1eyedking What's the best way to go, visually?

[orcinator]

anime

 

[Zed]

I think games look better than ever. Photorealism is now a possibility without the uncanny valley problem.

Some games still benefit from having their own unique art style - normally, adventure games and JRPGs where the focus is not on providing an "immersive" experience.

The Last of Us: Remastered is probably the best looking game I have played although I haven't played any AAA title from 2017.

The Last of Us has been surpassed, this in my opinion is one of the best looking games at the current moment across all platforms.



Sadly, this video is only in 720p for some dumb reason but playing it on a 1080p screen downsampled from 2160p checkerboard and it's mind blowing.

I think the nu-Tomb Raiders (on PC) surpass Horizon.
Battlefield 1 (again, on PC) is probably my top pick though.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

While photorealism is possible now, it remains a big question on whether you want to use it or not. Because at the end of the day it looks just like Real Life - which is what every gamer on the planet is trying to get the fuck away from. It's brilliant if you're trying to bring a truly exotic location to life (outer space, alien worlds, ocean depths, Cthulhu's bathroom) but otherwise I think it should be used sparingly... or the end result will look like Every AAA Ever Made.

Scaling the graphics back a little bit and instead adding your personal style gives a much more memorable result. Great examples of this have been posted in the thread already. Unfortunately this approach to graphics often requires Talent and Effort, both of which are in ever-dwindling supplies nowadays.

 

[pakoito]

anime

There were a couple of weird years were Naruto anime games looked and were animated better than the show...or most other shows.

 

[Sigourn]

All I'm going to say is textures > polygons.
If you are going to have extremely detailed polygons, blurry textures will make your game look like shit. On the other hand, you can get away with low polygons if your textures are sufficiently high res, which in most cases means Deus Ex (2000) levels of quality.

 

[luj1]

All I'm going to say is textures > polygons.
If you are going to have extremely detailed polygons, blurry textures will make your game look like shit. On the other hand, you can get away with low polygons if your textures are sufficiently high res, which in most cases means Deus Ex (2000) levels of quality.

Maybe... in the roughest sense imaginable. Morrowind is kind of like that too. Horrible meshes but great looking textures for its time.

 

[SpaceGhost]

For longevity, simple meshes with large polygons and stylized abstraction. In other words, cartoony. Wind Waker looks just as good today as it did 17 years ago.

 

[Darkforge]

I know this is slightly off-topic but it has to be said. Any game in Nvidias recently abandoned 3dvision. Stereoscopic gaming is the graphics tragedy of the industry. Forget 4k/8k, forget HDR, forget Ray tracing. Nothing compares to a properly supported game in true 3D at maximum convergence and separation. It's one of the biggest secrets, and everyone I have shown gaming on my rig to has been completely blown away. Even games like Kingmaker look amazing with it.

Community fixes here.

https://helixmod.blogspot.com/

 

[DalekFlay]

Really just depends on the game for me. Something like Battlefield 5 mentioned in the first reply? Yeah, they should go for realistic. Something more fantastical though, I like a little artistic style to it. It made me sad to see people attack Amid Evil for being too stylized, because that's exactly the type of game that benefits from it IMO. I also think often times people mistake a certain style for "bad graphics" like with Outer Worlds or Deus Ex Human Revolution.

I hate tons of post-process effects though, that's my main graphics annoyance. Especially when you make me upgrade my GPU to run the fucking thing and then slather it will blur filters and shit so it doesn't look that great anyway.