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 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.
This sounds like a shower thought I would have but when someone else says it, it just seems reductive and incorrect. The Germans probably have a word for this phenomenon.
I was just having a discussion with my family about recent union wins in the US, and when something good is a sign of how bad things must be. I suggested that there must be a german word for it, and my sister suggested maybe a chinese saying.
If you like the category of ‘things that sound like german has a word for it’, look into the 4-character chinese sayings called chengyu. One of my favourites is ‘Melon Patch, Under Plum’, meaning something that is completely innocent but should be avoided because it looks really sketchy. Don’t tie your shoes in a melon patch or fix your hat under a plum tree.
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
…but hired some AI to generate the story.
Lmao, you mean how games used to be before everyone started chasing realism in graphics?
duuude skyrim has mountains!!!
Immerse us in dlc and micropayments no doubt. We pay for PSN to have multi-player and they kill servers beloved by many. RIP LBP series
Did they say “Immersive”? I think this might be the closest they’ve come acknowledging their VR headset in years!
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.
