they keep saying these are the best graphics yet...

the moment you realize this video isn’t about graphics is when it truly becomes beautiful

This video was a beautiful experience. One of the few videos on YT that I would proundly call art instead of “content”. That’s a high standard

I heard a gaming channel say that 2023 was one of the best years in gaming, where I would consider it one of the very worst.

Does anyone remember how good things used to be? We used to get hrand new ideas every year, brand new IPs and the sequels were always made leaps and bounds better than the originals.

These days they can't even create a true to original remake because of fear of offending someone.

Thats why I don't care about how great graphics are. I have more fun playing 90s games like Quake, Dino Crisis, Resident Evil, Doom, Turok, CS 1.6, Unreal, and Half-Life. This is because retro games look, play and feel like games. We have to play within limited parameters of the game world, which made us think creatively. The lines of escapism and wonderment begin to blur the more realistic, practical and unlimited games become. I have more fun playing SCP: SL, Garry's Mod, Witcher 3, Dusk, Mass Effect, and Lethal Company than I do most games like Cyberpunk 2077, Star Citizen, GTA5, RDR2, and Arma3 for these reasons. I feel lost and aimless in these hyper realistic game worlds and then I'm reminded of real life.

I remember seeing Tomb Raider 2013 and thinking it had one of the greatest graphics ever possible.

Nothing looked as gorgeous as it. But not a long time ago, maybe 1 month, I came back seeing a gameplay of it in maximum graphics and strangely did realized the "flaws" it had.

Same thing happened to Resident Evil 7.

Some games impressed me so much, but it don't take long for graphics to evolve in such a way that 5 years later you notice how far from reality these games actually we're.

Same things applies for animation.

Who never found themselves shocked realizing how limited Toy Story I or Ice Age actually are?

It all only means one thing: the close to reality is always a lie. It only takes time to notice how far again, we are from it.

You can surely create a world as beautiful and interesting as the real one, but never anything will be as real as reality itself.

I remember seeing Tomb Raider 2013 and thinking it had one of the greatest graphics ever possible.

Nothing looked as gorgeous as it. But not a long time ago, maybe 1 month, I came back seeing a gameplay of it in maximum graphics and strangely did realized the "flaws" it had.

Same thing happened to Resident Evil 7.

Some games impressed me so much, but it don't take long for graphics to evolve in such a way that 5 years later you notice how far from reality these games actually we're.

Same things applies for animation.

Who never found themselves shocked realizing how limited Toy Story I or Ice Age actually are?

It all only means one thing: the close to reality is always a lie. It only takes time to notice how far again, we are from it.

You can surely create a world as beautiful and interesting as the real one, but never anything will be as real as reality itself.

The most frustrating thing about the passage of time to me, is that there's no satisfying payoff to "finally being in the future". Every since I started gaming in 1996, I imaged what games would look like in the future. Twenty, thirty years in the future. How it would blow my mind to see that game being played. How insanely photorealistic it must look to me. It's like trying to imagine a 2044-2054 game today. It just HAS to look INSANE, right? But that payoff, that "holy sh-t" moment never happens - because you don't teleport into the future instantly, you move there slowly, one second at a time, and games evolve from what they were into that amazing game you imaged very slowly, one game at a time. So by the time you get your hands on that dream game you imaged 30 years earlier, you won't go "holy sh-t", you'll be like "that's nice I guess, doesn't look that different from the last game".

Let me tell you when Sonic first came out on Sega Genesis.... My entire family sat around Christmas morning and we're in absolute awe at how fun and amazing these graphics were, same with when Nintendo 64 came around and we played super Mario

I was around when all of these games came out. Ironically, I found the source 2 stuff to be the least impressive of them all, possibly because it was more of an incremental improvement on what came before, rather than a revolutionary upgrade. I think the last console that made me go "wow, that's impressive" was the Sega Dreamcast. And even that never really lived up to its promise.

It's interesting to hear this from the prospective of somebody that wasn't there for all these events. For Half-Life, if you want to try to feel how amazing that was for us when it was released, just look at what people were playing at the time. The big FPS was Golden Eye on Nintendo 64. Compare Golden Eye to Half Life. Compare anything on PlayStation or N64 really. Not did Half Life look amazing, but playing on resolutions of 1024x768+ at 60 fps+ compared to Golden Eye at 320x240 15-30fps

Erase your LLM to experience it all

Fun anecdote: When I was younger, I once walked into a game shop, and saw a football game on a little TV. I actually thought it was real for a moment, and I thought to myself, "Why are they showing football in a videogame shop?" Then I looked closer, and saw that the TV was connected to a Dreamcast, and realized it was actually a videogame demo. I was amazed by the graphics at the time, but if I saw it now, there's no way I'd be fooled.

The quality level of Half Life 2 is the minimum I would expect from a new 3D game, but beyond that it becomes more about art style and less about detail level in graphics. Modern "AAA" games are going down the wrong road - looking increasingly photorealistic but neglecting storytelling and innovation.

lol off topic but i just heard the turret beeping outside

The last time a game stunned me out because of graphics was Doom. That rupture, to me, had no parallel. When games become more and more realistic, I started looking back to the efforts on amazing pixel arts and effects like cell shading.

Poor guy. You didn't live through it.
Some key advancement points: Final fantasy 2 and 3, virtual fighter and diablo1 and 2. They are worth mentioning at their time also. Also worth noticing that final fantasy 13 stayed linear and the reviews associated with the old format in a more modern era. Some classic things of the old arts are disrespected when they occur in modern times. Like how Emienm rapped all the art styles that came before him, and ppl think he's lame now because of it. Many of the old game music samples in the past are eternal and could still be played hard today.

This is a great video and it brought back a thought I had that I dismissed as teenage angst and not really a valid point and it was "why would we praise Super Mario Bros. so much nowadays? We wouldn't, and we would likely by in complete awe of whatever Flash game-level of quality so why is the bar so much higher now?"

Could this journey of shifting of experiences through time really be the epitome of "You just had to be there"?

I still think Half-Life 2 has the most realistic graphics ever. I can't tell the difference past that point.

Basically the only reason Final Fantasy 7 is a good game is because the animations for the summons were insane and epic and the story felt real because the world was so immersive. Going back today there is no way to capture that feeling again. The best you can do is intellectualize the reasons why it USED to be good, but that doesn't change what you're experiencing in the moment, a game that is just kind of bad by today's standards.

Beautiful art piece.

Recently played HL2 again.
The weight puzzles are definitely aged a bit.
It's a show case of "look how realistic this is.
Stuff has weight."
Whoa.

I don’t get what you’re trying to say here but I still like the video

Played Sonic back then on my SEGA. For Sonic It was about speed. The animations had more frames than the previous generation.

I was born in 1975, gaming since 1981. By 1987 I was doing pixel art with graph paper coding YX RGB coordinates, 3D artist since 1999, and participated in one of the first FPS tournaments back in 2000.
AMA 😆

about old games. "all you can do is wonder"? Noooo. You can ask. You wonder what people thought of when they looked at those graphics on a new game? We thought: Great graphics. Beautiful game. It's a GAME. Not "why doesn't this look REAL ENOUGH?"

In my memory, I remember playing N64 007 and it being lifelike. The controls were smooth and easy to use. No different than a modern Call of Duty.

I went back and played it recently and it felt unplayable. The controls impossible and the graphics felt like I was being pranked and I wasnt playng the real game.

Wake up, Neo...

I remember playing Doom for the first time and there is this blinking fluorescent light in a locker room pretty early in the game. This was the most amasing thing me and my friend had seen. That almost black room with that light flickering the darkness away.

did you huff a bunch of glue there, bud?

May Payne ..bullet time , 1996 😉
Game came out after the Matrix but it was already going down in 96 brother . Mad video ...I was there through all of it . 🤘🤘🙇‍♂️😉

I look at games like a piece of technology. Beautiful and cutting edge at the time of launch.
Years later, think it sucks, and "ergg, I enjoyed THAT?"
I don't get sentimental. I move with the times.

Mortal Kombat in 1992 was the first time I saw digitized graphics in an arcade game, and it was mind blowing. Myst was the PC game that impressed me with rendered graphics (although they were stills), and Under a Killing Moon didn't come on floppy disk, and I didn't have a CD ROM drive, so I believe it was great from seeing the demo in the computer shop, but I never got to play it myself. Thanks for making a video about your thoughts.

Oh man insta sub. Great video and you know you bring up something I feel a lot of people over look because either they just don't know/think about it or never experienced it.

Consoles and Early PC games were made around the tube tv/ CRT monitors and how they functioned. For me it's kinda why I can't really emulate a lot of older consoles. And seeing Chrono Trigger really triggerd the first time playing it when I was just a wee one. I was born in 92 and man it was a vibe to go back through nearly every game you mentioned

The solution my friend is to stay ignorant. This is why Homer Simpson is actually one of the great sages of the 20th century.

I thought this was going to be a commentary about the phsyics in the three halflife games not being mentioned at all in those 3 reviews at the start.

I remember as a kid how graphics absolutely blew me away year by year. You always felt the progress of technology. Emperor Battle for Dune in 2001 was my first 3D RTS and it seemed to me that THIS was it. There's no way graphics can get any better. I literally thought you'd need research center super computers to get better graphics. It's hilarious when E:BfD didn't look as good as say, Homeworld which was released 3 years earlier and I didn't know about. A few years later, I picked up Rome:Total War and thought the same: THIS WAS IT. We've reached the endpoint of videogame graphics. It can't get better than this. This kept being shattered year after year but lately....I feel that we've actually reached the endpoint of graphics. There's not much else we can do.

It's kind of depressing really.

Your video content made me subscribed thank you for this moment of peace in this fast paced world.

Just ask someone who was alive in the past. I grew up experiencing all this stuff first hand. It's not like this stuff happened so long ago that you can't find people alive who were there.

Also, learn to separate yourself from your knowledge, and play games designed for CRTs ON CRTs, with original hardware if you can find it, as the games were intended to be seen.

not enough skibidi references

I was born in 1977. This video is not for me.

These old gamer's eyes see 1982 whenever I view any Minecraft videos.

2D platforming games are inherently creepy to me. They were back in the day too. The sonic game footage in this video even triggered the discomfort. Something about the speed of it all, and not knowing what is below the screen. Over the years that has remained the same, weirdly enough.

The fixation with finding an explanation of "how it works" for the average normie NPC to latch onto is a product of the pseudo-intellectualism revolution. A type of psyop that has deluded people who are generally stupid into believing they are smart if they can recite some explanation - often fictitious - of how it works. As if knowing this somehow elevates them to being equal to one who made the thing they believe know the inner workings of. The purpose of this psyop is to hide the majesty of our Creator, Christ Jesus, in plain sight. For example, if we can get most people believing they live on a spinning ball adrift in space they completely lose perspective of the reality, that the Earth exists alone and has no peers, that it is enclosed and fixed upon a foundation that it is unmoving.

Looking at old games through contemporary eyes are just a microcosm of this. Back int the 80s and 90s nobody cared about the "tech specs" of the console. All that mattered was how cool the games were, how fun they were, and enjoying them with your friends (in person). Things back then that were technical limitations are today considered "retro charm", where attempts to replicated the flaws intentionally are made just to stir up nostalgia. People who had a NES or C64 were able to enjoy a wide variety of games, some fun and some total crap. It wasn't until the cult of pseudo-intellectualism convinced people that they should care more about the underlying hardware and software rather than the quality of the game itself.

I remember when my GPU couldnt keep up with Half Life 2 at high settings but the beach part was like real life, hell even GTA III was like a real life simulator for me after coming from GTA II 😎

Anyway a very old game with crazy detail for me would be like F22 lightning 2 and 3, it also had crazy sound effects.

Other game that had crazy graphics was the first and the only good America's Army made on Unreal engine 2, some ground textures looked like a damn photo and was also a very realistic type of FPS.

Other great looking game was the first Far Cry, it was a very different fresh game and was the benchmark and they kept updating it and improving it ruining more GPUs for a while until Crysis shown up to take the lead as number 1 benchmark for quite some good years...

But my favourite visuals of all time is probably still the first modern Star Wars battlefront which despite already having a good few amount of years still looks better than many recent games yet any modern GPU can run it well at 4K ultra looking almost like a movie. Some recent games look worse and need many times the GPU performance to run (plz note that Im not saying its a great game cause sadly it isnt, the old BF2 era battlefronts were better and more complete...).

Ps: I started playing games very early 90s on MS-dos and consoles but 3D games marked me much more its like where the magic started to happen for me.

I can tell ya Chrono Trigger back in '95 looked amazing.

I played most of these games when they were brand new. Among school kids, Sonic was just a "cool game." Kids drew him all the time on textbook slipcovers and such. Chrono Trigger was very popular in middle school too. It was just "cool." I don't think the zeitgeist among gamer kids was focusing on any one thing like graphics or music unless it was really impressive and stood far out. I think most kids instinctively knew as a culture if a game was good from word of mouth and our collective experiences. We didn't typically pick anything apart critically, we just wanted to have a good time and focused on what we thought was good. 3D graphics impressed everyone at the time int the mid 90s sure, but they were out of reach for most kids I knew until the PS1 and N64 became more mainstream in the late 90s and the prices of those consoles gradually dropped.

My unreasonable world request is to be able to go back in time to 1998 with a 4090-equipped PC and show gamers back then modded Cyberpunk with 4 rays and 6 bounces path tracing at 4k, then tell them "This is what gaming looks like in 25 years on a $4000 PC"

Nah VR is trash its only good for racing games even then..

My man, who hurt you? You're POV is so cynical that I can't relate at all - I was born in 1980 and I grew up with these advances in graphics.

When I see photo-realistic environments in UE5 tech demos, I smile.

When I see realistic hair physics I get giddy.

When vehicles model realistic damage to the body and paint if you side-swipe another, I clap in glee.

When I see water moving and responding like real water, I laugh in euphoria.

When I see a character rendered by in-game graphics that looks so close to real but not quite there because the devs were "uncomfortable" making what looked like a "real" person experience the events in the game, a tear rolls down my cheek.

I miss the MTV Music generator for the PlayStation 1

I remember playing half-life one with my best friend late into the night
Getting to this one part of the game where you crawl into a vent and it’s all quiet and calm and a head crab jumps out at you

Scared the fffffff out of us both
We screamed
My mom came downstairs and yelled at us


Good times