Surely I'm not the only one who thinks late 90s/early 2000s 3D PC graphics look "lifeless". PC games released in this era have really shitty texture work and the environment always lacks detail. Feel free to post examples of otherwise.
Surely I'm not the only one who thinks late 90s/early 2000s 3D PC graphics look "lifeless".
I know what you mean. They all have a very similar aesthetic, trying to get some rugged appearance without the shaders or normals necessary for it
PC devs just have shitty taste and are bad at art, unlike good console devs.
ENTER
Uh buddy that's 2d isometric sprites, it's not 3d
I think they tend to make up for it in art direction and color palette. And personally, I just find the sharp models charming
>lifeless
diasagreed. lowpoly and questionable texture work can spark one's imagination in ways modern uncanny valley pseudorealism slop cannot
>personally, I just find the sharp models charming
same
Textures or graphics in general aren’t the problem. That era did look “soulless”, but it looks that way because every studio was going for the exact same “gritty medieval” artstyle with zero variation or innovation being attempted. Compared to the DOS games that came before and the games that came shortly after, the 90s really was a bland time for computer RPGs.
This is the definition of a clueless zoomer post.
almost definitely older than most here lol. Apple II was my computer.
Around 93 every computer RPG started looking just like OPs pic, and it stayed that way until the early 2000s when studios remembered that colors besides brown/grey/olive/red exist.
>Around 93 every computer RPG started looking just like OPs pic
Oh yea, most definitely a larping zoomer. Full 3D graphics on PC didn't become popular until around 97-98, and for RPG's it didn't become popular until after Morrowind.
As for the "dark and gritty aesthetic", that has always been the primary RPG aesthetic from day 1.
>skeletons look lifeless
What were they thinking!?!?!?
But I know what you mean. It was a real problem at the time. There were a number of contributing factors, but at the end of the day it comes down to companies hiring shit designers. Many such cases.
Westerners lack taste for aesthetics. Most of them just want the game to look as "realistic" as possible for the current hardware and it always looks drab.
Other way around. Japs have shit taste in aesthetics, so majority of their games always look like moronic clownvomit. That's why they've all been copying Western aesthetics the over the last 10 years, with RE7, RE8, Elden Ring, Devil May Cry 5, Nier Automata, and so on. Their games sell better when they don't look like moronic clownvomit.
>Other way around.
Nope.
That's why they've all been copying Western aesthetics the over the last 10 years
No, the reason is they want Western money, so the compromise their aesthetic values. The Japanese audience hates it.
>nope
Yup.
>The Japanese audience hates it.
Lol, who gives a shit what the jap audience likes? They have notoriously shit taste. Japanese devs know this and actively hate their native audience for it.
You say while posting a screencap from a game heavily inspired by Japanese media and is a spiritual successor to a past game they made also heavily inspired by Japanese media.
No, it was heavily inspired by John Woo films, who is Chinese. The horror aspect was inspired by Japanese horror, but that aesthetic has nothing to do with anime or Japanese video games, with aesthetics more closely resembling Western ones.
The combat was inspired by Hong Kong action. Everything else was inspired by Japanese media particularly anime and horror movies. You can drop the act kid I'm onto you.
Idk if its the bias of that being really old but this image looks charming to me. American McGee's Alice had good art direction but somehow looked like shit at the same time though
the seethe in this reply lol
>Westerners lack taste for aesthetics. Most of them just want the game to look as "realistic" as possible for the current hardware and it always looks drab.
you weaboos are absolutely delusional lol
>Most of them just want the game to look as "realistic" as possible for the current hardware and it always looks drab.
I mean maybe since the ps3 era sure, but not always, you moron
Outcast - 1999
Fricking sequel, man. So heartbreaking.
I was trying to remember the name of this game for ages until you posted it, my friend played this game and I think he had the graphics on super low and it looked gnarly
nah but I remember seeing this image on the NWN box, it's a soulful promotional image. The game wasn't perfect but part of the reason it looks the way it does is because they gave you the tools to make custom maps and shit, you're meant to use your imagination; lots of the combat is running numbers, not watching animations and particle effects. Plenty of games looked fine, but admittedly it was a difficult time for 3d.
You could call any of them "lifeless" or "ugly" but that's just, like, your opinion moron. Nice NWN thread
>Nice NWN thread
It’s a Dungeon Siege screen. I thought it was NWN at first, too.
>The game wasn't perfect
No game is, but unreal was fantastic.
picture not related? Ground texture and that rock pillar looks low rez and lack of shadows but I think it looks good. Only the Dreamcast had high quality textures in that era
I miss it.
Alice still looks great.
It bothers me greatly I still have never played the alice games at all in my life. I heard they were really good games and worth a play.
Hell yea. The sequel is pretty too
Max Payne has more detailed and interactive environments than many modern titles.
So fricking good looking still. Absolutely worthy of being the first PC game to force me to upgrade back in the day. I spent a long time looking at the manual, back cover, and front slip sucking up all the detail like the bullets while reading all the magazines hype up what a great game it was. I couldn't believe something like that could happen yet.
Morrowind has some atmospheric environments
Deus Ex has a lot of interactivity as well.
>PC games released in this era have really shitty texture work and the environment always lacks detail. Feel free to post examples of otherwise.
I think the evidence rests on you to post other-wise, shitter, the screenshot you just posted from Dungeon Siege has more detail and better texture work than most games on the PS2.
So I get a Dreamcast playing Soul Calibre while PC games look like N64 with high rez textures, building still look like boxes, corridors made of 6 polygons, I'm thinking stuff like Kingpin. PC strength was 2D stuff like starcraft or sim style games like the sims. Actually its a downgrade from software 3D like in Normality or Realms of the haunting.
Soulcalibur isn't impressive. It's a fighting game that has 2 actors on-screen in a very limited arena-styled environment. Unreal is more technologically advanced than it is, and far more impressive.
Soul Calibur has animations and character models the PC wouldn't match until the late 2000s.
>animations and character models the PC wouldn't match
Soulcalibur is a 2.5D game, not even fully 3D, using plastered JPEG's and sprites for half of its environments. Unreal is more impressive.
>corridors made of 6 polygons
That wasn't even true when Duke Nukem 3D released.
I dunno, some of those games made it work. Something like NWN to me felt very atmospheric, the sound design obviously did a lot of heavy lifting but I still feel like the graphics worked for what it was going for.
Good lighting helps a lot with atmosphere as well, and I recall NWN's lighting being pretty good.
>equating "lifelike" with "detailed"
Reconsider your views
Sounds to me like console babies need their saturated colors otherwise they'll start throwing their lego blocks around.
Its so weird when people try to retroactively do pc master race shit when were talking about 80s and early 90s video games
PC games of the time often had stilted, awkward animation that looked worse than some PS1 games and the way lighting was handled never really looked great. It's a mix of a lack of contrast and a lack of talent. PC was in a very different world of consoles games which far exceeded what was on computers.
Apart from the fact that you're wrong, every single video game made for PS1 was made using a PC you fricking moron.
That's nice, Tekken 3 has better character animations than any PC game from the 90s. Why is that?
Gee anon, how come consoles didn't have view distances up to 5 miles away?
That's a whole lot of nothing, reminds me of N64 games.
>N64
>has a shorter view distance than a game from 1989
OHNONONONONON, LOOK AT HIS FACE!
That's a whole lot of nothing, reminds me of Elite on NES
>the NES was using technology already outdated by the time it released, as Battlezone was using Wireframe models in 1980
Yikes. It's worse than I thought. Also
>comparing wireframe model graphics to full 3D
Ouch.
>that's a whole lot of nothing
You console babies are hilarious. The closest consoles would get to flight sims of the late 80's and early 90's would be Air Combat and Ace Combat 2, neither of which had as complex of flight sims, or as large of environments that you could fly, or as complex of damage models for the aircraft.
>F-15 Strike Eagle II
Very based. One of the first PC games I ever played.
you're mistaking cool looking characters for technical prowess. "coolness" is vague, nebulous and for children, all that matters is raw rendering power, not art homosexualry or playabilty
I'm talking about animation fidelity, PC was still doing that action figure rotation until the 7th generation of consoles.
>animation fidelity
Tekken is really just a bad example.
>until the 7th gen of consoles
Objectively wrong, but when did that ever stop a moron-shitter such as yourself?
Is that Gothic 2?
No, it's Severance.
>poor quality animations
>ugly lighting
>shit environments
>low quality models
yeah this is giving devil may cry a run for its money!
PC didn't attract artists.
>poor quality animations
Better animations than Tekken, lmao.
>ugly lighting
Better lighting than Tekken, lmao.
>shit environments
Its environments match its tone and setting, non-argument.
>low quality models
They have a higher level of complexity with partitioned limb damage than anything Tekken has ever done, lmao.
>PC didn't attract artists.
Nice goalpost moving. If you wanted an "artsy" game, well, Tekken is as far from "art" as conceivably possible, lmao. But even with your butthurt goalpost-moving, you're STILL wrong. Man, it must suck being you.
Keeping coping and seething, console-kiddie.
>Better animations than Tekken, lmao.
false.
>Better lighting than Tekken, lmao.
looks a lot worse. stencil lighting is ugly.
>Its environments match its tone and setting, non-argument.
repeating tiled textures for repetitive gameplay.
>They have a higher level of complexity with partitioned limb damage than anything Tekken has ever done, lmao.
Delusional.
>Nice goalpost moving
Ironic.
PC didn't attract artists, it's a tech demo platform. Proof:
All games are tech demos. And that's a good thing.
>false
Nope. It's true. You don't have any awkward bone-breaking animations in Severance.
>looks a lot worse, stencil lighting is ugly
It's better than having zero lighting, which is what Tekken has. Also, it doesn't.
>repeating tiled textures for repetitive gameplay
Pffffttttt, ahahahahaha, oh man, not the best argument, since Tekken games, especially the older ones, had a TON of repeated textures in their arenas, holy frick the cope. Also, gameplay is as repetitive as any other hack and slasher, like Demon's Souls, Elden Ring.
>Delusional
Wrong. You simply have no argument against it. Cope and seethe, shitty-boy.
>Ironic
Please, explain the irony to me. *holds head on palms* Do tell.
> Proof
Your proof of it being a tech demo platform is a good game? Am I supposed to take this argument seriously? Oh, who am I kidding, you're a delusional weeb.
See here
>hating on Dark Messiah
Opinion discarded.
>damage sponges: the game
>good
good difficulty is good game design, dark messiah has neither.
Dark Age of Camelot - 2001
i want to blame it on art direction as far as fantasy RPGs go, but some of the strongest examples are weird cases like Morrowind where the characters animate and look like absolute fricking dogshit but the creatures and environments are highly creative (granted its just fantasy Dune). Then you have the preceeding Daggerfall where it has beautiful, hand-drawn character portraits that are actually pleasing and attractive (a fricking first for the entire franchise) but the world's art direction is rather "straight-forward" at best. and a lot of games simply lacked both
That looks good to me - charming and colorful
Was your post supposed to be ironic?
Lifeless would be almost all modern games
games from this era really benefited from shrinking their ugly character models down to microscopic size and fixing the camera position isometrically and making a strategy game.
Neverwinter Nights... Such an ugly game
lol you're the third guy to think that, including me. Apparently it's dungeon siege but I don't know much about that game. I think it was an ARPG. NWN was ugly though, but the music was god tier so it had that. Also the inventory iconography was kino.
>OBI DAI DEBHORAH SESPAH!
i know what you mean. these games looked back even bad then
when the game has breadth of scope like EE, who gives a frick? I loved that game
warcraft 3 looks good, empire earth doesn't
warcraft 3 has no depth, and no it does not look good. You couldn't even zoom in/out in the original game, unlike EE, which also allows you to have tons more units on screen at once. This is an awful comparison to make, the games are nothing alike and you're fricking moronic
even as of late 2005
oblivion tier face
Unpopular opinion incoming: I think PC graphics peaked in the early 00s. Everything that happened since 2005 until nowadays was redundant. I'd have game engines capable of true real-time destructibility (i. e. bettered Silent Storm-tier stuff) or a proper AI rather than another 5000000 polygons wasted on some face that still looks borrowed straight from the uncanny valley.
I think this is an oft-recited but false prediction. The reason we don't have better AI is because it's difficult to create, not because graphix take up too much space or dev time. It's easier to sell a game on aesthetics than it is to market smart AI. Modern AI integration is coming to games, but even now there is significant "think time" involved in generating npc responses, etc.
I agree with your general sentiment, game budgets have ballooned for the wrong reasons and developers are stuck in a position where they need to hit certain benchmarks in terms of graphical fidelity and monetization rather than focusing on mechanical depth or real technological achievement. Games like Hellblade are lauded despite their obvious simplicity, and when it isn't a walking simulator it's either multiplayer or some bloated cinematic "epic", or an open world piece of shit. When Fromsoft started making open world games, I knew it was fricking over for the industry. No one is safe from the plague
PC gaming in general has always been trash outside of WRPGs, simulation, and maybe FPS because it's all western developed. Western devs are just really bad at gameplay and action/combat.
>Westoids suck at art!
>No, wait, I meant they suck at aesthetic!
>N-No, wait, I meant they suck at animation!
>Stop, changing my words around, I said W-W-Westoids suck at gameplay!
Man, what new cope will you invent next?
looked fine to me then
looks fine to me now
old 3D PC game low poly with stretched relatively realistic textures is genuinely my favorite aesthetic of all time
>Feel free to post examples of otherwise.
Like the picture you posted? Way to blow your own "argument" out by posting a pic that proves you wrong.
WoW is very stylized though.
I can see it. The textures were detailed but undefined, muddy, and the bilinear filter made then even more blurry. Meanwhile the models were low poly and had bad proportions.
>Surely I'm not the only one who thinks late 90s/early 2000s 3D PC graphics look "lifeless".
You are, that era was peak soul. Everyone who says otherwise is just being contrarian.
I really enjoy this aesthetic, it's fine that some people don't though.
Literally the opposite is how I feel.
>Feel free to post examples of otherwise.
You picture is a great example of good aesthetics from the time. 3D before that sucked and after that was lifeless.
Shitty bait threads belong in Ganker
I love early 3D.