Vidya Games Thread

[Security]

A

"I’ve come to the conclusion that “retro” by our old definition doesn’t work anymore, because the capabilities of the PS3 tech from 18 years ago really aren’t THAT different from now. Compare to 18 years before PS3 and you get the NES which is practically prehistoric in fidelity."

This isn't cope (no seriously) but I must say this is observant. The 90s were absolutely insane in how rapid advancement was. A not insignificant burst in the late 80s, a fucking hardcore sprint throughout the 90s, a good run in the early to mid-00s, then a fucking crawl since then.

I'm reminded of a post where someone was mocking graphics from Die By the Sword or something, saying how my generation would lose our minds over it. Someone responded with: "In five years, we went from F-Zero to Wipeout. In five years, you went from Fortnite to Fortnite. Your generation is dead on arrival."

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

A

"I’ve come to the conclusion that “retro” by our old definition doesn’t work anymore, because the capabilities of the PS3 tech from 18 years ago really aren’t THAT different from now. Compare to 18 years before PS3 and you get the NES which is practically prehistoric in fidelity."

This isn't cope (no seriously) but I must say this is observant. The 90s were absolutely insane in how rapid advancement was. A not insignificant burst in the late 80s, a fucking hardcore sprint throughout the 90s, a good run in the early to mid-00s, then a fucking crawl since then.

I'm reminded of a post where someone was mocking graphics from Die By the Sword or something, saying how my generation would lose our minds over it. Someone responded with: "In five years, we went from F-Zero to Wipeout. In five years, you went from Fortnite to Fortnite. Your generation is dead on arrival."

The focus on 4K and ultra-high fidelity has fucked the gaming industry over the past 15 years. It's resulted in a super high budgets that exceed film budgets, causing studios to "survive or die" based on the game's eventual release 5 years down the line. Meanwhile graphics has hit a point where people largely don't care anymore. Supermarket Simulator is the most basic shit and that has ended up mogging the majority of the market on PC for 2024. Elden Ring has been widely received as an amazing game and sold extremely well but graphically it's okay and its visuals are carried by the art design.

 

[Thomas Talus]

This isn't cope (no seriously) but I must say this is observant. The 90s were absolutely insane in how rapid advancement was. A not insignificant burst in the late 80s, a fucking hardcore sprint throughout the 90s, a good run in the early to mid-00s, then a fucking crawl since then.

There are a lot of areas in culture (like fashion) and tech that seem to have followed a similar pattern. There was a much bigger shift in fashion between '90-'98 that there has been in the decades since, to say nothing of the 60s>70s>80s>early 90s shifts. I'd be hard pressed to think of a genuinely disruptive technology that came out in the last 10 years; everything's been minor tweaks and enshittification.

 

[John Vtuber👁️]

I really should replay one of my favorite retro games, Batman: Arkham Asylum

 

[UberSoldat]

So if 2009 is now a retro year, Modern Warfare 2 is a retro game............................

 

[Security]

I think I need to reiterate what is retro.

What is retro are things from before my time. Anything during or after my time is not retro.

So things like the PS3, Gamecube, Genesis, or NES are not retro. Things like the Atari 2600 or the Magnavox Odyssey are retro, as they were from before my time.

Hope this helps.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

So if 2009 is now a retro year, Modern Warfare 2 is a retro game............................

Seeing as it came out on the Xbox 360 and PS3, Skyrim is a retro game.

 

[Bronze]

Monolith's(Xenoblade chronicles) hiring people for a new RPG

 

[CalciumAnimal]

Monolith's(Xenoblade chronicles) hiring people for a new RPG

the first game after ending a franchise is a terrifying one.

I hope whatever the hell they do it works out well for them.

Looking forward to Xenowave the adventures of an alien radio....actually that sound sick.

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

Never heard of McVicker.

Anyways, torn on this. Yay, Half-Life 3. BUT this is way, way, way past Valve's prime. I didn't like the direction HL2 Ep2 was going, TF2's looking retarded (as shown in the video), I have no idea what the state of the Civil War inside Valve is right now between the nerds and the woketards (boy that's been a fun battle to view from the outside on the Steam storefront), and Deadlock looks absolutely embarrassing, and also a showcase of "those that once lead now follow."

I do not know what Valve could even do with Half-Life 3 to make it a great game, much less make something groundbreaking. Technologically, they can either go for super fine-tuned (which I don't think would grab much attention outside of aficionados), or really push it visually - which, if they're not going VR, would have to be ray/path-tracing. I have a hard time seeing that, even though my recent experience with Quake II RTX makes me think it absolutely is the way forward - but that's with Quake II, and not a brand new, high-poly game, where going full-on ray or path-tracing just isn't possible at the moment (Cyberpunk 2077's isn't the same, but that's a tech rabbithole).

Maybe they could do it culturally, where they go turbo-90s with cool shit, sexy women, cultural stereotypes, and saying "faցցot" at every opportunity. Very unlikely, but I can dream.

Have you played (or watched a playthrough of) Half-Life: Alyx? Game was actually very good, the writers of the past games returned as contractors for it - which explains why it isn't slop; presumably they've also returned for this upcoming traditional game as well. Spoilers, the ending of HL:A retcons the ending of HL2:EP2 via G-Man time-travel fuckery to be different with Eli still being alive and Alyx is now missing. This was presumably done because Marc Laidlaw leaked a plot outline of HL3 back in 2017 and so Valve had to find a way to switch it up to avoid ending up being compared to it. Video

Valve may be meandering with their multiplayer offerings nowadays, but I don't want to be so doomer so as to say I don't have faith in them to deliver a competent single-player product set in their most important franchise. If they fumble this, it will be very depressing.

McVickers is definitely a Valve Autist, but if he's saying they're back to working on HL3 then he probably has something. It should be noted that Valve has taken at least 2, maybe as high as 4, real attempts at HL3. They could never quite bring it together. If they're actually committed to it, what it really means is Source 3 is about to drop. Considering how Game Engines have almost given up on improving Physics for the last decade, there's some wild stuff they could potentially do with very different game world dynamics.

Or Gaben was stuck in NZ for long enough he had time to think of a new future for HL and is really invested in completing it before he retires.

A

"I’ve come to the conclusion that “retro” by our old definition doesn’t work anymore, because the capabilities of the PS3 tech from 18 years ago really aren’t THAT different from now. Compare to 18 years before PS3 and you get the NES which is practically prehistoric in fidelity."

This isn't cope (no seriously) but I must say this is observant. The 90s were absolutely insane in how rapid advancement was. A not insignificant burst in the late 80s, a fucking hardcore sprint throughout the 90s, a good run in the early to mid-00s, then a fucking crawl since then.

I'm reminded of a post where someone was mocking graphics from Die By the Sword or something, saying how my generation would lose our minds over it. Someone responded with: "In five years, we went from F-Zero to Wipeout. In five years, you went from Fortnite to Fortnite. Your generation is dead on arrival."

The S-Curve hit computers hard. And, yes, the PS3 generation hit "good enough" 3D graphics to push 720p well enough that increases in fidelity require something like 16x performance improvements. That's actually the issue, but, as we're also seeing in real-time, the more pixels you have the less teams are actually focused on Graphic Design. Everything is super detailed and incredibly forgettable. Frankly, they're kind of stuck in an early 2000s CG Movie look and it's quite dull.

 

[reinigen]

The focus on 4K and ultra-high fidelity has fucked the gaming industry over the past 15 years. It's resulted in a super high budgets that exceed film budgets, causing studios to "survive or die" based on the game's eventual release 5 years down the line. Meanwhile graphics has hit a point where people largely don't care anymore. Supermarket Simulator is the most basic shit and that has ended up mogging the majority of the market on PC for 2024. Elden Ring has been widely received as an amazing game and sold extremely well but graphically it's okay and its visuals are carried by the art design.

"Perfect is the enemy of good" is the best thing to summarize the current attitude of graphical fidelity in the industry right now. A majority of the development budget and time is used to take a game from 80% amazing graphical fidelity to 100% amazing graphical fidelity. Literally the Pareto principle in action. 20% of the develop (graphical obsession) takes 80 percent of the development resources.

 

[Punished Anime Discusser]

In five years, you went from Fortnite to Fortnite.

You wanna hear the depressing part? Fortnite now looks much better than Fortnite five years ago, and is actually pushing a bunch of the new UE5 tech and fidelity, but people don't realize because they either don't play it, or because of the art style. A better example would be us going from Skyrim to Skyrim in Space in 12 years. Or from Call of Duty 2019 to Call of Duty 2019 but worse looking over five years. Or Battlefield 5 to Battlefield 2042. Or all of Capcom's RE engine games somehow getting greasier and uglier than DMC5.

Only games actually pushing anything forward right now would ironically be Fortnite, and probably Alan Wake 2, other than that it's a bunch of memetracing, grease-covered slop. And memetracing won't really be a real advancement as long as it keeps crippling the framerate and needing tricks like framegen or DLSS/FSR to barely hit 60 fps.

 

[UberSoldat]

Gman looks at shitty ports of great games

 

[agility_]

Every game released over one month ago is "retro". There I hope this helps.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

You wanna hear the depressing part? Fortnite now looks much better than Fortnite five years ago, and is actually pushing a bunch of the new UE5 tech and fidelity, but people don't realize because they either don't play it, or because of the art style. A better example would be us going from Skyrim to Skyrim in Space in 12 years. Or from Call of Duty 2019 to Call of Duty 2019 but worse looking over five years. Or Battlefield 5 to Battlefield 2042. Or all of Capcom's RE engine games somehow getting greasier and uglier than DMC5.

Only games actually pushing anything forward right now would ironically be Fortnite, and probably Alan Wake 2, other than that it's a bunch of memetracing, grease-covered slop. And memetracing won't really be a real advancement as long as it keeps crippling the framerate and needing tricks like framegen or DLSS/FSR to barely hit 60 fps.

I'm really interested to see how the launch of GTA6 turns out, regardless of all the bad news I'm hearing about their internal workings. They're still trying to push the whole "we launch on consoles first to bait PC players to buy it on console, then we'll launch on PC later".

GTA5 launched in September 2013 on the 7th gen:

• The Xbox 360 launched in 2005 and had sold 80 million units by October 2013
• The PS3 launched in 2006 and had sold 80 million units by November 2013.

That's a base of 160 million consoles to be sold on.
GTA6 is suppose to be XSX/PS5 exclusive:

• The Xbox Series X and Series S has sold 21 million units as of July 2023
• The PS5 has sold 59 million units as of May 2013

GTA6 is so far looking at a base of 80 million consoles sold, that's half of what GTA5 was launching to. Of course there's going to be some people buying a console just to play the new GTA but I don't think it will be enough to cover that gap.

GTA6 is either going to be the savior of this console generation's shit console sales data or its going to be a nuclear event to the industry if it doesn't perform as well. I expect them pulling all the stops (multiple release tiers, 3 days early for $20) because it's not looking good.

 

[Stunned But Dumb]

You guys are saying some very important stuff for the future of the gaming industry but I want you to know that all of the worst people you know will be collaborating next year

 

[Awoogers]

You guys are saying some very important stuff for the future of the gaming industry but I want you to know that all of the worst people you know will be collaborating next year

i sure do like being chased by frederick fitzgerald fazbear on whenever the fuck is 2025

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

i sure do like being chased by frederick fitzgerald fazbear on whenever the fuck is 2025

Welp, time for Lia to get addicted to DBD

 

[Awoogers]

Welp, time for Lia to get addicted to DBD

have fun for a fuckton of vtubers to magically boot up DBD next year to stream it

 

[Punished Anime Discusser]

Welp, time for Lia to get addicted to DBD

inb4 Lia gets got by one of the infinite RCE exploits still unpatched in DBD