The wildest thing for me and my brother was using the graphic switch button (aka the back button) for Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Halo: Combat evolved where it would swap between original and new graphics. After having grown up with Halo, it blew our minds.
💯 but CDPR really did what they said they were gonna do and made the game into something special. A lot of people won’t ever stop hating on it for the launch but I have to give them props, they crushed it the best they could after that launch. It’s one of my favorite worlds and games of all time now. I don’t even fast travel because Night City is so interesting to drive and run around in.
It actually hurt me to fast travel in liberty city😂 I started playing a week after the 2.0 patch and it is one of my most played games I have. Such a good game.
@@DintheDinster I tried after launch and had a terrible time, but reinstalled after the 2.0 patch too, and now it's one of my favourite games. The original release was virtually unplayable, but CDPR was very diligent in continuing to develop it, and the Phantom Liberty DLC really completes the narrative. It honestly feels like an Early Access experience, which pushes further blame to the publishing timeline, not the devs.
Really? Just because something looks nice doesnt make it worth talking about. The original RE2 was ground breaking, the remake was.....a remake. People nowadays really need to think of something new to talk about
That's the magic of pixel art, for example, your brain fill the gaps and you love what you imagine. Take Quake, faces were a bunch of pixels but your mind created perfect images. When I downloaded the "hi res pak" I thought, "nice, but that's not what it should look like to me".
Resident evil.. walking into that mansion in the first game back in 97 or whatever was unreal.. mind blowing.. now look at it, and how good the new remakes are. We have seen a lot
I get the logic of preffering better graphics over worse ones, but that doesnt change the fact that ive played some of the worst best looking games, and the best worst looking games, graphics dont fix a bad game and they dont ruin a good one imo
@@vadnegruCyberpunk actually has nothing to do with that, it was the same game, just don't optimized at the release. Dude means completely different stuff
I somewhat disagree that bad graphics can't ruin a good game. Maybe not for you, but they definitely can for myself and others. While I can appreciate a game that plays well but looks bad, it definitely holds me back from really getting into it. That also doesn't mean that a game has to be a technical graphics powerhouse, it can just be art direction.
I agree. It just drives up the costs of the pretty games while they loose the essence of what makes a game good. Graphics are something to throw money at, but gameplay is where all of the creativity is at. Sadly for the big guys, you cannot just throw money around and get a good game with a compelling story.
I’m excited to see how facial graphics improve in the next few years, because for a lot of games I feel like they have a really hard time escaping the uncanny valley.
To make graphics as life-like as possible...water. Because of thermoregulation, humans are always filtered through water vapor. Whoever comes up with the algorithm for water vapor, wins.
i think they dont care, compare Fallout 76 vs Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76 has less facial animations than ME: Andromeda had at launch, a lot of companies, like Bethesda simply dont care about adding motion capture or animations, which already exist, it way cheaper to not add them at all
Weve been pushing photorealism for a while, with textures at least and even lighting. When i look at new games and judge them "graphically" nowadays i tend to look more at the fluid, hair and cloth physics.
The lighting is definitely the most important thing for photorealism. Ray-tracing helps a lot. But yeah you're right about the hair and cloth, I think we mostly ignore this in our judgement of graphics nowadays because it's still nowhere near reality.
@@teeds88 Yeah, but we still have a long way to go for photorealism. Most things that are called that way (be it unrecorded or anything else) rather looks like a fever dream due to all the tricks used than actual photorealism.
Playing games with my second grader has reminded me that graphics are not nearly as important as gameplay. He could care less if it's NES or PS5, just so long as it's fun.
The first time I played Tekken 1 is etched in my memory. At 14, I was dining with my parents at a pizzeria on Spain's south coast, a summery place fringed with palm trees and the beach just a stroll away. It was about 9 p.m. when we entered and I spotted a Tekken arcade machine. My excitement was palpable. That evening, the pizza tasted incredible, and those 100 pesetas (roughly 60 US cents) were the best spent on any game.
my 1st pc also, 4mb RAM, probaly 10mb HD . the 1st thing to test it was Doom episode 1 last level boss, so had to pony up for the other 4MB up to 8MB, which i'd imagine cost somewhere like £100+ back then
When resources were little, people were more creative. Now it seems the solution is just more money coz the technology we have today can do pretty much anything you want.
They need a proper Dragon Ball Z game with Unreal Engine 5 and fully destructible environments. I have been wanting such a game, since I was 12 years old. I'm nearly 40 now, still waiting for the day we have that technology. And I dont think we are too far off from that day.
The big deal about Deus Ex was never the graphics. It was about a fully voice acted game with a really cool multiple choice storyline. And I think the graphical difference between Indigo Prophecy and Detroit Become Human is pretty crazy.
An example even within the same game: No Man's Sky has received quite the graphics glow-up since it's 2016 release. I wouldn't say it's completely unrecognizable, but it sure is a stark difference when you compare them side-by-side.
The “cool” thing about old graphics was the fact that the “rest” could be interpreted, similar to a book That's why old games have a charm that many of today's games can't match
The crazy thing is that it looks like the older games being used here as examples of outdated graphics are being run on modern hardware/emulators (which generally increases framerate, resolution and smooths textures). They'd look even WORSE if we actually saw them through an old CRT TV and running on launch-edition consoles. The progress made in graphical fidelity over the last 20 years in phenomenal.
Back in those days, our eyes didn't see them as horrible graphics. We were so much happy to play the games and saw them as real. Though back in the day i liked those graphics I also imagined high polygon graphics like we have today.
That's the mid-point though. If you compare modern-day games to 20 year old games, there's a huge difference. If you compare them to 10 year old games, there's no difference because all the tech advancements are now used to push games out faster. We've got AI now - imagine all the cool things that could do... Devs: we don't have to design things anymore - we'll just procedurally generate it. We've got upscaling and frame generation now - imagine how incredible graphics could look!? Devs: we don't have to optimize games anymore - we'll just release them unfinished and DLSS can pick up the slack.
Graphics have definitely advanced really well, but I'm still waiting for an open world city with the ability to enter every building. GTA where every npc lives and has a genuine life. Imagine a mission where you have to run through a street but can jump through open windows, smash through any door, etc.
theres not much reason to do it. like why invest the dev time for a feature that ultimately will lead to many players getting lost or searching 1000 virtually identical rooms. like its a niche within a niche if anyones gonna do it i could see an Arma style game and it could be cool for a persistant online space like Rust; like if you had a new york sized map there could be thousands of players and you could never see a single one for literal days
@@ince55ant I don't think it would be too hard to design a program that could procedurally generate interiors, the same way that buildings and landscapes were generated in the Matrix UE5 demo. I imagine that would take a lot of resources though, so maybe in a decade or two.
We've reached a point in graphical fidelity where I just don't see the point of obsessing over the most microscopic details anymore only to completely fumble the core of any game... the damned gameplay.
Give me pixel graphics with good story and mechanics, and will be happy. Because even the most polished gilded turd is still a turd at it's core. Plus, pixel art has a charm of it's own.
Who else saw the Red Hot Chili Pepper's music video for Californication and thought those graphic were great at the time? I remember seeing that video and thinking how cool it would be to play a game like that.
The Tekken segment does make the argument that graphics aren't everything (which is not what you're claiming I know). Seeing those OG animations applied to current gen graphics just shows that the gameplay is what allowed us to overlook the relative unreality of the old graphics back in the day. If anything, devs have to work a lot harder now to make these much more realistic graphics move and act realistically. The old games relied on help from our imaginations to bridge the gap.
Doom could have been added. Actually you could make an episode of any game series from first installment to the latest comparison (Aliens, Doom, GTA etc) Love the show, keep it up!
The original Nier is still on of my favorite games of all time. I feel like even though graphics weren't there, older games were so much more memorable
You make a good point - we can't trust demos of Unreal 5 games too much. Until the next gen consoles come out, & we see actual gameplay, it's wise not to get our hopes up too high.
Did Falcon call Nina Ninja? Lol, rare for him to misread so it jumped out. Great vid, I love old games and graphics and appreciate many games from PS1 and early PC 3D.
Little bit random but .. why is there not triple AAA studio covering the SCP Games? Like.. Imagine the original SCP game but with way more features, monsters, lore and stuffs. You could update it FOREVER knowing how BIG, scary and creepy the SCP possibilities are. I am so sad we only get like shooters as SCP games.
The Serious Sam games, some of the most awesome fun I ever had, single player, LAN multiplayer and online multiplayer. The games were jaw dropping to be hold to me, as I was new to PC gaming and had a machine powerful enough to run Serious Sam and Serious Sam 2 maxed out at 1280x1024. The only other game to get the more play time online and just at home multiplayer than Serious Sam was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and its expansions. That game I was a part of a pretty highly ranked clan, and it was a blast.
Honestly, I've been stoked for every advance in graphics from the original 8-bit, 4 color graphics on up. Back then, never in my wildest imagination would I have foreseen where we are today, from Baldurs Gate 3 (and I loved playing the original TSR D&D Gold Box games back in the late 80's and early 90's) to the promise of Unreal Engine 5.
As someone who played all the older games, the weirdest thing is that we/I somehow filled in all those "inadequacies" with our brains. Coming from pixel games like Zelda or Pokemon, 3D games like Half Life, Tomb Raider or Deus Ex felt and looked lifelike. In Spiderman, seeing more than one moving car in the city, especially because of it was ist just background and not needed for the game was mind blowing. Yesterday I was on Tiktok and thought someone is POV streaming a walk in the woods, till he used pulled out a gun and used the scope; and only then I realized it's a computer game. I can only imagine what the next centuries will do.
I would disagree with your point to an extent, and here's why: it heavily depends on the types of games you play. For instance, if I had to choose one genre for the rest of my life, it would be simulators. When you play simulators, they're not necessarily about fun in terms of having a breathtaking story; they're about grind and completing objectives. Take Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and Microsoft Flight Simulator X, for example. They're pretty much the same game in terms of concept, but would you rather play a simulator with insane graphics or with subpar graphics? I would pick the one with insane graphics any day simply because good graphics add to the overall immersion of the game.
@@peek_exe That's a given. As a racing simulation fan, definitely, I've never been happier than in the past decade, ever since Assetto Corsa came out. But for many other genres, yeah, graphics are very secondary. For example, I still prefer 90s 2D RTS like Red Alert 2 than any new 3D RTS. Same for turn-based strategy like Heroes of Might and Magic.
All these technical advancements and people still pay $90/year for sports games that have been carbon copies of the same game since 2015. The same copied assets, the same physics engines, the same stadiums, same voiceover announcers, the same crowd noises. The only thing that changes is the background tracks which get shittier each year. But hey, uPdAtEd RoStErs!
Dam I remember playing Serious Sam when it first came out. I think it's actually aged quite well. It's a game that has a scene ingrained into my head forever... when Sam approaches a sand hill *hears faint screaming* "Uh Oh!" Suicide bombers run over the hill in waves... ARHHHHHHHH!" *BOOM!" "ARRRHHHHHHHH!" "BOOM!" "ARRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Don't forget that a lot of old games were made with CRT tv's in mind. Old textures or sprites that look terrible now (on modern screens) looked really good on CRT tv's. So yeah, a lot of stuff does look a lot better now, but showing stuff on a modern screen makes it look a lot worse. But still, the improvements over time are amazing!
Unpopular opinion: you're comparing constantly with games pre-2005, because if you'd compare with games of, let's say, a decade ago (which is still 10 years!), you wouldn't find any real significant updates besides a bit of atmospheric light play. Graphics just follows the Unreal engines, and a 15 year wait for an update is at the very least a bit disappointing. On the other hand, I'm still waiting for the first game that will truely take use of Unreal 5's photographic developments.
I think this is the equivalent of "running out of ideas, lets change our wording and change our list to make it look 'different'". Gameranx's Top 10 stuff are a bit stale. I do like their other content though
2 ideas for you: - Try to do the opposite: then vs now... finding game that are 10 years (ish) old that look better than new recent games. - compare current real-time game with old(-ish) pre-rendered 3d movies (toy story, Final Fantasy, ...?) have fun, thanks for the videos !
I was playing Castlevania: SoTN on my 360 earlier this week, and was wow'd switching between the original graphics and the enhanced ones. And I remembered playing the original disc game on my PS1 in the 90's. We really have come far.
So many more comparisons you could do! I'd love to see a second part - GTA 1 vs 5, Fallout 1 vs 4 (especially with the next gen mod!), Morrowind vs Starfield, Red Dead 1 vs 2. Would also be cool to do a comparison with originals vs. remakes (FF7 comes to mind first).
You were right to say that the Dekogon asset for fractured mind is older, but not because it isn't an amazing asset. Dekogon did really good work here, it's that Unreal Engine 5's newer material editor Substrate supports Specular PBR, which has better belnding of metallics and dielectric (non-metallic) surfaces. In theory it doesnt take much to update it, but we've known for a while that Unreal's reliance on Metallic PBR GGX (the algorithm used to render physically based surfaces) does bring in some issues.
I vividly remembered standing in my boy room mesmerized by the graphics of the cut scenes in Rage Racer (Ridge Racer 3) for PS1 and thinking wow one day the gameplay will look that awesome! And here we are today where it’s starting to become realism without any uncanny valley’s.
Far Cry to Crysis was a pretty big jump and those games were only 3 years apart. Which is kinda mind blowing when you think about it. Graphics were moving so fast back in the day.
Sure but that's kind of the point of this video - comparing modern-day technology to 20+ year old technology. Cyberpunk vs Starfield is a good example of that.
What amazes me is when you watch videos like this and you then consider how much work goes into making new games to be better than what has gone before and then people start complaining about the price of new games.
Whenever someone goes, "walken' heee-r!!", it reminds me off thst video with the kid walking in NYC and the lady goes, "we don't sound like that!!!" And he goes, "ok....fugget about it" and so she chokes him....funny 🤣
I remember losing my mind when Jak & Daxter came out and Jak's feet actually stood at different elevations when you stood on an incline or stairs. The same when Bloodrayne 2 had snacks come out of vending machines when you destroyed them.
Where is Mario? The NES brought kids like me to tears on Christmas. Then the 64 came out later and I had to RENT the console and a game for the weekend to have my mind blown with advancements…I remember the feeling as a kid going into “Karma” (My local and privately owned rental service) and loving to waste time looking around and hiding the cards for games I wanted to rent later. LOL
God, the last triple AAA game I played was fallout 4 and the Witcher 3. Played it on a 1030 GPU before I was forced to sell my PC for college. I'm so pumped to play these new game in the future when I have a proper PC to game on
Surprised you didn't have FF7. Back in the day, theor backgrounds were a brilliant way to show a detailed environment without having models made of the same polygons as the characters. with the 3d models moving around it. It's awesome seeing all the little details recognizable in remake/rebirth in true HD.
I first started gaming on the Atari 2600 and looking back at those games it's a little surprising how I found them fun. But I did. However, there is no way I would be able to last ten minutes playing one of them again today.
So happy to see that Sean Ashmore is in Alan Wake 2! He was in one of my favorite underrated Remedy games! The reason I wanted an Xbox One because of Quantum Break. Still cool to this day.
![Evolution of Unreal Engine [1995-2023]](/img/n.gif)
The wildest thing for me and my brother was using the graphic switch button (aka the back button) for Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Halo: Combat evolved where it would swap between original and new graphics. After having grown up with Halo, it blew our minds.
Similarly, the graphics toggle for the Diablo 2 remaster.
I feel like the remastered graphics in that game are genuinely worse than the original. It’s just rough to look at.
i did the same thing only to find in some cases that the newer graphics were worse and more lifeless
@@knivesron They also mess up the level design's visual queues by putting 10+ new light sources
@ZimtikiBar don't be daft they look 100 times better.
The OG Gran Turismo vs GT7 is a unreal difference too
I agree with this
GTA and Fallout have some of the biggest “then vs now” differences
I mean fallout went through extremely changes gameplay wise so idk if that’s best example
@@JetBlack2024facts I guess first two don’t really count but even the jump from 3 and NV (if you wanna count it) to 4, 76 and SF are big
That could be said for literally any long running franchise
@@brandonreyes7113Fallout SF? What’s that?
@@clays4038 Fallout seventy fix
Even having played Spiderman, I dont know why this never clicked, but Insomniac should reboot the Prototype franchise. It would be amazing.
Hdr or 4k prototype 3rd sequel would slap!
I think Microsoft owns them now
Holy crap I was just thinking that as I was watching this video! +1 for this!
when ever i see photo realistic graphics i think "wow cool this game is gonna be at least 100Gb"
Cyberpunk 2020 vs Cyberpunk 2024 lol
👍
Yeah lol
💯 but CDPR really did what they said they were gonna do and made the game into something special. A lot of people won’t ever stop hating on it for the launch but I have to give them props, they crushed it the best they could after that launch. It’s one of my favorite worlds and games of all time now. I don’t even fast travel because Night City is so interesting to drive and run around in.
It actually hurt me to fast travel in liberty city😂 I started playing a week after the 2.0 patch and it is one of my most played games I have. Such a good game.
@@DintheDinster I tried after launch and had a terrible time, but reinstalled after the 2.0 patch too, and now it's one of my favourite games. The original release was virtually unplayable, but CDPR was very diligent in continuing to develop it, and the Phantom Liberty DLC really completes the narrative. It honestly feels like an Early Access experience, which pushes further blame to the publishing timeline, not the devs.
Would have been a great opportunity to talk about Resident Evil and their remakes.
And Final Fantasy. The FF games from XV onwards look absolutely incredible
Really? Just because something looks nice doesnt make it worth talking about. The original RE2 was ground breaking, the remake was.....a remake. People nowadays really need to think of something new to talk about
@@iainstewart102 okay? but a THEN vs NOW comparison is actually perfect for remakes of games that existed both THEN and NOW lol
@@iainstewart102 wow you really miss the only shot you got quite often huh
?
13:00 Ninja? You mean Nina :)
I am shocked!!!
Got you to comment. Classic UA-camr strat
Gotta find the comment and up it instead of making one. ❤
I was about to comment this but you beat me to it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who picked up on that 😂
You should make a list of older games that look better than new games.
This actually is a good idea.
Crysis was holding up for a long time
Batman arkham, uncharted 4, tomb raider reboot are some of the ones I can think of.
👍
Heroes 3 vs any Heroes afterwards.
this is like a list of "how games used to actually look vs how we imagined them looking when we played them"
That's the magic of pixel art, for example, your brain fill the gaps and you love what you imagine.
Take Quake, faces were a bunch of pixels but your mind created perfect images.
When I downloaded the "hi res pak" I thought, "nice, but that's not what it should look like to me".
Resident evil.. walking into that mansion in the first game back in 97 or whatever was unreal.. mind blowing.. now look at it, and how good the new remakes are.
We have seen a lot
I get the logic of preffering better graphics over worse ones, but that doesnt change the fact that ive played some of the worst best looking games, and the best worst looking games, graphics dont fix a bad game and they dont ruin a good one imo
Cyberpunk 1.0 got something to say about that
@@vadnegruCyberpunk actually has nothing to do with that, it was the same game, just don't optimized at the release. Dude means completely different stuff
I somewhat disagree that bad graphics can't ruin a good game. Maybe not for you, but they definitely can for myself and others. While I can appreciate a game that plays well but looks bad, it definitely holds me back from really getting into it. That also doesn't mean that a game has to be a technical graphics powerhouse, it can just be art direction.
sometimes games are about immersion, contemplation, or have a meaningful artstyle. gameplay isn't some monolithic thing separated from the graphics
I agree. It just drives up the costs of the pretty games while they loose the essence of what makes a game good. Graphics are something to throw money at, but gameplay is where all of the creativity is at. Sadly for the big guys, you cannot just throw money around and get a good game with a compelling story.
I’m excited to see how facial graphics improve in the next few years, because for a lot of games I feel like they have a really hard time escaping the uncanny valley.
To make graphics as life-like as possible...water.
Because of thermoregulation, humans are always filtered through water vapor.
Whoever comes up with the algorithm for water vapor, wins.
@@intelligentbodywork i bet slow people think you're smart
@@iangray1980 I bet most people think you're stupid for wasting your time trolling youtube comments with weak wit.
i think they dont care, compare Fallout 76 vs Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76 has less facial animations than ME: Andromeda had at launch, a lot of companies, like Bethesda simply dont care about adding motion capture or animations, which already exist, it way cheaper to not add them at all
We hope we ain't dead
Weve been pushing photorealism for a while, with textures at least and even lighting. When i look at new games and judge them "graphically" nowadays i tend to look more at the fluid, hair and cloth physics.
The lighting is definitely the most important thing for photorealism. Ray-tracing helps a lot. But yeah you're right about the hair and cloth, I think we mostly ignore this in our judgement of graphics nowadays because it's still nowhere near reality.
@@teeds88 Yeah, but we still have a long way to go for photorealism.
Most things that are called that way (be it unrecorded or anything else) rather looks like a fever dream due to all the tricks used than actual photorealism.
Yes, something like cars already got pretty realistic in 2012, but something like cloth and fluids still aren't looking good in most games
Don't forget mirrors
Most of this isn't photorealism. It's a sort of larger-than-life "hyper realism" that has its origins in art of the 50s and 60s.
Playing games with my second grader has reminded me that graphics are not nearly as important as gameplay. He could care less if it's NES or PS5, just so long as it's fun.
The first time I played Tekken 1 is etched in my memory. At 14, I was dining with my parents at a pizzeria on Spain's south coast, a summery place fringed with palm trees and the beach just a stroll away. It was about 9 p.m. when we entered and I spotted a Tekken arcade machine. My excitement was palpable. That evening, the pizza tasted incredible, and those 100 pesetas (roughly 60 US cents) were the best spent on any game.
Didn’t realize Ninja made it through all eight generations of Tekken. 😏
I noticed Falcon's mistake too 😅
The benefit of sticking to the shadows I guess
Some great mentions would've been : Final Fantasy, Twisted Metal, Metal Gear, Mario, Zelda.....The OG's
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. Built my first 486DX2 PC in 1992. Played most of these older games. 👍🏼
my 1st pc also, 4mb RAM, probaly 10mb HD . the 1st thing to test it was Doom episode 1 last level boss, so had to pony up for the other 4MB up to 8MB, which i'd imagine cost somewhere like £100+ back then
When resources were little, people were more creative. Now it seems the solution is just more money coz the technology we have today can do pretty much anything you want.
They need a proper Dragon Ball Z game with Unreal Engine 5 and fully destructible environments. I have been wanting such a game, since I was 12 years old. I'm nearly 40 now, still waiting for the day we have that technology. And I dont think we are too far off from that day.
The big deal about Deus Ex was never the graphics. It was about a fully voice acted game with a really cool multiple choice storyline.
And I think the graphical difference between Indigo Prophecy and Detroit Become Human is pretty crazy.
The freedom of game play mixed with RPG elements was a decade ahead of its time! It blew my mind back then.
An example even within the same game: No Man's Sky has received quite the graphics glow-up since it's 2016 release. I wouldn't say it's completely unrecognizable, but it sure is a stark difference when you compare them side-by-side.
The “cool” thing about old graphics was the fact that the “rest” could be interpreted, similar to a book
That's why old games have a charm that many of today's games can't match
The crazy thing is that it looks like the older games being used here as examples of outdated graphics are being run on modern hardware/emulators (which generally increases framerate, resolution and smooths textures). They'd look even WORSE if we actually saw them through an old CRT TV and running on launch-edition consoles. The progress made in graphical fidelity over the last 20 years in phenomenal.
Back in those days, our eyes didn't see them as horrible graphics. We were so much happy to play the games and saw them as real. Though back in the day i liked those graphics I also imagined high polygon graphics like we have today.
Wow look how different ninja is 13:03
13:04 “Look at Ninja, for example” lol
Microsoft Flight Simulator should really be on this list, I'm not sure there is a bigger THEN vs NOW anywhere.
Exactly.
Yea, thought so to. Just compare FS 4 to MSFS 2024
Max Payne 1 blew my mind when it first came out lol
Man, I have no idea if it’s nostalgia goggles, but even with these truly amazing graphics, games just felt so much more interesting back in the day.
Sometimes simplicity is more fun.
Why not compare Harry Potter to Hogwarts legacy? Lol that was such a weird choice to start with.
yeah, this guy has bird brains for sure
I can only assume that it was a comparison of what Unreal can do from it's original form compared to now. Also, Hogwarts Legacy used Unreal 4.
because this video was sponsored by Unreal
this is a graphic comparison of game engine version used back in the day vs now
Because no one gives a shit about HP.
meanwhile crysis 3 still holds up well today despite being 11 years old
That's the mid-point though. If you compare modern-day games to 20 year old games, there's a huge difference. If you compare them to 10 year old games, there's no difference because all the tech advancements are now used to push games out faster. We've got AI now - imagine all the cool things that could do... Devs: we don't have to design things anymore - we'll just procedurally generate it. We've got upscaling and frame generation now - imagine how incredible graphics could look!? Devs: we don't have to optimize games anymore - we'll just release them unfinished and DLSS can pick up the slack.
Graphics have definitely advanced really well, but I'm still waiting for an open world city with the ability to enter every building. GTA where every npc lives and has a genuine life. Imagine a mission where you have to run through a street but can jump through open windows, smash through any door, etc.
Isn't this claimed for Watch Dogs or The Division?
I went outside once... was pretty much what you are asking for... Planning to go again this year ;D
Shadows of Doubt
theres not much reason to do it. like why invest the dev time for a feature that ultimately will lead to many players getting lost or searching 1000 virtually identical rooms. like its a niche within a niche
if anyones gonna do it i could see an Arma style game and it could be cool for a persistant online space like Rust; like if you had a new york sized map there could be thousands of players and you could never see a single one for literal days
@@ince55ant I don't think it would be too hard to design a program that could procedurally generate interiors, the same way that buildings and landscapes were generated in the Matrix UE5 demo. I imagine that would take a lot of resources though, so maybe in a decade or two.
I can think of two big, very natural reasons Stellar Blade looks better than Nier.
Haha !
We've reached a point in graphical fidelity where I just don't see the point of obsessing over the most microscopic details anymore only to completely fumble the core of any game... the damned gameplay.
Give me pixel graphics with good story and mechanics, and will be happy. Because even the most polished gilded turd is still a turd at it's core.
Plus, pixel art has a charm of it's own.
Who else saw the Red Hot Chili Pepper's music video for Californication and thought those graphic were great at the time? I remember seeing that video and thinking how cool it would be to play a game like that.
ME TOO!!
You called Nina from Tekken "Ninja", lmao.
The Tekken segment does make the argument that graphics aren't everything (which is not what you're claiming I know). Seeing those OG animations applied to current gen graphics just shows that the gameplay is what allowed us to overlook the relative unreality of the old graphics back in the day. If anything, devs have to work a lot harder now to make these much more realistic graphics move and act realistically. The old games relied on help from our imaginations to bridge the gap.
Tekken 3 is a better example, and is two years apart from tekken 1, and the jump of quality was awesome
Doom could have been added. Actually you could make an episode of any game series from first installment to the latest comparison (Aliens, Doom, GTA etc) Love the show, keep it up!
I prefer old graphics. Everything looks the same now, and all AAA publishers seem to care about are graphics, no matter how poorly a game runs.
Even better than graphics are physics, the Euphoria engine used in gta4/5 and force unleashed does more for immersion than grahpics ever could.
Spiderman 2 may have been empty, but that kid still managed to lose his damn balloon every couple of blocks
why didn't you compare Harry Potter to Hogwarts legacy?
Legacy not made with unreal 5
@@EverlyZillaJ180 that's not what the video was about?
Yah I was thinking the same...a lot of the time their lists just don't make sense lol
@@Reddeadredemption3seeing as he mentioned unreal engine 5 alsmot every number I’d say yes this is about unreal engine lol
@@Scotland_James no he didn't lmao, you must have brain damage, only like 5 of the games use unreal engine, you can keep coping tho
The original Nier is still on of my favorite games of all time. I feel like even though graphics weren't there, older games were so much more memorable
You make a good point - we can't trust demos of Unreal 5 games too much. Until the next gen consoles come out, & we see actual gameplay, it's wise not to get our hopes up too high.
following star dust we are
Next-gen consoles... God, that feels weird to say. I still can't wrap my head around the Series X and PS5 even existing and it's been five years
@@pygmalion0451it’s been 3?
Thought ue5 was for ps5 not 6??
@@RubyDaCherry261 3?! What is time anymore? Man...
Im a big fan of Croteam. Love the optics of Serious Sam 3, but Talos Principle 2 was WOW
Lego games are slept on in terms of graphical quality. Compare Complete saga to Skywalker saga and it's night and day
PS1 games still look beautiful in my eyes. If you grew up with 8bit and 16bit consoles, the jump to 3d was gigantic.
Did Falcon call Nina Ninja? Lol, rare for him to misread so it jumped out. Great vid, I love old games and graphics and appreciate many games from PS1 and early PC 3D.
Little bit random but .. why is there not triple AAA studio covering the SCP Games? Like.. Imagine the original SCP game but with way more features, monsters, lore and stuffs. You could update it FOREVER knowing how BIG, scary and creepy the SCP possibilities are. I am so sad we only get like shooters as SCP games.
Far Cry 2004 to Crysis 2007 is a whole different world
The Serious Sam games, some of the most awesome fun I ever had, single player, LAN multiplayer and online multiplayer. The games were jaw dropping to be hold to me, as I was new to PC gaming and had a machine powerful enough to run Serious Sam and Serious Sam 2 maxed out at 1280x1024. The only other game to get the more play time online and just at home multiplayer than Serious Sam was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and its expansions. That game I was a part of a pretty highly ranked clan, and it was a blast.
If the gameplay and stories could also keep up with the graphics we'd be living in gaming Utopia.
But we can't have it all I guess 🤷♂️
Honestly, I've been stoked for every advance in graphics from the original 8-bit, 4 color graphics on up. Back then, never in my wildest imagination would I have foreseen where we are today, from Baldurs Gate 3 (and I loved playing the original TSR D&D Gold Box games back in the late 80's and early 90's) to the promise of Unreal Engine 5.
For years i thought the face of max Payne 1 was Johnny Knoxville
I have no idea why the developer's used Sam Lake's "I just ate a lemon" expression for that game.
HL2 beginning is perhaps THE BEST opening in any game ever made. It's so atmospheric.
1:11 Forespoken 2.0, anyone…? 🤨🤷🏾♂️
Yes. I wish I could get my son to play Forspoken. Massive criticisms aside, I really enjoyed it, especially once all magic types were unlocked.
As someone who played all the older games, the weirdest thing is that we/I somehow filled in all those "inadequacies" with our brains.
Coming from pixel games like Zelda or Pokemon, 3D games like Half Life, Tomb Raider or Deus Ex felt and looked lifelike.
In Spiderman, seeing more than one moving car in the city, especially because of it was ist just background and not needed for the game was mind blowing.
Yesterday I was on Tiktok and thought someone is POV streaming a walk in the woods, till he used pulled out a gun and used the scope; and only then I realized it's a computer game.
I can only imagine what the next centuries will do.
Graphics aren't the most important in a game. Gameplay and story should come first, I think
I would disagree with your point to an extent, and here's why: it heavily depends on the types of games you play. For instance, if I had to choose one genre for the rest of my life, it would be simulators. When you play simulators, they're not necessarily about fun in terms of having a breathtaking story; they're about grind and completing objectives. Take Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and Microsoft Flight Simulator X, for example. They're pretty much the same game in terms of concept, but would you rather play a simulator with insane graphics or with subpar graphics? I would pick the one with insane graphics any day simply because good graphics add to the overall immersion of the game.
@@peek_exe That's a given. As a racing simulation fan, definitely, I've never been happier than in the past decade, ever since Assetto Corsa came out.
But for many other genres, yeah, graphics are very secondary. For example, I still prefer 90s 2D RTS like Red Alert 2 than any new 3D RTS.
Same for turn-based strategy like Heroes of Might and Magic.
Probably my favorite gameranx videos.see how video games graphics are then and now is amazing.word up son
Just remember that all these beautiful demos will run at 30fps on consoles.
teehee get a battlestation
Nothing wrong with 30fps and this is coming from a PC gamer with 144hz. Ya’ll are just weird
8:56 when you said “People walkin’ heeeerrrreeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!” That was hilarious!!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂
I dont want realistic graphics in games, I want stylistic graphics
I just want gameplay over graphics.
Nah screw that. I want my games to be beautiful.
We're gonna see what Unreal 5 is capable of when Hellblade II drops
Unreal Engine has come so far, it's unreal
All these technical advancements and people still pay $90/year for sports games that have been carbon copies of the same game since 2015.
The same copied assets, the same physics engines, the same stadiums, same voiceover announcers, the same crowd noises. The only thing that changes is the background tracks which get shittier each year.
But hey, uPdAtEd RoStErs!
13:03 It's Nina, not "Ninja"! 😂
these guys don't even play the games they talk about
Dam I remember playing Serious Sam when it first came out. I think it's actually aged quite well. It's a game that has a scene ingrained into my head forever... when Sam approaches a sand hill *hears faint screaming* "Uh Oh!" Suicide bombers run over the hill in waves... ARHHHHHHHH!" *BOOM!" "ARRRHHHHHHHH!" "BOOM!" "ARRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Unforgettable 😊
10 best Fishing Minigames in actual Games
when?
Don't forget that a lot of old games were made with CRT tv's in mind. Old textures or sprites that look terrible now (on modern screens) looked really good on CRT tv's. So yeah, a lot of stuff does look a lot better now, but showing stuff on a modern screen makes it look a lot worse. But still, the improvements over time are amazing!
Unpopular opinion: you're comparing constantly with games pre-2005, because if you'd compare with games of, let's say, a decade ago (which is still 10 years!), you wouldn't find any real significant updates besides a bit of atmospheric light play. Graphics just follows the Unreal engines, and a 15 year wait for an update is at the very least a bit disappointing. On the other hand, I'm still waiting for the first game that will truely take use of Unreal 5's photographic developments.
"Look at Ninja" LMAO, I don't mean it in as an offense, but hearing that was really funny.
this list feels really dumb for some reason
Maybe have a reason before complaining because this just makes you seem like a jerk 😐
I think this is the equivalent of "running out of ideas, lets change our wording and change our list to make it look 'different'". Gameranx's Top 10 stuff are a bit stale. I do like their other content though
Boohoo, you’re still here…🤣
The comparisons are like 2d vs 3d
See the better perspective on a 3d plane. Infinitely more advanced than 2d
try reading my reasons😉
I remember playing RoboCop on the Spectrum! 😅
Robocop Vs Terminator was also cool
2 ideas for you:
- Try to do the opposite: then vs now... finding game that are 10 years (ish) old that look better than new recent games.
- compare current real-time game with old(-ish) pre-rendered 3d movies (toy story, Final Fantasy, ...?)
have fun, thanks for the videos !
I was playing Castlevania: SoTN on my 360 earlier this week, and was wow'd switching between the original graphics and the enhanced ones. And I remembered playing the original disc game on my PS1 in the 90's. We really have come far.
As someone that started on a Atari.... I'll just say that games are made by wizards ... 🎮 ❤️
So many more comparisons you could do! I'd love to see a second part - GTA 1 vs 5, Fallout 1 vs 4 (especially with the next gen mod!), Morrowind vs Starfield, Red Dead 1 vs 2. Would also be cool to do a comparison with originals vs. remakes (FF7 comes to mind first).
You were right to say that the Dekogon asset for fractured mind is older, but not because it isn't an amazing asset. Dekogon did really good work here, it's that Unreal Engine 5's newer material editor Substrate supports Specular PBR, which has better belnding of metallics and dielectric (non-metallic) surfaces. In theory it doesnt take much to update it, but we've known for a while that Unreal's reliance on Metallic PBR GGX (the algorithm used to render physically based surfaces) does bring in some issues.
I vividly remembered standing in my boy room mesmerized by the graphics of the cut scenes in Rage Racer (Ridge Racer 3) for PS1 and thinking wow one day the gameplay will look that awesome!
And here we are today where it’s starting to become realism without any uncanny valley’s.
Far Cry to Crysis was a pretty big jump and those games were only 3 years apart. Which is kinda mind blowing when you think about it. Graphics were moving so fast back in the day.
7:53 You know what definitely DOES hold up from Deus Ex? The music!
Normally I hate people talking over videos but your narration is very good.
I can't wait to watch a similar video in 25 years.
01:48 - are you proud of yourself, Falcom?
I would have loved a bonus mention with Cyberpunk 2077 vs Starfield flipping the narrative on its head. The older looking so much better than the new.
Sure but that's kind of the point of this video - comparing modern-day technology to 20+ year old technology. Cyberpunk vs Starfield is a good example of that.
What amazes me is when you watch videos like this and you then consider how much work goes into making new games to be better than what has gone before and then people start complaining about the price of new games.
Metros Engine is Super Underrated
Whenever someone goes, "walken' heee-r!!", it reminds me off thst video with the kid walking in NYC and the lady goes, "we don't sound like that!!!" And he goes, "ok....fugget about it" and so she chokes him....funny 🤣
I remember losing my mind when Jak & Daxter came out and Jak's feet actually stood at different elevations when you stood on an incline or stairs. The same when Bloodrayne 2 had snacks come out of vending machines when you destroyed them.
Where is Mario? The NES brought kids like me to tears on Christmas. Then the 64 came out later and I had to RENT the console and a game for the weekend to have my mind blown with advancements…I remember the feeling as a kid going into “Karma” (My local and privately owned rental service) and loving to waste time looking around and hiding the cards for games I wanted to rent later. LOL
God, the last triple AAA game I played was fallout 4 and the Witcher 3. Played it on a 1030 GPU before I was forced to sell my PC for college.
I'm so pumped to play these new game in the future when I have a proper PC to game on
Back in 80s --> 90s we had this lvl of jumps jut per generation :-/ miss that
Surprised you didn't have FF7. Back in the day, theor backgrounds were a brilliant way to show a detailed environment without having models made of the same polygons as the characters. with the 3d models moving around it. It's awesome seeing all the little details recognizable in remake/rebirth in true HD.
Great video ma friend!! Tks for that!!
Oh man... when you said 30 years for the tekken franchise, I heard my back pop at the same time
It's worth noting that High Definition wasn't common until the PS3/360 era. These older games were at 480p at best.
Spider-man 2 is one of the best looking games I've ever played. Its honestly insane how far we've come.
I first started gaming on the Atari 2600 and looking back at those games it's a little surprising how I found them fun. But I did. However, there is no way I would be able to last ten minutes playing one of them again today.
Resident Evil 0 had a really dope train section.
So happy to see that Sean Ashmore is in Alan Wake 2! He was in one of my favorite underrated Remedy games! The reason I wanted an Xbox One because of Quantum Break. Still cool to this day.