what a novel concept.
A game with a great story will be boosted by amazing graphics. (RDR2, Cyberpunk).
Great stories will sell well, and sell well for a long time (Mass Effect, Dragon Age)
Great graphics will not be able to make up for a lackluster story (Pick any ubisoft game at random)
I want to add, good graphics doesn’t mean realism. All that you listed (and essentially all AAA) go for realism, because they’ve sold the idea realism is the way it should look. I don’t know about everyone else, but realist art is the least appealing to me. I can appreciate the skill and effort, but I can see better realism in real life. Games should try to be stylistic and intentional. They’re art. They should be creative and not limit themselves to what the real world looks like.
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I read an article years ago, maybe like a decade ago, of some game industry person saying it was a cycle:
Incredible new graphics come out and people will buy the shiny regardless of anything else, then slowly they have to start making actually good games with those graphics to sell, then incredible new graphics come out and you don’t need to bother with story for a while.
If I had to guess, each graphics cycle is a little less dominant than the last. The iterations on graphics are becoming lesser and lesser. A game from 10 years ago is far improved from a game 20 years ago, but not that much worse than a game from last month.
There are moments of awe (imo, especially in VR when a game “nails it”), but we’re pretty desensitized to high-graphics video games of late.
Translation.
We just fired a bunch of graphic artists
This is not unexpected, Sony games are movie games and they prioritize cinematics over anything else and graphics for the most part have peaked without going full path tracing. Shame they have no good writers at any of their studios anymore.
Did they say “Immersive”? I think this might be the closest they’ve come acknowledging their VR headset in years!
Playstation gets it. I haven’t been disappointed by a Playstation published game yet (Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted, God of War, etc.), unlike Ubisoft games which are abysmal.
Because that’s all the games they have. Imagine they would also suck. People who bought a ps5 would feel even dumber
What your point?
