I don't know if I've done this rant here before or not, but let's go anyway. Amazing realistic graphics generally makes for crappy games. I'd call that a 'hot take' but honestly I don't really think it is .... I think there's a good portion of people out there that will agree with me. For so long the large studios have focused on graphics, making things more detailed, more realistic, more polygons, better textures. And, in many cases, the actual gameplay suffers. Harder to visually process, and harder on computers, requiring upgrades, more memory, more hard drive space, longer loads. My wife and I picked up Space Marine II on the Steam summer sale. And don't get me wrong I love the game ... except the load times .... any game where my wife and I want to play co-op and the day starts with, let me launch the game while we're eating breakfast so it can load to the main menu to save time ... is a problem. Though, personally I'm confused as to why it needs a 5+ minute load time just to get to the main menu .... followed by another 5+ minute load time to get to the mission hub, and then a 5+ minute load time to start the mission .... what in the Emperor's Golden Light does it need to load for that long to display the freaking main menu? You can probably minimize this with a SSD, but that just goes into my point of making games that require the end user to have high end gear or upgrade ... it's a part of the problem facing the game industry as a whole.
I've also been going back and playing Ghost Recon: Breakpoint ... an older game ... absolutely beautiful game no doubt about it, but would it have killed the team to have worked on movement a little more? I'm not even talking about the passive cover system that causes me to stick to a wall rather than walk through a doorway because I moved too close to the wall at an angle before reaching the door .... I'm talking about the fact that an ankle high curb stops me unless I wait for the 'climb' prompt ... or to cross over a fence I can only do it at certain places ... nope can't cross the fence there ... there's a gap and a board at a 45 degree angle that would be easy to cross in real life, you have to go to where the fence is full chest height and straight across the top because that's the only way the animation works ... why? Because we spent more time making the foliage of a make believe pacific island that has tropical forests, swamps AND snow covered mountains look real, rather than actually making our movement smooth and realistic in the world. We won't let you cross a board at an angle because it won't look good ... never mind the fact that moving at a crouch means your weapon's barrel is embedded in the ground and looks bad .... but look at that tree .. isn't it the best tree you've ever seen? .... Well at least it's load times are minimal and once you're in world you're done with them.
Breakpoint suffers from some other minor issues ... it's an open world game and I'd guess the map is a scale 15k square but absolutely packed with enemies all over the place and points of interest and objectives to a realistically absurd degree. Thankfully the PvP mode is its own thing and can be completely ignored in the game itself, it takes place on it's own maps with it's own objectives and rewards.
I know I said at the beginning that high end graphic games are crappier, and I haven't really made that case as both of the games mentioned actually have pretty good gameplay. However, I would argue that had they backed off the graphic budget and spent some of that money in other areas of the game they could have made an even better game, with smoother gameplay that was also accessible to a greater number of people. And with modern systems you wouldn't even have to tool it back that much. There were games 10 years ago that I still think are 'realistic' enough ... no, they aren't as 'realistic' as the cutting edge games now, but we could have stayed at that level of graphics and I highly doubt that anyone would really be complaining that it didn't look good.
Also, arguably, games with a more stylized look age better because the look isn't trying to be real, it doesn't have to compete against games that ARE trying to be real. Where as a game 20 years ago trying to look real, held against a modern game with the latest graphics isn't going to hold up.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate released in October 2015 and I dare say that most people would still be more than happy to play a 'realistic' game with those graphics. Or for that matter, Fallout 4, Witcher III, or Batman: Arkham Knight ... All were cutting edge in 2015 and while, yes, I can see some rough edges on them compared to modern games of the same caliber, but I would argue that if games had stopped pushing graphics at that point (or maybe even before it got TO that point) as arguably Assassin's Creed III from 2013 also had solid graphics
The race to 'better' graphics has lead to increased game size, as the graphics are the largest part of a game, as well as increased memory requirements, and an increase in required GPU capability. All for a part of the game that, while visually appealing, generally is one of the least important factors of a 'good game'. Graphics don't make a game good, there have been plenty of games with 'great' graphics that have been crap because the rest of the game was just not there. Graphics can improve the game, increasing immersion and adding a level of polish, but if the gameplay itself isn't engaging the game as a whole suffers. Gameplay, story, I would argue that even audio can be more important to a game than graphics ... this is NOT to say that they are unimportant but just that I believe that the focus on graphics has been detrimental to the industry as a whole and why, of late, I think that the smaller studios have actually been having more success as they often tend to have more stylized or just simpler graphics over all, but have a lot more focus on gameplay and story.
If you've been a regular here you know I'm a fan and regular player of a Free-to-Play game known as Warframe ... launched in 2013 and it has had a few graphic updates over the years, but even still there is an ongoing joke that you can play it on a toaster. Their graphics are great but also highly optimized for performance. The game is incredibly fast paced and even older systems can play it and keep up. This is what games should be aiming for more than the bloated, overly detailed, and resource hogging mess that many of the major studios have been making. We've had launches with major performance issues many of which are graphics and rendering related. Graphics need to be good enough to display what's needed to play the game, but we don't need to be able to see the threads of Spider-Man's suit ... Style is also important but let's be real, Fortnite is STILL one of the biggest games out there and it is a very cartoony stylized graphics that is easy to render and doesn't require the latest GPU and top end system ... Hades one of the big hits a few years ago likewise, stylized animation style graphics, we don't need photo realism ... and in most cases we don't really want it .... use the budget better, gameplay, story ... maybe take some of the graphics budget from several projects and use it to work on even more projects. If you need a bleeding edge system to play your game at release you are limiting your market ... back off ... use graphics tech that was bleeding edge 5 or 10 years ago and is more stable and mainstream now ... you'll likely have a more stable game out of the gate AND a larger market as more people will have systems that can run it.
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