this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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I was saying the same thing about dishonored (2012/3) the other day. Graphics look dated - low-res mainly - but the art direction makes them still very okay. I remember back in the early-mid 2000s graphics were absolutely progressing every year, with every new game being able to offer a higher fidelity experience as well as bigger worlds, more npcs on screen etc. by which I mean very quantifiable technical achievements. When they started introducing ragdolls to npc bodies the whole world screamed at the sight of what had become possible on consumer hardware.
I can barely tell the difference between a 2019 and 2025 game, aside from there's more animations and they look smoother. They're doing ray tracing and HDR now but if your graphics card can't even do it (which is most of them currently in use I'd wager) you're never going to interact with that. I think they're also doing stuff with sound, but I can't really think of a breakthrough technical achievement that becomes commonplace. I guess if I had to think of one, it's how many NPCs the new hitman games are able to simulate at once... but the reboots started in 2016, 9 years ago.
Everything Viktor Antonov touches as an art director immediatly looks good forever, dude has been touched by the god of art. Half Life 2, CSS, Wolfenstein TNO, DOOM (new one), Prey (also new one) to name a few. Even the games that aren't that good, Kingpin: Life of Crime and Falllout 4 for example, you still can't really fault them for looking bad