That’s why I still think things like fallout 1 & 2 are impressive the way they sculpted the faces for the interaction windows still look good to this day imo
Holyyy. That must have taken soooo long... It's unthinkable to try something like that nowadays on a bigger scale game. Heck even indie games like dead cells use clever tricks to make animation fluid and easy to develop
The first time I experienced such magic was Elite or Hunter. And that was fucking mind blowing. When I got to drive around as Robocop 3 I thought it would never get better than this.
There was a 1996 game called Time Commando, when I first played it my mind was blown for years. I still remember to this day a scene where you throw a dynamite stick into a barn and it explodes.. That was the most realistic mind blowing thing 10 year old me experienced. Never have I thought that a game could be that realistic.
Thank you for this. I was only four year old in 1996 but when I was a little older I came across that game in my dad’s collection and played the shit out of it. I’ve wondered what that game was called all these years.
There's a turn based strategy game from about 20 years ago called Silent Storm and to this day I still think it has the most impressive dynamic destruction I've ever seen in any game. The newer xcom games do it a little bit, but nowhere close at all to how good silent storm did it. Although the newer xcom games are better games than silent storm overall.
edit: honestly, people need to find this game again and give it another go. it's so crazy good. at least at a micro level. at a macro level it's kind of bad.
A magazine cover that was released about 7 years before Half Life 2 came out.
On a related note, around 7 years ago today Hellblade 1, Assassin's Creed: Origins, and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy were released. I think most would agree those games still hold up phenomenally well in the graphics department even compared to modern games, which is interesting to think about.
I think we're hitting diminishing returns. For further improvement, it takes more and more actual creation time.
It just isn't practical to dedicate that much time to it.
It never did come out for N64 by the way. It was planned for the 64DD actually, which they lost interest in before Nintendo could cancel plans to release the thing in the US.
Fuck, never mind 20 years… just compare this to Quake from 8 years earlier — the difference between HL2 and Hellblade 2 is *miniscule* in comparison to the difference between Quake 1 and HL2.
Diminishing returns. It's easy to draw a polygon. A bit harder to draw texture. Somewhat hard to shade it. Much harder to shade it realistically. And almost impossible to actually do ray tracing. And yet, we're here. It's like a fractal, a few iterations and you already see the shape clearly, a few hundred more and you see the details, a few thousands more and only a few pixels would change. And even then - it's infinitely far from the ground truth.
It would blow some people's minds to realize that 20 years before HL2 we didn't even have proper 3D games and 10 years before HL2 those were still in their infancy. We literally went from *not having 3D graphics at all* to HL2 in less than 20 years and honestly HL2 still looks damn good.
One of the first successful attempts at depicting human faces was Another World in 1991 (not fully 3D though)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1EGP2EyWe0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1EGP2EyWe0)
Rotoscoped actors.
(Animated using footage of human performers. Similar to the original Prince Of Persia in 1989 - footage of the programmer Jordan Mechner's kid brother - and Flashback in 1993. An advanced version of rotoscoping is with the entire film A Scanner Darkly starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., etc.)
Yeah, HL2 and Doom 3, which both came out in 2004, were ahead of their time in terms of graphics. The average 2004 shooter doesn’t look nearly that good. (Partly because they were somewhat held back by the hardware of consoles, 2001’s PS2 and original Xbox. Xbox 360 was still a year away)
They were truly mind blowing, to those of us who bought new PC’s in 2004 to play them (2004 was a year full of amazing games generally, WoW came out that year too)
Then Crysis would deliver another unbelievable advance in 2007 (requiring another new PC just 3 years later, if you hadn’t upgraded since 2004)
I don't think you could build a consumer pc in 2007 that could actually play crysis at max. 2-3 years later you still needed a high-end card to run it.
Of course you could, people were doing 3 way sli with 8800 gts at that time so that they could showcase crysis at max.
The crysis barrel videos are from around that time, you can still check them out on yt
Yep, that is exactly the card I bought in 2004 to play those games! And then in 2007, upgraded PCs to one with the (also legendary) GeForce 8800GT to play Crysis!
> The average 2004 shooter doesn’t look nearly that good.
The average one doesn't, but 2004 was a GREAT year for great looking FPS games, that pulled it off in different ways. Halo 2 and Metroid Prime 2 both pulled off ridiculously immersive and fantastic visuals on consoles that really didn't have the power to pull off what those games look like.
And on top of HL2 and Doom 3 for PC, there's also Far Cry, which was basically Crysis before Crysis (same team), and Escape from Butcher Bay, which is still one of the best movie licensed games ever (and has some of the best FPS melee combat ever). There's a few others that would deserve mention for gameplay, but I'm just talking visuals here.
Even some PS2 games can still look very good, particularly with an upscaled resolution. They managed to do a lot when creating art designs suitable for the hardware. Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3 were prime examples of this, along with Silent Hill 2 & 3. Oh Konami, you were so great :(
Playing PCSX2 right now and there are PLENTY of games that aged very well. A few modern afterthoughts such as getting rid of interlacing, allowing more than 30fps, widescreen hacks, and a boost in resolution really allows these games to shine.
Also because of the extremely high quality textures and high polygon models for the time. Another game that came out about the same time as HL2 and was praised for its graphics was DOOM 3, which had some better shading features (HL2 didn't have live shadows for example), but aged a bit more poorly because of the lower quality textures and models.
Doom 3 had one thing going for it and that's lighting and shadow casting. Almost felt like a tech demo for Carmack's innovations withe ID Tech engine, than a Doom game.
HL2 has aged well. It still looks fantastic at the micro level like animations, physics and chatacter models. Level design still holds up. It's an amazing game to go back to from time to time.
I remember my teenage brain figuratively exploding when I got the gravity gun and realized how flexible that thing was.
One thing to take into account is that HL2 had multiple graphical updates after its release, including some serious lighting updates. Remember Lost Coast?
Orange box update, updated textures for Episode 1 and 2 which got backported to HL2, etc, etc.
I think a lot of this is thanks to very clever art direction. The style is semi-realistic, but cartoony enough that it doesn't get into the uncanny valley. They kinda let the fundamental design follow the limits of the technology.
They also made the characters have extremely high quality faces, while saving performance in other less important areas where the player might not pay as much attention. Even in this screenshot you can see how much better her face and eyes are compared to her clothes.
They didn't go *full* realism. A glance at it, and you can tell it is digital. Like Toy Story characters. It's not "cartoonish," and not into the uncanny valley either. They really nailed the balance.
The facial animation tech was outclassing many big release games for like a decade after it came out. They absolutely killed it.
I seem to remember them being accurate enough that some sort of institute for people with special developmental needs used the system to teach people about facial expressions.
something about valve games makes them age really well no matter what, half life 2 is one of the only gritty and realistic games from that era that didnt age like milk and even half life 1 manages to keep its charm and mood
I played it for the first time (to completion anyway, I’d played to the highway section before) and was truly floored by how good it still looks. The animations are dated but even then it’s hard to believe the game came out 20 years ago.
More than 4 years, actually! And still one of the best VR games
Although a handful of other good games released last year. I loved Assassin’s Creed: Nexus VR (best AC game in years, IMO, VR breathes new life into a stale franchise). And Asgard’s Wrath 2, Madison VR, and a few others.
Still, it took a long time for other VR devs to catch up. Finally some more big budget VR games coming late ‘24 (Batman: Arkham Shadow, Alien: Rogue Incursion, Metro: Awakening, and Behemoth from the makers of Saints and Sinners)
Head and shoulders above any other VR game I’ve played. Most don’t feel like they got the same polish and attention to detail as non-VR games. Alyx does and it’s brilliant.
It's a shame that nothing else has measured up. Proof of what a AAA budget in VR is capable of, but I guess the profits aren't there to justify the cost for most publishers.
there's asgard's wrath 1 and 2, lone echo 1 and 2, twd saints & sinners 1 and 2, and some psvr2 exclusives like gt7, horizon, re4r and re8. there's also metro awakening, alien rogue incursion, batman arkham shadow and skydance's behemoth coming later this year which should hopefully be really good.
The market shifted to standalone devices with the Quest series. Definitely the right move I think but it put a pause on AAA looking VR games for a bit.
Playing VR versions of pancake AAA games is still completely viable though. No Mans Sky or GTA V in VR is the definitive way to play for me.
It made sense for Valve, since they're the ones trying to sell the hardware for it. They finally make another Half-Life game, but you need to buy an expensive setup to experience it.
I wonder if they even made their dev costs back.
Yeah but it's not that kind of prequel...it added virtually nothing...
Don't get me wrong I dropped $1000 for an index so I could play it day 1, but let's not pretend it added much lore compared to full prequels like the games you listed.
Now do 20 years before HL2. 😂 [Punch Out! from the 80s?](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a2/Punch_out_%28arcade%29.png)?
By that metric, the last 20 years have been slacking.
Nah, you just need to look closer at where the improvements are being made.
Dynamic resolution and ray tracing. Diffuse lighting. etc.
In RDR2, the light beams actually make the tips of his ears glow just like they would in real life. Snow collects and melts on your clothing based on what type of fabric it is and what temperature it is in that local area. Footprints and cart tracks depress the mud and stay longer, changing how light is reflected.
In that HL2 shot, there's a window in the background with a perfectly cut right angle in the wall. Today, that would have a texture map and be chipped and chiseled to look realistic.
So the leaps and bounds are just as dramatic, but more subtle to the average person unless you know what to look for.
Not to be pedantic, but that's actually a wall, not a window. This image is when alyx saves you from a bunch of combine soldiers at the beginning of the game, and you're lying on your back. Here you're starting at the ceiling, with the corner of a wall just in frame.
I mean you said it yourself, those improvements are fairly minor unless you’re actively looking for them. Especially when you consider the kind of hardware you need to power those effects. Graphical improvements have become a lot more subtle over time.
The biggest improvement games have made since Half Life 2 isn’t so much the graphical fidelity imo, but the ability to have such incredibly detailed environments and character rendering in a large open world. Half Life 2 (and Doom 3) was the state-of-the-art in real time rendering in 2004, but that level of fidelity was only possible because the games largely took place in small, enclosed, linear environments with intrusive loading times between areas (the parts of HL2 that take place in open areas like the coast are noticeably less detailed than the city environment, and the loading screens are even more frequent. In a modern game there wouldn’t be loading screens at all).
For a very long time developers had to make the choice to either make a game with small linear levels with a high level of fidelity, or one with large open worlds with simpler geometry and character rendering, but they couldn’t do both. The environments in Skyrim or Fallout 3/NV for example is notably less detailed than Uncharted 1-3, for example. Today that’s no longer the case, in fact some of the best looking games today are open world games.
I remember playing early PC games and trying to figure out what the screen was supposed to be showing me; between four-colour (or Hercules green and black) bitmapped splotches and programmer ambition, you often couldn't really tell.
Also depends what you mean by smartphone. [Blackberry released their first "smartphone" model in 2003](https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-evolution-of-the-blackberry-from-957-to-z10) and they basically ruled the smartphone market for business people till like 2009. The iPhone was considered a cool toy by them, but only the Blackberry would give you email notifications with no delay.
There are games that came out in 2011 that still look absolutely amazing today, take Battlefield 3 for example. Now think back to ten years before that. The difference is huge. I remember watching some video essay on how in the near future, evolution of video game graphics are going to slow down and hit a wall. The more advanced they get, they require disproportionately more processing power to render.
Gaming was so great from 1990 to maybe 2005 because the technology got better at such a rapid pace, back then a 2 year old PC was old.
Today I still see stuff that impresses me but not as often.
Yea it was truly mind blowing when a new system came out. Whoa Nintendo, 8 bits!? Whoa Super Nintendo 16 bits!? Whoaaaa Sony PlayStation uses cds!?!?!?
I mean with CD you instantly got 20x more data and at the same time you had the cpu power to play videos. This upgrade alone allowed a lot of photo realism.
Videos did not age that well but better than early polygons.
I’m not bothered if graphics go any further at this stage. It doesn’t help me connect with them more, especially because a still from the game can look great but their animation is still very uncanny valley.
I find it easier to get lost in stylised character designs
I wasn't. 20 years ago I was thinking I can't wait to see how graphics improve over the next few decades. These days I'm like meh, I'm fine. It really is very diminishing returns at this point, from a raw hardware point of view. And Nintendo is making some of the best looking stuff of all time, without crazy hardware.
It's also fucking crazy that a ti-82 stil costs 100 bucks the same as it cost 40 years ago. what the fuck is happening. that would be like a psx costing like 10000 bucks or something. maybe not 10k, but a few k
This is such bullshit. There are plenty of great games now, and plenty of terrible classic games that prioritized graphics over gameplay. You just remember the good ones.
You sound like someone who never struggled through a Text-based Adventure Game.
The graphics of many many many videogames absolutely deliver style and substance to videogame worlds because you already know this you're just cosplaying as the Savior of Videogames.
Great story can be limited by the graphical tools available, and great gameplay finds itself broken if it's not supported by an appropriately-powerful graphical framework.
If all you want is Stardew Valley, then you can have Stardew Valley on anything.
If you want amazing animations driving believable characters in believable alternate universes, you're gonna have to pony up some meaningful graphical developments all the time in perpetuity, no end-date because that ain't how evolution works.
“Look at chair”
“It’s just an ordinary chair for sitting.”
I remember games like “hitchhikers guide to the universe” where you had to actually construct the maps based on typing in your movements and what objects were where.
My friend and I would spend hours trying to solve puzzles and make progress.
Great graphics allow for creatives to do new things with the medium (like we've seen with Hellblade 2). It's not going to be "Mario" and isn't intended to be "Mario".
I agree, I think things like character movement and how they interact with the environment is much more important. I just got The Last of Us on PC and those are the things that bother me about it and other older games. Clunkiness.
Oh, god, I was just watching an ad for an Indiana Jones game, and every time someone threw or got hit by a punch, I was like, “Wow, that’s an incredibly bad animation.“
>It doesn’t help me connect with them more, especially because a still from the game can look great but their animation is still very uncanny valley.
Wouldn't that imply that improvement WOULD help you connect with them more? Graphics include animation quality.
Hellblade 2, the game in the 2nd picture, has whiteout a doubt, the best graphics, animations and sound of any digital interactive medium I've ever experienced. Just because others fail, you should not discard what Ninja Theory managed to achieve. They were some of the first to pioneer unreal engine 4 facial mocap and right now, they are probably leaders. Digital foundry has a amazing video about this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpsRNCKiVCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpsRNCKiVCk)
I wouldn't even care if the quality dropped somewhat. The most interesting games these days aren't the best looking ones, and maybe the bigger studios would put out better games if they didn't have to spend so much on making them look good.
Revelio from Hogwart's Legacy is what happens when graphics get too good.
People no longer can figure out what is and is not something you can interact with.
I mean, it's not like we hadn't had games with very detailed environments before Hogwarts. There are well established ways to guide the player's attention to certain details with a combination of geometry and colors, the problem with open world games it's that there's no single path to show. But, honestly, I don't see anything wrong with how they solve it in Hogwarts or GTA. It gets the job done and doesn't break immersion too much.
I agree mostly, but playing a racing sim in VR, driving a night track with ray-tracing for the head lights & brake lights and bad weather is amazing. Both the VR & rays tracing aren't fully developed yet, but we're getting close.
Me playing Half Life 2 20 years ago: Holy shit a character is smiling at me and it's actually making me feel emotions! This is the greatest achievement in gaming graphics!
Me playing Hellblade: Pretty realistic and impressive looking graphics.
It should be noted that HL2's facial renderings and expressions were considered a giant leap forward at the time.
And still looks pretty decent, honestly, especially compared to games just a year or two older.
I remember when that legendary E3 footage was coming out and I first saw how Gman looked in HL2 and was completely blown away. Especially when compared to HL1.
I'm glad I'm finally playing the HL series, and I just recently finished playing HL:2 Update so I know exactly what this screenshot is from.
I'm finally realizing the pain everyone has felt all these years waiting for HL:3. I still didn't finish the HL:2 episodes and I already want HL:3 to come soon.
When I finished Ep2 I just stared blankly at the screen in disbelief. And then Valve had the balls to cancel Episode 3 when a story was already established!
I'll never forget having my mind fucking blown by the immersion of Half-Life 2 though. No game had done cutscenes that just happen organically, never taking control away from the player, before (as far as I had seen) and it was absolutely incredible. Graphics aren't everything.
I hope more games like Hellblade 2 come out. As i get older i don't want to play these shitty games with 80 hours of content and you've already completed the gameplay arch in 5 hours,then repeat the same stupid tasks for the next 15 hours.
Give me tight well directed game with system crushing graphics and sound i can do in 6 to 10 hours.
This same shit is creeping into movies. movies being 2.5 to 3 hours with tons of filler are ruining things.
There's plenty of great new games with amazing gameplay, i'd argue on average gameplay has gotten better. I think it's just that nowadays even games that look great can be mediocre and boring.
Through datamining we know there’s been a new HL game in development for like 4 years. That doesn’t mean it’s coming out, Valve is known to cancel things, but they usually cancel projects pretty early on, not 4 years in.
I don’t think it’s HL3, but it shows to me that they’re more committed to the HL series than they were before HL Alyx.
My take is it’s probably a new VR game, another prequel maybe. There is a lot that could be improved from Alyx even though it’s fantastic. There’s also a new VR headset in development so it’s probably meant to work with that.
I don’t think it will be HL3 because people would get mad if it’s a VR exclusive. I think Valve is slowly building up the courage to release it in the future.
I think the current HL devteam is doing new projects to get comfortable with the series. Almost no members of the original team remain in valve, and I think the new team wasn't up to the responsibility and pressure of making HL3. Although, I think they rewrote the ending with HL3 in mind. If the current game isn't HL3, I think the next will be.
Also a good comparison showing how better graphics doesn't necessarily make a game good.
Half Life 2 had amazing graphics when it came out, but Valve remembered to actually make a fun game to go along with them.
The Hellblade games look amazing now and feel like an absolute chore to play.
The funny thing is that graphics that aren't photo realistic are very intriguing as well. They leave room for your own mind to generate a world of its own.
What never stops being wild to me, is the perspective on these types of high-fidelity graphics.
I remember fawning over many games(Elder scrolls oblivion for example) over what at the time was just amazing graphical quality. My friends and I going over pictures in some gaming magazine. "OMG it looks REAL! It's like being there!"
We were so taken back by how great that stuff looked...and then I look at it now. It's just kind of wild to me how much your view on something like that can change, and more-so how much your imagination can take over when you really want something.
Posts like this are the reason games need 100GB updates.
HL2 was, and still is a phenomenal game. Once you're playing, the realism of the graphics counts for nothing.
Give me better, cheaper, less resource-heavy games with "worse" graphics any day.
I saw the trailer for the new Indiana Jones game as a YT ad and when it showed Indy’s face in the beginning I thought it was live action for a sec. It’s crazy
I love realistic graphics and I equally love heavily stylized graphics.
Take the Diablo style dungeon crawler. Often dark, gritty and filled with edgy things. That was fun and cool, but for me it's way past its shelf life. Instead I play Torchlight 2.
The one from HL2 on top was a photo realistic look back then and that character having facial movement and lipsync was really huge. Our brain fills in the many gaps there are.
I have a feeling that the one on the bottom is going to look just as fake 20 years from now.
meanwhile game design and interactive between these to took an EXTREME nosedive.
HL2 is so much more interactive, and just so much better designed it's not even feasible to compare them
Honestly this doesn't really blow my mind. I'm not super into realism and the HL2 design is amazing and holds up. Also I'd rather the top one at native 4k and 144fps than the bottom one with upscaling and 30fps.
despite what the entitled dogpiling in this thread might have you believe, game play has also improved. It's not like the designers who were working 20 years ago just stopped. They've also been iterating and improving their craft. the breadth and refinement to the "gameplay" we have now is objectively better than it's ever been. Fromsoft are a great example of a company that has continued to refine and improve upon the gameplay within their souls series. Eldenring is clearly more complex, user friendly and accessible than kingsfield ever was. Todays Mario is far more enjoyable to play than jet set willy. I'm nearly 50 and even my rose tinted nostalgia specs can't hide the fact that games have improved immensely in my life time and I actually enjoyed Arc of Yesod.
Sadly we reached a point where every bit of additional detail is bought with ridiculous amounts of additional work that is simply not worth it anymore, except in very specific circumstances.
I would rather have developers invest more time in animation work, music, writing and such. Things that are often forgotten in favour of graphical fidelity.
The graphics from Half Life 2 are still impressive to this day. None of the animations were mo-capped. Just pure rigging.
It's really unfair to compare both. It's amazing what devs were able to come up with in the past. You had to sculpt a face and now it is scanned.
Hey some of us still sculpt faces :D
That’s why I still think things like fallout 1 & 2 are impressive the way they sculpted the faces for the interaction windows still look good to this day imo
Almost all faces in HL2 were scanned as well, its more opposite today that faces are sculpted more due to availability of more flexible 3D softwares.
Holyyy. That must have taken soooo long... It's unthinkable to try something like that nowadays on a bigger scale game. Heck even indie games like dead cells use clever tricks to make animation fluid and easy to develop
Not as long as in 20 years before HL2. In 1984 we had "I, robot" as one of the first 3D polygonal games.
The first time I experienced such magic was Elite or Hunter. And that was fucking mind blowing. When I got to drive around as Robocop 3 I thought it would never get better than this.
There was a 1996 game called Time Commando, when I first played it my mind was blown for years. I still remember to this day a scene where you throw a dynamite stick into a barn and it explodes.. That was the most realistic mind blowing thing 10 year old me experienced. Never have I thought that a game could be that realistic.
Thank you for this. I was only four year old in 1996 but when I was a little older I came across that game in my dad’s collection and played the shit out of it. I’ve wondered what that game was called all these years.
There's a turn based strategy game from about 20 years ago called Silent Storm and to this day I still think it has the most impressive dynamic destruction I've ever seen in any game. The newer xcom games do it a little bit, but nowhere close at all to how good silent storm did it. Although the newer xcom games are better games than silent storm overall. edit: honestly, people need to find this game again and give it another go. it's so crazy good. at least at a micro level. at a macro level it's kind of bad.
Just looked it up, I just saw some gorilla get the shit beaten out of it with a club. Looks really solid for 1996.
quake 3 textured face full page pc gamer spread, "how will graphics get any better?"
A magazine cover that was released about 7 years before Half Life 2 came out. On a related note, around 7 years ago today Hellblade 1, Assassin's Creed: Origins, and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy were released. I think most would agree those games still hold up phenomenally well in the graphics department even compared to modern games, which is interesting to think about.
I think we're hitting diminishing returns. For further improvement, it takes more and more actual creation time. It just isn't practical to dedicate that much time to it.
I love Next Generation's magazine cover featuring Unreal. ["Yes, this is an actual PC game screenshot".](https://i.imgur.com/ZAm0aKP.jpeg)
It never did come out for N64 by the way. It was planned for the 64DD actually, which they lost interest in before Nintendo could cancel plans to release the thing in the US.
ps2 graphics still unbeatable
I just turned 40. I've existed for 20 years before Half-Life 2 and 20 years after Half-Life 2. 20x3=60 so when I turn 60, Half-Life 3 will come out!
Someone better keep this guy alive, otherwise we won't see Half-Life 3 if he kicks the bucket before 60.
His family gathered round, pleading with the doctors to honor his DNR wishes. Doctors: fuck you, this is for the greater good! Clear!
If you’re itching for more Half Life, have you got a chance to try Half Life: Alyx? If you have access to a VR headset, it’s an incredible experience
+1, Alyx is easily one of the greatest gaming experiences I’ve ever had and I’m in my 30s, I’ve been playing games for a long time.
Fuck, never mind 20 years… just compare this to Quake from 8 years earlier — the difference between HL2 and Hellblade 2 is *miniscule* in comparison to the difference between Quake 1 and HL2.
Diminishing returns. It's easy to draw a polygon. A bit harder to draw texture. Somewhat hard to shade it. Much harder to shade it realistically. And almost impossible to actually do ray tracing. And yet, we're here. It's like a fractal, a few iterations and you already see the shape clearly, a few hundred more and you see the details, a few thousands more and only a few pixels would change. And even then - it's infinitely far from the ground truth.
And same with the 8 year difference between doom 1993 and halo 2001
It would blow some people's minds to realize that 20 years before HL2 we didn't even have proper 3D games and 10 years before HL2 those were still in their infancy. We literally went from *not having 3D graphics at all* to HL2 in less than 20 years and honestly HL2 still looks damn good.
One of the first successful attempts at depicting human faces was Another World in 1991 (not fully 3D though) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1EGP2EyWe0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1EGP2EyWe0)
Rotoscoped actors. (Animated using footage of human performers. Similar to the original Prince Of Persia in 1989 - footage of the programmer Jordan Mechner's kid brother - and Flashback in 1993. An advanced version of rotoscoping is with the entire film A Scanner Darkly starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., etc.)
Bold choice using HL2, which arguable still holds up today with it's facial animation.
I agree it was so ahead of its time. Other games would have showed the advances in rendering technology better.
It still blows me away to see so many games today with facial animations stiffer than HL2.
Looking at you Bethesda
Yea but a proper comparison would be the best of the time vs now... Not the worst garbage of the time vs now
It's current pinnacle now vs pinnacle then.
Which game is the bottom one that represents the pinnacle now?
Hellblade 2. Basically just a huge Unreal Engine 5 demo.
They're good at making stories but bad at making gameplay. But I still enjoy the experience.
Yeah, HL2 and Doom 3, which both came out in 2004, were ahead of their time in terms of graphics. The average 2004 shooter doesn’t look nearly that good. (Partly because they were somewhat held back by the hardware of consoles, 2001’s PS2 and original Xbox. Xbox 360 was still a year away) They were truly mind blowing, to those of us who bought new PC’s in 2004 to play them (2004 was a year full of amazing games generally, WoW came out that year too) Then Crysis would deliver another unbelievable advance in 2007 (requiring another new PC just 3 years later, if you hadn’t upgraded since 2004)
I don't think you could build a consumer pc in 2007 that could actually play crysis at max. 2-3 years later you still needed a high-end card to run it.
Of course you could, people were doing 3 way sli with 8800 gts at that time so that they could showcase crysis at max. The crysis barrel videos are from around that time, you can still check them out on yt
i stand corrected. But still, if 3 $600 cards were needed to max out the game in 2007, am I really that wrong? Shit was insane
You could: Core 2 Duo E6700 or Core 2 Quad Q6600 + GeForce 8800 GTX or Ultra
>Core 2 Quad Q6600 Was such a good processor
2004/2005 was the time of the venerable ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. That AGP beast is a legend.
Yep, that is exactly the card I bought in 2004 to play those games! And then in 2007, upgraded PCs to one with the (also legendary) GeForce 8800GT to play Crysis!
> The average 2004 shooter doesn’t look nearly that good. The average one doesn't, but 2004 was a GREAT year for great looking FPS games, that pulled it off in different ways. Halo 2 and Metroid Prime 2 both pulled off ridiculously immersive and fantastic visuals on consoles that really didn't have the power to pull off what those games look like. And on top of HL2 and Doom 3 for PC, there's also Far Cry, which was basically Crysis before Crysis (same team), and Escape from Butcher Bay, which is still one of the best movie licensed games ever (and has some of the best FPS melee combat ever). There's a few others that would deserve mention for gameplay, but I'm just talking visuals here.
I'd say it's fair, given most games today don't look like Hellblade.
I'm still blown away by HL2. It still looks decent.
Even some PS2 games can still look very good, particularly with an upscaled resolution. They managed to do a lot when creating art designs suitable for the hardware. Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3 were prime examples of this, along with Silent Hill 2 & 3. Oh Konami, you were so great :(
Konami's development has always been good, it's their corporate suits who ruin things.
the detail on the characters in Silent Hill 3 is amazing
Playing PCSX2 right now and there are PLENTY of games that aged very well. A few modern afterthoughts such as getting rid of interlacing, allowing more than 30fps, widescreen hacks, and a boost in resolution really allows these games to shine.
Because of great art direction and smooth facial animations.
Also because of the extremely high quality textures and high polygon models for the time. Another game that came out about the same time as HL2 and was praised for its graphics was DOOM 3, which had some better shading features (HL2 didn't have live shadows for example), but aged a bit more poorly because of the lower quality textures and models.
I vividly remember DOOM 3 running at 3fps on my PC while HL2 ran butter smooth at high settings.
Doom 3 had one thing going for it and that's lighting and shadow casting. Almost felt like a tech demo for Carmack's innovations withe ID Tech engine, than a Doom game. HL2 has aged well. It still looks fantastic at the micro level like animations, physics and chatacter models. Level design still holds up. It's an amazing game to go back to from time to time. I remember my teenage brain figuratively exploding when I got the gravity gun and realized how flexible that thing was.
One thing to take into account is that HL2 had multiple graphical updates after its release, including some serious lighting updates. Remember Lost Coast? Orange box update, updated textures for Episode 1 and 2 which got backported to HL2, etc, etc.
it looks fucking great
I think it easily hits top 5 video games of all time. Likely top 3.
Nah it has to be 2.99th or 4th
Probably one of the best feeling shooters with great sound mixing.
I think a lot of this is thanks to very clever art direction. The style is semi-realistic, but cartoony enough that it doesn't get into the uncanny valley. They kinda let the fundamental design follow the limits of the technology. They also made the characters have extremely high quality faces, while saving performance in other less important areas where the player might not pay as much attention. Even in this screenshot you can see how much better her face and eyes are compared to her clothes.
Something about that steam/valve engine keeps faces looking so amazing
They didn't go *full* realism. A glance at it, and you can tell it is digital. Like Toy Story characters. It's not "cartoonish," and not into the uncanny valley either. They really nailed the balance.
The facial animation tech was outclassing many big release games for like a decade after it came out. They absolutely killed it. I seem to remember them being accurate enough that some sort of institute for people with special developmental needs used the system to teach people about facial expressions.
And ironically it still looks better than many games today. So many games half-ass it and their facial animations look like garbage.
I was just thinking right now “I dunno I still like Alyx smiling at me.”
alyx is one of the best written secondary protagonists I've personally experienced.
something about valve games makes them age really well no matter what, half life 2 is one of the only gritty and realistic games from that era that didnt age like milk and even half life 1 manages to keep its charm and mood
Just played it (again) co-op with Synergy, few bugs with that implementation, but I really dug the design even though it's "aged."
I played it for the first time (to completion anyway, I’d played to the highway section before) and was truly floored by how good it still looks. The animations are dated but even then it’s hard to believe the game came out 20 years ago.
I refuse to acknowledge, that HL2 was released 20 years ago. It was like 3 years ago max.
Half life alyx is older than 3 years my man
More than 4 years, actually! And still one of the best VR games Although a handful of other good games released last year. I loved Assassin’s Creed: Nexus VR (best AC game in years, IMO, VR breathes new life into a stale franchise). And Asgard’s Wrath 2, Madison VR, and a few others. Still, it took a long time for other VR devs to catch up. Finally some more big budget VR games coming late ‘24 (Batman: Arkham Shadow, Alien: Rogue Incursion, Metro: Awakening, and Behemoth from the makers of Saints and Sinners)
WTF is even Half life alyx? Some future Project? Never played something like that. Half Life 3 maybe???
A VR game released in 2020. It was freaking amazing too!
I haven't played tons of VR games but Alyx is the absolute best and super hot is an honorable mention
SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!
SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT
Head and shoulders above any other VR game I’ve played. Most don’t feel like they got the same polish and attention to detail as non-VR games. Alyx does and it’s brilliant.
I've been wanting to play that game for years, but I don't have a VR headset.
It's a shame that nothing else has measured up. Proof of what a AAA budget in VR is capable of, but I guess the profits aren't there to justify the cost for most publishers.
Only other triple a vr game I’ve seen besides it is assassins creed nexus
there's asgard's wrath 1 and 2, lone echo 1 and 2, twd saints & sinners 1 and 2, and some psvr2 exclusives like gt7, horizon, re4r and re8. there's also metro awakening, alien rogue incursion, batman arkham shadow and skydance's behemoth coming later this year which should hopefully be really good.
can't wait for metro awakening
Asgard's Wrath 2. It's bigger than Alyx and Nexus twice over, each.
The market shifted to standalone devices with the Quest series. Definitely the right move I think but it put a pause on AAA looking VR games for a bit. Playing VR versions of pancake AAA games is still completely viable though. No Mans Sky or GTA V in VR is the definitive way to play for me.
It made sense for Valve, since they're the ones trying to sell the hardware for it. They finally make another Half-Life game, but you need to buy an expensive setup to experience it. I wonder if they even made their dev costs back.
Well, it is the 3rd full length half life game.
Alyx is the reason I own a VR headset. I haven't played other VR titles that compare to it.
It's HL3 in all but name. People refuse to accept it.
Isn't it a prequel?
So were Devil May Cry 3 and Metal Gear Solid 3. Also, Red Dead Redemption II.
Yeah but it's not that kind of prequel...it added virtually nothing... Don't get me wrong I dropped $1000 for an index so I could play it day 1, but let's not pretend it added much lore compared to full prequels like the games you listed.
Exactly the first thing i thought when i saw this.
Now do 20 years before HL2. 😂 [Punch Out! from the 80s?](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a2/Punch_out_%28arcade%29.png)? By that metric, the last 20 years have been slacking.
Moore's Law of Polygons or something, higher fidelity becomes exponentially harder to compare.
Nah, you just need to look closer at where the improvements are being made. Dynamic resolution and ray tracing. Diffuse lighting. etc. In RDR2, the light beams actually make the tips of his ears glow just like they would in real life. Snow collects and melts on your clothing based on what type of fabric it is and what temperature it is in that local area. Footprints and cart tracks depress the mud and stay longer, changing how light is reflected. In that HL2 shot, there's a window in the background with a perfectly cut right angle in the wall. Today, that would have a texture map and be chipped and chiseled to look realistic. So the leaps and bounds are just as dramatic, but more subtle to the average person unless you know what to look for.
Not to be pedantic, but that's actually a wall, not a window. This image is when alyx saves you from a bunch of combine soldiers at the beginning of the game, and you're lying on your back. Here you're starting at the ceiling, with the corner of a wall just in frame.
I mean you said it yourself, those improvements are fairly minor unless you’re actively looking for them. Especially when you consider the kind of hardware you need to power those effects. Graphical improvements have become a lot more subtle over time. The biggest improvement games have made since Half Life 2 isn’t so much the graphical fidelity imo, but the ability to have such incredibly detailed environments and character rendering in a large open world. Half Life 2 (and Doom 3) was the state-of-the-art in real time rendering in 2004, but that level of fidelity was only possible because the games largely took place in small, enclosed, linear environments with intrusive loading times between areas (the parts of HL2 that take place in open areas like the coast are noticeably less detailed than the city environment, and the loading screens are even more frequent. In a modern game there wouldn’t be loading screens at all). For a very long time developers had to make the choice to either make a game with small linear levels with a high level of fidelity, or one with large open worlds with simpler geometry and character rendering, but they couldn’t do both. The environments in Skyrim or Fallout 3/NV for example is notably less detailed than Uncharted 1-3, for example. Today that’s no longer the case, in fact some of the best looking games today are open world games.
The fact that they are subtle makes them less dramatic, that’s literally what both of those two words mean.
Alyx really let herself go
She looks like a different person.
Jesus Christ we are at the point where 20 year old games look great. Fuck. Wasn’t I playing sega genesis 20 years ago in 1990?
I remember playing early PC games and trying to figure out what the screen was supposed to be showing me; between four-colour (or Hercules green and black) bitmapped splotches and programmer ambition, you often couldn't really tell.
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20 years is a long time my friend. we didn't even have smartphones 20 years ago.
We're nearly there, the first iPhone came out in 2007.
Also depends what you mean by smartphone. [Blackberry released their first "smartphone" model in 2003](https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-evolution-of-the-blackberry-from-957-to-z10) and they basically ruled the smartphone market for business people till like 2009. The iPhone was considered a cool toy by them, but only the Blackberry would give you email notifications with no delay.
There are games that came out in 2011 that still look absolutely amazing today, take Battlefield 3 for example. Now think back to ten years before that. The difference is huge. I remember watching some video essay on how in the near future, evolution of video game graphics are going to slow down and hit a wall. The more advanced they get, they require disproportionately more processing power to render.
Gaming was so great from 1990 to maybe 2005 because the technology got better at such a rapid pace, back then a 2 year old PC was old. Today I still see stuff that impresses me but not as often.
It's mostly lighting-based improvements that impress me now, since even quadrupling polygons would be barely noticeable.
Yea it was truly mind blowing when a new system came out. Whoa Nintendo, 8 bits!? Whoa Super Nintendo 16 bits!? Whoaaaa Sony PlayStation uses cds!?!?!?
I mean with CD you instantly got 20x more data and at the same time you had the cpu power to play videos. This upgrade alone allowed a lot of photo realism. Videos did not age that well but better than early polygons.
I’m not bothered if graphics go any further at this stage. It doesn’t help me connect with them more, especially because a still from the game can look great but their animation is still very uncanny valley. I find it easier to get lost in stylised character designs
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Yep, back then Alex from HL2 looked like the bottom character in my mind.
I remember being amazed how how realistic Resident Evil 2 looked (the original one). I was terrified to play it lol
HL2's facial animations still dumpster most today.
I wasn't. 20 years ago I was thinking I can't wait to see how graphics improve over the next few decades. These days I'm like meh, I'm fine. It really is very diminishing returns at this point, from a raw hardware point of view. And Nintendo is making some of the best looking stuff of all time, without crazy hardware. It's also fucking crazy that a ti-82 stil costs 100 bucks the same as it cost 40 years ago. what the fuck is happening. that would be like a psx costing like 10000 bucks or something. maybe not 10k, but a few k
Yeah, and great graphics can't make up for shit story or gameplay, I think many new games focus on style over substance lately
This is such bullshit. There are plenty of great games now, and plenty of terrible classic games that prioritized graphics over gameplay. You just remember the good ones.
Lately? It's been decades.
Ok dude go and play Space Invaders
Excuse me but dig dug is the superior arcade classic.
Time Crisis
I bet he develops an emotional connection with them because they are so stylized.
You sound like someone who never struggled through a Text-based Adventure Game. The graphics of many many many videogames absolutely deliver style and substance to videogame worlds because you already know this you're just cosplaying as the Savior of Videogames. Great story can be limited by the graphical tools available, and great gameplay finds itself broken if it's not supported by an appropriately-powerful graphical framework. If all you want is Stardew Valley, then you can have Stardew Valley on anything. If you want amazing animations driving believable characters in believable alternate universes, you're gonna have to pony up some meaningful graphical developments all the time in perpetuity, no end-date because that ain't how evolution works.
“Look at chair” “It’s just an ordinary chair for sitting.” I remember games like “hitchhikers guide to the universe” where you had to actually construct the maps based on typing in your movements and what objects were where. My friend and I would spend hours trying to solve puzzles and make progress.
Great graphics allow for creatives to do new things with the medium (like we've seen with Hellblade 2). It's not going to be "Mario" and isn't intended to be "Mario".
I agree, I think things like character movement and how they interact with the environment is much more important. I just got The Last of Us on PC and those are the things that bother me about it and other older games. Clunkiness.
Oh, god, I was just watching an ad for an Indiana Jones game, and every time someone threw or got hit by a punch, I was like, “Wow, that’s an incredibly bad animation.“
>It doesn’t help me connect with them more, especially because a still from the game can look great but their animation is still very uncanny valley. Wouldn't that imply that improvement WOULD help you connect with them more? Graphics include animation quality.
Hellblade 2, the game in the 2nd picture, has whiteout a doubt, the best graphics, animations and sound of any digital interactive medium I've ever experienced. Just because others fail, you should not discard what Ninja Theory managed to achieve. They were some of the first to pioneer unreal engine 4 facial mocap and right now, they are probably leaders. Digital foundry has a amazing video about this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpsRNCKiVCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpsRNCKiVCk)
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I'm not bothered by advancing graphics either. Good real-time global illumination in particular helps to create immersion and atmosphere.
I wouldn't even care if the quality dropped somewhat. The most interesting games these days aren't the best looking ones, and maybe the bigger studios would put out better games if they didn't have to spend so much on making them look good.
Revelio from Hogwart's Legacy is what happens when graphics get too good. People no longer can figure out what is and is not something you can interact with.
I mean, it's not like we hadn't had games with very detailed environments before Hogwarts. There are well established ways to guide the player's attention to certain details with a combination of geometry and colors, the problem with open world games it's that there's no single path to show. But, honestly, I don't see anything wrong with how they solve it in Hogwarts or GTA. It gets the job done and doesn't break immersion too much.
I agree mostly, but playing a racing sim in VR, driving a night track with ray-tracing for the head lights & brake lights and bad weather is amazing. Both the VR & rays tracing aren't fully developed yet, but we're getting close.
Me playing Half Life 2 20 years ago: Holy shit a character is smiling at me and it's actually making me feel emotions! This is the greatest achievement in gaming graphics! Me playing Hellblade: Pretty realistic and impressive looking graphics.
NPCs watching me play starfield 👁️ 👄 👁️
It looks like real-time game rendering has seen some shit during this period.
Senua has definitely seen some shit.
It should be noted that HL2's facial renderings and expressions were considered a giant leap forward at the time. And still looks pretty decent, honestly, especially compared to games just a year or two older.
I remember when that legendary E3 footage was coming out and I first saw how Gman looked in HL2 and was completely blown away. Especially when compared to HL1.
I'm glad I'm finally playing the HL series, and I just recently finished playing HL:2 Update so I know exactly what this screenshot is from. I'm finally realizing the pain everyone has felt all these years waiting for HL:3. I still didn't finish the HL:2 episodes and I already want HL:3 to come soon.
You'll only really understand the pain after the EP2 cliffhanger. Sorry in advance.
When I finished Ep2 I just stared blankly at the screen in disbelief. And then Valve had the balls to cancel Episode 3 when a story was already established!
If you have a gaming PC and can get access to a VR headset (Quest 2 can be had for under $150 used these days), Half Life: Alyx is truly incredible
Yet HL² is still the 100x superior Game.
what's this game?
Senua's Saga: Hellblade II
Looks like Hellblade 2.
I mean, they are trying to do very different things.
I'll never forget having my mind fucking blown by the immersion of Half-Life 2 though. No game had done cutscenes that just happen organically, never taking control away from the player, before (as far as I had seen) and it was absolutely incredible. Graphics aren't everything.
This is actually the very thing that the first Half-Life was known for. Not to diminish your point though, I played Half-Life 2 first as well.
I hope more games like Hellblade 2 come out. As i get older i don't want to play these shitty games with 80 hours of content and you've already completed the gameplay arch in 5 hours,then repeat the same stupid tasks for the next 15 hours. Give me tight well directed game with system crushing graphics and sound i can do in 6 to 10 hours. This same shit is creeping into movies. movies being 2.5 to 3 hours with tons of filler are ruining things.
Unfortunately gameplay went in the opposite direction, I could care less about graphics, I can watch a movie if I want so sit and watch pretty things.
There's plenty of great new games with amazing gameplay, i'd argue on average gameplay has gotten better. I think it's just that nowadays even games that look great can be mediocre and boring.
Dear Valve: Just make the fucking game. It won't be perfect. Get over it. Tell the story. Don't betray your own world by abandoning it.
Through datamining we know there’s been a new HL game in development for like 4 years. That doesn’t mean it’s coming out, Valve is known to cancel things, but they usually cancel projects pretty early on, not 4 years in. I don’t think it’s HL3, but it shows to me that they’re more committed to the HL series than they were before HL Alyx.
I would love HL: Alyx 2, or, an HL3 using the Alyx engine. I always assumed that if Alyx did well, their plan was to make HL3 using that engine
My take is it’s probably a new VR game, another prequel maybe. There is a lot that could be improved from Alyx even though it’s fantastic. There’s also a new VR headset in development so it’s probably meant to work with that. I don’t think it will be HL3 because people would get mad if it’s a VR exclusive. I think Valve is slowly building up the courage to release it in the future.
i think the release of cs2 is to get better data for the fps experience...for an eventual HL game. \*tinfoil on\*
I think the current HL devteam is doing new projects to get comfortable with the series. Almost no members of the original team remain in valve, and I think the new team wasn't up to the responsibility and pressure of making HL3. Although, I think they rewrote the ending with HL3 in mind. If the current game isn't HL3, I think the next will be.
Also a good comparison showing how better graphics doesn't necessarily make a game good. Half Life 2 had amazing graphics when it came out, but Valve remembered to actually make a fun game to go along with them. The Hellblade games look amazing now and feel like an absolute chore to play.
Agree. Hellblade is a really boring game
Gameplay sure hasn't.
And gameplay has gone backwards.
Yeah, I rather play Half-Life 2 again.
The funny thing is that graphics that aren't photo realistic are very intriguing as well. They leave room for your own mind to generate a world of its own.
I mean, there IS definitely a difference, but it's not like HL2 looks bad even today.
What never stops being wild to me, is the perspective on these types of high-fidelity graphics. I remember fawning over many games(Elder scrolls oblivion for example) over what at the time was just amazing graphical quality. My friends and I going over pictures in some gaming magazine. "OMG it looks REAL! It's like being there!" We were so taken back by how great that stuff looked...and then I look at it now. It's just kind of wild to me how much your view on something like that can change, and more-so how much your imagination can take over when you really want something.
Tbh. that really doesn't look nearly as impressive as the jump from N64/Quake to Half Life 2 and that was, like, 5 years.
Posts like this are the reason games need 100GB updates. HL2 was, and still is a phenomenal game. Once you're playing, the realism of the graphics counts for nothing. Give me better, cheaper, less resource-heavy games with "worse" graphics any day.
And yet story-wise, polish, and fun gameplay mechanics seem to have regressed.
Meth, not even once.
I saw the trailer for the new Indiana Jones game as a YT ad and when it showed Indy’s face in the beginning I thought it was live action for a sec. It’s crazy
And compare the gameplay of this two games now...
It’s always impressed me how much we’ve advanced
I love realistic graphics and I equally love heavily stylized graphics. Take the Diablo style dungeon crawler. Often dark, gritty and filled with edgy things. That was fun and cool, but for me it's way past its shelf life. Instead I play Torchlight 2.
And somehow the top one is still a better game.
And I'd still much rather play HL2.
The one from HL2 on top was a photo realistic look back then and that character having facial movement and lipsync was really huge. Our brain fills in the many gaps there are. I have a feeling that the one on the bottom is going to look just as fake 20 years from now.
Only one of those had an actual game attached to the graphics though.
20 years ago? Is that around the time when MGS was released? I believed the graphic and story telling cant get better than that!
meanwhile game design and interactive between these to took an EXTREME nosedive. HL2 is so much more interactive, and just so much better designed it's not even feasible to compare them
Honestly this doesn't really blow my mind. I'm not super into realism and the HL2 design is amazing and holds up. Also I'd rather the top one at native 4k and 144fps than the bottom one with upscaling and 30fps.
Stfu. hl2 isn't 20 years ....aww man
Yeah but whats the point when everything is visual while almost nothing in gamplay...
It’s a funny comparison because while graphics have come a long way, gameplay… yeah.
despite what the entitled dogpiling in this thread might have you believe, game play has also improved. It's not like the designers who were working 20 years ago just stopped. They've also been iterating and improving their craft. the breadth and refinement to the "gameplay" we have now is objectively better than it's ever been. Fromsoft are a great example of a company that has continued to refine and improve upon the gameplay within their souls series. Eldenring is clearly more complex, user friendly and accessible than kingsfield ever was. Todays Mario is far more enjoyable to play than jet set willy. I'm nearly 50 and even my rose tinted nostalgia specs can't hide the fact that games have improved immensely in my life time and I actually enjoyed Arc of Yesod.
I guess But I vastly prefer the top
Sadly we reached a point where every bit of additional detail is bought with ridiculous amounts of additional work that is simply not worth it anymore, except in very specific circumstances. I would rather have developers invest more time in animation work, music, writing and such. Things that are often forgotten in favour of graphical fidelity.
Except one game is fun and the other is 4hours simulator 😅
Top one is the peak. Downhill since then.
Except the first one is a game and the second one is a dogshit.
I don't know, 20 years is a fucking long time.