games after lazy remastered games (that Super Mario Collection was such a disappointment), they also force players to pay for a subscription to play older games (why can't they allow people to buy single NES/SNES games) while also shutting down every ROM websites. Piracy is not a money issue, its a service issue. If Nintendo doesn't provide a legal way to buy these old games , then it's not a surprise that people want to get them from a different source. a source that will not shut dowb their service in 10 years and then tell players "sorry, can't download your games anymore" So, I don't think Nintendo is a "better" actor in this, but they are the least horrible. And that comes from someone who used to be a big Nintendo fan (I even own a Wii U). The way they support indie games is fantastic tho.

Can anyone recommend games which don't look photorealistic, but have a very strong "gothic novel-like" art-style, with heavy black-and-white contrast and shading which looks like pen strokes (ala e.g., Return of the Obra Dinn)?

Always thought the chase for hyper realistic graphics to be a bit of a snipe hunt. If realism was all that counted then the Mario, Sonic, Legend of Zelda and Pokemon games wouldn’t be the juggernauts they are

Nothing wrong with game looking visually realistic, it’s just games are so damn serious these days a GAME is meant to be fun and enjoyable ie helldivers 2 and hi-fi rush both arnt realistic looking but helluva lotta fun to play

Extremely good photorealistic graphics are already trivial and reasonably performance-optimized. Indie games are already implementing them. Triple-A studios just have completely fucked up project management and development processes, and their final products have both bad graphics and bad performance. Good graphics vs good gameplay is a false dichotomy.

I think you are right. I'll take art direction and gameplay over realism. I mean the way characters move in "realistic game" are still as bad as it was 25 years ago. That detail alone ruin any "realism" for me. But it's not an issue in non realistic game since it is not meant to be realistic.

It always has been, is, and will be about game play & mechanics. And let's not forget STORY !! Graphics are indeed awesome but if it runs like a turd, plays like a turd, and smells like a turd, well, it most likely IS a turd. :)

Thank you another great video! Even as things have changed with the Escapist, I have enjoyed the perspectives and hard work you bring to your videos!

The 3 newest games Ive played helldivers, stellar blade, and armoured core look great but the graphics mean nothing to me cause the gameplay is clearly the main focus, I genuinely have no interest in hellblade, horizon or the god of war games cause while they might be good there just big long interactive movies, I got god of war 4 and uncharted 4 for free on ps plus and genuinely didn’t make it past the first 3 hours of either of them I just got bored and stopped playing

Amazing graphics won't make a bad game a good game. But they can make a good game a bad game due to having too much greeble.

I don't mind realistic games they just need to have fun gameplay to make me play it.

I get more fun out of asteroids on my old atari, than i get from modern games.

It's not an either/or proposition.

To me Aart direction and game play matters the most .

You hit the nail on the head so hard that the board is in splinters right now: I'll take good art direction over realistic graphics anytime, anywhere. And color! All of these "realistic" games are brown and/or gray, and that isn't even realistic; I see a lot more color than that just going for a walk. AFTER MIDNIGHT! I do agree that gameplay is the most important, because if a game plays badly, it is, at its very best, a great movie, but still a bad game. That said, I do still think visuals are important, because that's what pulls you in when you first see the game, and that's what surrounds you while you explore, so even just decent gameplay with beautiful visuals will do it for me, depending on the genre. Like you said, though, you don't need realism for beauty; I vastly prefer something like Anodyne 2 or Broken Reality over whatever new big budget game banner ads are shoving down my throat this week. As for whether realism is what's making games the way that they are, I certainly think that's part of it, but not the whole story. We've been on this path since The Bit Wars back in the '90s, and at some point, we had to hit greatly diminishing returns. Back then, you could also easily tell the difference between this console or that from little more than a screenshot; now, all we have left to talk about are resolutoin and framerate, and whoever has the biggest numbers wins. Everything you said about funneling too much effort into realism making everything else predictable is absolutely true, but there isn't much payoff anymore, either: you buy a game at $70 brand new, and it isn't even finished yet; you have to wait until it goes through a series of patches to make it just playable, and then, it's bereft of content, so you have to wait for all the DLC to come out, and that's not even getting into lootboxes, microtransactions, and whatever other anti-consumer trash they shove into it, and by then, you could've gotten the whole package on sale for maybe even less than half the original price. Or you could check out some indies and get several games for the same price, and while the indie scene has plenty of bad games, too, I find that most of the good games coming out these days are part of that scene.

PREACH IT GIRL 100% agree To heck with storytelling and graphics. Give me a good game

Realistic graphics really mean nothing to me when your doing fast paced action combat. At that point tor more focused on movement and shapes then how many skin pores the boss has when they are moving just about as fast as you can react to them. They would matter more to me in a game that is much more slow and methodical where your going to find yourself taking in the sights and sounds such as a hunting game where your going to move much slower and easily finding yourself standing still looking around your environment. Then I would want my game to be laden with polygons and light effects.

Thank you. It's really simple publishers are not gamers they are MBA corpo folks that assume the more money you put in the more money you will get out. Even though Fromsoftware proves them wrong all the time. A ton of great B and A games would make so much more money with less risk bc all of your money isn't in one basket

IMO one of the worst trends in gaming visuals is basing videogame characters on actors' likeness, one advantage that games/animation/3D had over live action for the longest time is that the artists could go wild with the character designs and create very unique and interesting characters and they would still feel coherent and part of the world (while it's possible to do that in live action it's much harder to make it believable or coherent), but now when most characters start being nothing but body/face scans of actors it becomes not only boring and bland but also in way immersion breaking.

I mean i don't want people to say "games shouldn't be realistic" games should be whatever they want. And the technology has progressed so far, we should be allowed to push the limits of graphic capabilities. It's cool that we got to see lara croft go from square polygon boobs to real sweat and blood dripping from every pore of her skin. BUT it's not worth it if it comes at the cost of making a good game first and foremost.

I absolutely agree with you, but i do have to take 1 issue, I absolutely adore the Horizon series. Not for graphical fidelity, but because of gameplay and what is quite possibly my favorite sci-fi story/setting in any genera

Nintendo Switch is about to surpass PS2 in less time of existence (those 150m are from like 10 years in the market) meanwhile Sony and Microsoft already admited their consoles to be a failure. But hey kids, our NEXT CONSOLE will have even better GRAPHICS.

I mostly blame publishers for following the wrong trends when it comes to their pursuits. Nintendo and a FEW others stand out because they didn’t chase the hyper realism bs. Maybe back in the 90s and early 2000s graphics were king but now it’s killing the industry. It doesn’t have to look super realistic and the Indie scene is where I buy most of my games now. Also we don’t need super long 80+ hour games. It’s too much and I’m sure it contributes heavily to rising costs. 40 hours is good, plus fun unlockables that give it replay value. I drop so many games because they become stale at the 40-50 hour mark.

The most beautiful games I've played in the last few years were Metroid Dread and Octopath Traveller 2. The beauty of the graphics were phenomenal and drew me in than the music immersed me into the game and hours upon hours passed without me knowing. I prefer more crisp graphics but graphics just draw you in what keeps me is the music and gameplay. Those two things are everything to new over graphics. Hifi rush studio being shut down is insane.

I wonder what Triple AAA games will be if they reduced their focus on realism and applied that work to gameplay instead? Who knows, maybe additional testing on the mechanics would improve the quality of a game?

Graphic don't have to be "good". Chess is still very popular. ADOM is deeper then most of all "AAA" games from a year combined and it doesn't take up 90% of you harddrive. Also, Cryptmaster is a great example to good graphics and graphics use. (Good being well suited to its enviroment, rather then just the latest and most expensive outfit of the month).

realism is just a crutch to impress little timmies. fancy graphics are a nice to have, not a must have. realism is also easier to grasp for someone who has zero clues about gaming and is just a bean counter designated to develop a game. creating good graphics is hard. you know whats even harder? making a good game.

My only point of disagreement with this video is that it doesn't go far back enough. This has been happening since at least the 16-bit era. I agree: game devs treat graphics as the only thing that matters, and this has been ruining games and holding back the industry for over 30 years. And yet, somehow, there hasn't been another crash. The gaming industry has managed to scrape by on fancy mediocrity for literally decades, each gen typically being little more than a glorified visual reskin of the last. Frankly, it could use a correction in the economic sense: something to shake their obsession with pretty pictures. But it keeps not happening. Even at the dawn of HD, when the games weren't profitable and they had to prop up their studios' numbers with shovelware on systems that actually made money, they kicked and screamed and moaned about their precious visual minutiae. And people bought the marketing lines. There should have been a crash right then, and there wasn't. Somehow, gamers still want this easy shortcut to reassure themselves that games are still getting better, rather than having to actually demand better games. It's one of the industry's biggest longstanding problems. And I don't know what causes it, or how to fix it. But as long as gamers refuse to demand better, this is what it's going to be like.

Here is the real question. If graphics aren’t important, how do you sell gamers on the PlayStation 6? How do you sell gamers on the latest graphics card?

And they say that female gamers aren't influential! Absolutely the video we have been talking about with mates (43yrs)!!! Like the first Alien movie - what you 'didn't see' you made in your head! Your head conjures up more than realism ever could! I used to race games and immerse myself in stories. I'm going up through the ranks. Gonna be the best!!!! AND I WIN!!!! Everything is fromt and center now - no imagination. Kids are being ripped of their projections (for want of a better term)! I dreamed of realism as a kid!!! Now I'm just another 'Adult' saying 'it's went to far' lol!!! And the generational opionions roll! They just have to remeber that - just like the first Alien movie - just because you CAN show it, it's more intreging to not show it!!! My uncle was told this (with fail) in Ireland, before every the xmas party kicked off

I love modern day gaming have no issue with realism. The games I see as modern day masterpieces TLOU2, RDR2, and GoT all just so happen to have amazing graphics as well. GTAVI will have amazing graphics and I bet it will become one of the highest selling games of all time eventually.

Realism is cool if there is a vision for it and it acomploshes something in the gameplay feel. I love myself some tactical squad based shooters, especialy online like Squad. But yet again the whole premisse is based on that realistic feel to it. Realism for realism sake is not realy a plus.

I will take a great story and gameplay over realism. There are some that have all of that, Death Stranding and God of War but I would love to see more stylized games. I took so many chances on weird Wii games that turned out being amazing and it had nothing to do with graphics and everything to do with fun.

I’m really happy with the look of Dragon Age Veilguard

I dont think i can add much to the conversation other than "graphics isn't the end goal of gaming". The more realistic a game looks without any gameplay that engages me, then the more my brain says "no". The plot may more than make up but then that's more the exception than the rule IMO. I'll give one example in the FPS genre: COD looks more and more like a good CG movie, and though that's cool, it gets blander and blander and makes my eyes seek bleach. Sure you got cool looking characters and weapons and now there are takedown animations but man if j want a deatiled look at that shit then i'd either go to a shooting range or gym IRL, there it's not realistic, it's REAL. Mind you it's only one of several reasons i wouldnt play the Reboot MW trilogy even if someone pirated it for me - Spec Ops: The Line is the biggest one. Trepang² on the other hand is a shooter that focuses on being FUN and just so happens to look both really good AND have an excellent art style. The gun sounds are what sold me on the gunplay, plus the whole "bullet time abd cloaking" added so much more to the gameplay. Hell what little melee combat there adds to what sells me on how an actual supersoldier would most likely fight.. Sorry for the ramble but TL,DR: focus on the real engagement, the gameplay/story and the visuals can come second

Microsoft spent $67 billion on Activision and Blizzard. That's 33.5 GTA6 level games, in development and marketing. Maybe they should had actually used that money to make legendary franchises instead of buying some to just sit on and do nothing with. Nintendo is ruling things for a reason, gameplay is king, always has been.

I'm not sure your argument holds as much water as you think it does. I don't believe that graphical fidelity is the problem, I think the problem is much more likely to be about scale Vs depth. Making a game bigger does not automatically make it better, but for too long the discourse has been focused on the size of games and the number of hours they deliver rather than what you're actually doing in the game.

Terminology in this video is a mess to be honest

Indies are doing all of that support then

Christ this just isn’t nearly the same without Yahtzee

Nothing wrong with realistic graphics. If the gameplay is mid then it probably would be mid with lesser graphics.

Gimme something fun and functional. I don't care if it looks like shit as long as it's fun to play with or tells a great story.

While I don't disagree that the focus on graphics has tanked a lot of the industry, you have to admit that's what players want. Look at what happened when shaders for Minecraft got really popular, you got the massive resurgence at the end of the twenty-teens that actually justified Microsofts acquisition of Mojang. Players want good graphics, not hyper realism.

well made, well put together fun > realism

Hellblade is really good tho

Considering every other game is a fantasy RPG nowadays, or a Fortnite clone, I don't see the issue with realism?

what ever happened to FMVs? shouldn't' actual live people be he most realistic?

was this script written by AI?

graphic fidelity is an artistic direction, change me mind

why don't you play as the zoids?

Realism should be moved to "interactive videos" make the game an actual video and tell the story and everyone will be wowed by the graphics. You can keep some options to wander around to enjoy the world, but have the sell be it's an interactive videos. Games are sold by gameplay then story then graphics. And the graphics just need to look good for the game world, realism doesn't make me think a game is better. Monopoly wouldn't be more fun if the board had hyper realistic graphics.

I disagree and agree. It’s corporate corruption that’s the problem. Graphics are simply the easiest metric for stupid corporate suits to measure. Meanwhile, storylines, IP’s, and skilled workers get shafted for the sake of saving money.

Than you for this video, but it was well done.

I agree with most of what is being said here, but I don't agree with using The Last of Us and Horizon as examples. I understand it's up to personal preference, but I don't think they are demonstrative of "this games realism detracts from it being a good game." I think a better example would be something like Jedi Survivor, which had and still has numerous performance issues, due to it's realistic graphical style. Personally, I'm fine with game development times taking longer if they can achieve their realism and gameplay goals, which The Last of Us and Horizon did imo.

Prioritising GAMEplay? In a video GAME?!

Tbh if AAA games reduce the graphical fidelity whats left to set them apart from AA games and Indies? Amount of content and playtime? AAA games are too bloody long anyway, so thats always been a a negative for me. That said I am not against AAA game studios reducing thier budgets and making AA games, I am all for it, there is too many 50 hour+ AAA games anyway. But it just wouldn't be AAA anymore would it?

nothing is killing gaming. games are sill here. games are no going away. I sill make my choices based on graphics but I also care about other factors. games will never feel real , nor will movies. no se designer no character designer is ha detailed.

Nintendo is great, but don't be fooled that they aren't ruthless when they need to be. The way they treat content creators should clue you in on that. From soft too, with their culture of crunch and not allowing devs to talk to the media. When you don't hear about these companies not laying people off, a lot of times it's because they don't allow that information to come out.

I don't think this is well thought out... And it's ultimately more dogpiling and proselytizing doom & gloom. For example... GOOD GAMES are not known for their visuals... and that is not what most people focus on. IN THE VERY EXAMPLES USED IN THE VIDEO, God of War, LoU2, RDR2, Ghosts of Tsushima, the OG Horizon... NONE of those games are remembered or talked about because of their visuals. People do heap praise onto them... but that's just a SMALL part of what made those titles special. If that was all/the biggest thing they had going for them no one would talk about them, even with the beautiful visuals. Now, there are games where the visuals are the only real notable element that people laud... IN the recent Hellblade 2, for example... But those are actually rare cases. Most games aren't championed off of visuals alone and devs/studios/publishers KNOW visuals alone aren't enough to sell a game anymore, and when you see things like Hellblade 2, it's an outlier and not at all representative of the norm, and I am 100% certain that down the line we'll find out that Hellblade 2 was scrapped and relaunched multiple times throughout development and faced huge developmental setbacks and issues that are responsible for it taking as long as it did and being as threadbare as it was. But to say it took a long time and was expensive because the devs were primarily focused on making it look pretty is SUPER REDUCTIVE and no at all accurate... As someone who has worked in game development for over a decade, it's simply not that simple. I t's usually due to poor management/leadership, a lack of vision or direction, or the misappropriations of funds, and publisher demands and shareholder expectations that cause a title's budget to balloon out of control and are the reason for excessively long development cycles. A lot of times you're waiting for direction and have nothing to do BUT make the game/animations look as good as possible... I challenge everyone to google "worst games of ____" or "most disappointing games of ____"... And see how many of them are just nice looking. You'll notice this argument doesn't hold water. It's usually broken and ugly games filling those lists... with maybe 1 or 2 games a year falling into the what this video is claiming. It's also not really fair to bring up Nintendo... PLENTY of Nintendo game don't sell well or fail to have a lasting impact... People just seem to forget or refuse to talk about them. And it's also fair to mention that gamers don't hold Nintendo to the same standard as Sony, Microsoft, or PC. Nintendo is allowed to put out an underpowered console. Nintendo is allowed to sell VERY UGLY and crappy ports of 5-year-old games FOR FULL PRICE and no one bats an eye. Nintendo games are expected to run sub-30 FPS, and people will not just accept it, but make excuses for it. Nintendo is allowed put out a flop, and folks will sweep it under the rug and not talk about it. Nintendo is allowed to release the same game 20 times and it's not a big deal. Nintendo is allowed to BARELY iterate between 2 entires in a franchise and people are okay with it. An AMAZING EXAMPLE is the recently revealed Astrobot's Adventure. Had that been a Nintendo game everyone would have been saying it looks like the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it is a fine looking title... BUT IT'S JUST NOT WHAT PEOPLE WANT TO SEE FROM SONY. They expect more than a 15-hour mascot platformer to get highlighted. Their audience DEMANDS the next Last of Us or Uncharted, or Tsushima 2... ANYTHING that pushes the technology to it's limit. That's not say Sony should ONLY focus on doing that, but it's certainly the MAIN reason people play their consoles and what people EXPECT from them. People don't expect cutting edge graphics from Nintendo because their console can't do that and it wasn't meant to. There's also the fact that Nintendo games and their entire VIBE is aimed at children/families... who are notoriously casual and undiscerning when it comes to their gaming demands... That's a niche Nintendo has filled and it's allowed them to circumvent some criticism... But lets not act like people haven't begun to expect and demand more from Nintendo moving forth. And lets not act like they haven't released their fair share of duds... and it wasn't because they were only focusing on the visuals. Misses are going to happen. That's a part of the process. I just think if you're going to talk about what going wrong in game development... It needs to be genuine and not scapegoating, which is easy and worthless. You certainly can't put Last of Us 2 in the Thumbnail and say "Where's the risk" when that was one of the riskiest games in gaming history and AT LEAST ATTEMPTED something we had never seen (killing the protag from the previous game). Many may not have liked some of the risks it took, and all of them certainly didn't land with everyone... but it was far from safe or formulaic. That's why this video just feels like a bad faith argument.

Steady 60fps + poor graphics + engaging gameplay over 30fps-ish + ultra realistic + boring interactive movie anytime. Indies are the answer. More freedom, more originality, more fun.

I want fun.

Nintenfo selling outdated hardware with plotless games , I don’t care about what this company selling

to me next gen means a game running fluit in at least 60fps :) i dont care about graphics.

This whole trying to be realistic concept is drastically backfiring & ruining games. It looks awful. They are better off taking an unrealistic/ artistic route. The realism can destroy any sort of escapism. It can destroy the soul to a game. It looks off putting & unappealing. I miss older game designs SO MUCH all of that didn't have to just go away just because things are "progressing" It sure doesn't feel like progress. How can gaming be so out of touch with good game design or good artistic direction? It basically feels like 95% of the game industry has been taken over by people who have no idea what a good game is because they don't play video games and didn't play games growing up. Where is THE PASSION! Growing up in the 90's, It really felt like the future of gaming was going to be awesome. It wasn't just about graphics. It was physics effects, art styles, a range of gameplay mechanics, damage effects, environmental interaction, an assortment of gameplay modes, engaging CPU to play against in single player modes, offline modes. Current video games focus way too much on graphical nitpicking. It seems they forgot how much players enjoyed physics effects & other aspects that make games fun. Quirky graphics can work, if a creative art style is used. Add engaging CPU AI, gameplay modes, the list goes on.. idk what happened? Also: {We have seen that even if companies delay games, it isn't improving the quality of games being released. Which is a sign there is a MUCH DEEPER issue going on with modern games. No excuses, devs used to make great games with much less and they would have given anything to have certain capabilities to utilize that are available today. It just takes actual passion, focus & talent to make great games. Sidenote: It's so crazy how many people are still supporting super mega rich companies putting out unacceptable products.. i don't understand certain people. I don't understand how certain companies can be messing up so badly. It's frustrating that other passionate people are not allowed to make a version of a type of game that we used to have but no longer get anymore.. Yet these huge companies get full control over if an unused game IP gets made & they do everything they can so no other versions of a game idea will ever come out. Even if there's a huge fan base around certain ideas and there's a ton of passionate devs out there dying to make a version of a certain video game idea.. that frustrates me beyond belief}

No, you're not in the minority. Not to mention that games with hyper realistic graphics are becoming computer killers, some of these companies are so focused on making the game to realistic, probably because they want to appeal to an older audience since "cartoonish = for kids" so more serious games will go for realism, that they forget to make the games actually playable. I tried the Enotria demo yesterday, and according to the other reviews, I wasn't the only one whose computer was struggling with the damn thing!

Damn, last of us 2 give me a serius depression for a long time. If you are in depression dont play sad games.

Um... I like how you criticized companies for not taking risks due to 'realism' and wanting to 'tick all the boxes' and then praised Nintendo for 'keeping its player base happy,' which is the definition of 'ticking all the boxes.' Sounds like a double-standard to me. Realistic graphics are nice. I love the way The Last of Us 2 looks (which won a GOTY award too, as I recall). I also love more stylized games, like Hi Fi Rush. We can have both, in fact. Risk aversion is a whole different topic unto itself.