War…War Finally Changed
Written by: Adam "ManKorn" Korenman, CC2K Video Games Editor
1) The Game Looks Last Gen
Okay, let’s just get this out of the way up front. Yes, discussing graphics in 2015 is a pretty lame way to pick at a game. We get it, graphics are right about at the uncanny valley, and characters are either going to look a little cartoonish or just too damn creepy. Except that’s not true anymore. Game design has reached a point where we are nearing photorealism. Take a look at a screenshot for the upcoming Detroit: Becoming Human.
That’s actress Valorie Curry starring in a video game. That, up there, is what games look like now. And you know what, I hear you. That’s a game that has yet to come out. Companies lie all the time about how good their games will look. So let’s take a peak at a recent release, one that hit shelves a while back. Until Dawn.
That is ridiculous. That looks like a person in a movie, mostly because video games hire talented actors and actresses to perform scenes for games in green screens, much like how Peter Jackson filmed the entirety of The Hobbit. Until Dawn was a pretty good, fairly scary title released this year, and it was able to craft some of the most believable characters and environments we’ve ever seen in video games. For comparison now, let’s have a look at Bethesda’s new epic.
I mean…that’s not bad, it’s just a little flat. A little bland.
Okay, now that is pretty awful. Seriously. Come on, Bethesda.
Now you’re just fucking with me, Bethesda.
Yes, this is an open-world RPG and the focus in on the immersion and not the graphics. I get it. I’m not without my sympathies for the hard-working developers. Fallout: New Vegas launched back in 2010. This is how much things improved in 5 years.
At the same time, here is how much Ubisoft changed from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood to Syndicate.
It may not be the most important detail in a game, and most of us are old enough to remember when 16 COLORS was enough to get us excited, but we are in the Age of the Gamer, and accepting a half-assed product just doesn’t seem right. Bethesda has made headway into every inch of their software, but they stubbornly refuse to update their engine beyond a few meager areas. This leads to flat, emotionless characters, lips that refuse to sync, and framerates that feel like a 1990’s FPS more than a 2015 Next-Gen AAA title.