explore the wreck

I feel like I can bring up my lament on the games industry and their obsession with graphics (spurred on by gamers overall and their obsession with graphics).

Each console cycle, we see more graphical improvements. But the Last of Us remake, it just shows that this has serious diminishing returns (and has for the last couple console gens).

FIFA’s a good benchmark because it releases every year. The red outlines indicate a new console release that year. This is the same person each year. (I missed 2017).

You can see the dramatic diminishing returns with each new iteration. From 2013 onwards you can see a dramatic shortening in the jumps in graphical upgrades. By 2018, this shortens again.

This is because what as the polygons increase, the addition of new polygons becomes relatively smaller. A model with 10 polygons sees a major jump to 20 polygons, 100%. But a jump of 10,000 polygons in a 100,000 polygon model is only a 10% bump.

This fixation on hyper-realistic graphics is pushing consoles to be bigger and better, while the idea of expanding other technical aspects of games go unexplored. To me, the fact that games AI has largely stayed the same for a decade is disappointing. 

To this day, NPCs will charge you with a knife from yards away, in a straight line, because their AI is just figuring out the shortest path to you and thinks of nothing else.

Enemies will funnel themselves into doors or halls without thinking because all their AI considers is if they have line of sight. So waves upon waves of NPCs will walk through doors, one at a time, and get shot like targets on a wall.

This AI has largely remained unchanged since Half-Life 2.

Sure, AI is hard to market while graphics are easier. So what about, instead of using improved hardware to update graphics again, instead focus on things like destructible environments. And not just the “oh, your cover degrades,” but making buildings and terrain show signs of damage in real time, rather than just slapping bullet decals on a wall when you shoot it.

What about sound? What about improving the way sound travels in areas and through objects? This would dramatically change how stealth operates.

What about clothing physics, so clipping is heavily diminished. Instead of a ribbon clipping through your character’s shoulder, have it interact with the model instead.

For the longest time, video games often ‘cheated’ by creating illusions to simulate real effects. Wall damage isn’t your bullet leaving a hole, it’s a decal on a still flat surface. Your footsteps aren’t actually creating sound, it’s just a sphere around you that gets bigger or smaller depending on variables. Mirrors don’t reflect, they’re just transparent walls looking into a cloned room with cloned NPCs. Rain is just a series filters, which is why standing under an awning or tree doesn’t stop your character from getting wet.

For a long time we could’ve been moving out of the realm of ‘cheats’ and, instead, improving these things to make them behave more realistically. But, instead, the budgets go to graphical improvements (and other things I don’t feel warrant the price tag).