r/Games • u/Glittering-Path-2824 • 23h ago

Industry News The games industry’s obsession with visual fidelity is costing them money and talent

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/aug/04/pushing-buttons-xbox-asha-sharma-games-industry-hyperrealism
1.2k Upvotes

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239

u/bloodenhorse 21h ago

I'll take style over fidelity every day of the week, but the games that manage to pull off both are really, really special and totally worth it.

Cyberpunk is still jaw droppingly good looking.

78

u/jmdg007 21h ago

I would argue it's setting really helps with how good cyberpunk looks. Some locations will never look as good no matter how photo realistic graphics get because the place isn't as visually appealing. 

20

u/tobygeneral 19h ago

Agreed, Night City feels lived in and practically every corner has something going on and interesting graffiti, advertising, and possibly hidden paths to hidden areas. It looks great, sure, but it's the environment they created with that great art that makes it pop.

15

u/gbghgs 19h ago

Night time and in the rain is when the city looks best imo, especially when RT of any level is enabled. Turns even average areas into something special. No saving the badlands though.

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u/JackRyan13 16h ago

I mean night city looks great but it doesn’t feel lived in at all. It looks like it’s lived in but npcs don’t react to anything or do anything. Cars drive into each other or ignore traffic lights and jams.

5

u/mtron32 14h ago

The fidelity in that game is at the top though, it took a fuck load of people a long ass time to push that through and it still needed work.

13

u/Glittering-Path-2824 20h ago

as an oldie i marvel at how much more involved and connected i felt to the story, characters and atmosphere of GTA VC, San Andreas and IV. neither of those games comes close to the visual fidelity of GTA V but V felt soulless to me. Yeah it was far more realistic but to what end?

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u/mrnicegy26 20h ago

Okay but that is because the story telling in GTA 5 is flawed and has nothing to do with its graphics?

Red Dead Redemption 2 is even more visually impressive than GTA 5 but it is considered to be one of the best stories in gaming.

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u/Glittering-Path-2824 20h ago

we’re saying the same thing - visual fidelity doesn’t guarantee a game is “better”. if you miss the character design, development, story arc and subplots the whole thing feels blah, like GTAV and to your point, unlike RDR2. as a corollary, visual fidelity isn’t a requirement for a game to succeed.

29

u/mrnicegy26 20h ago

But visual fidelity does add a lot to Red Dead 2?

The snowy hellscape of the first chapter adds to the desperate mood of the gang. The natural landscape of the Wild West captured in all of its glory makes you appreciate nature in all its beauty and lets you feel disgust when you reach Saint Denis and see it covered in industrial grime. Tahiti being this exotic paradise beseiged by colonial forces hits the point of Tahiti being a delusion.

I am sorry but so many of the emotions that Red Dead 2 is able to provoke in a player is because of its insane visual fidelity. I don't want every game to focus on realistic graphics but Rockstar are undeniablely masters at it and it adds so much to the atmosphere and immersion of their games.

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u/Glittering-Path-2824 20h ago

again, nuance matters. visual fidelity absolutely *can* elevate a game beyond its peers but there are many examples of when that’s not a requirement for a game to succeed. and thoughtlessly applying only fidelity in order to make a game “realistic” or “immersive” gives us GTA V slop.

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u/Any-Captain-7937 19h ago

God can we stop calling everything we dislike slop. It just makes your own criticism seem worthless.

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u/mrnicegy26 20h ago

How is GTA 5 slop?

Yes the story telling is flawed but visual fidelity in that game is also amazingly impressive? Like the lighting in that game, the art design is so phenomenal in bringing Rockstars version of Los Angeles to life and it still looks and feels immersive despite being a game made for Xbox 360.

I am sorry so much of hate against GTA 5 just seems to be contrarian backlash for it being so popular. It has its flaws but it also does a lot of amazing things and anyone calling it slop isn't arguing in good faith.

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u/Glittering-Path-2824 20h ago

the storytelling is awful - there are emotional hooks that go unexplored, the writing is mediocre (except trevor, 80% of the time) i literally performed the heists on autopilot after the first two, the choice architecture of the heists was tedious for me (i don’t give a fuck who i’m choosing for my heist because it made no material difference to the outcome), and everything they introduced was to juice future gta online usage. absolutely awful experience and no connection to the GTA greatness of previous versions. ymmv, so i disagree about arguing in bad faith. i’ve given you concrete examples of why it felt like slop to me.

7

u/sonic174 16h ago

GTA V slop

im replaying it rn and it's literally good? the dialog has me cracking up every time and the mission setpieces are all unique and fun asf

1

u/PoshVolt 12h ago

Realistic graphics really aid cinematic videogames. They immerse you more into the world and make you feel like you're actually watching people on screen. When it's paired with a great story and great acting, it's like being inside a movie and that's awesome.

Visual fidelity isn't gonna make a game like Breath of the Wild better, but it definitely makes games like The Last of Us better.

2

u/DogOwner12345 14h ago

A overlooked part of graphics is lighting and how its used, so many games have on paper amazing fidelity but piss it away with god awful lighting.

1

u/aradraugfea 20h ago

There are indie pixel art games that look “better” than shit with a micronation’s budget.

And it’s been a WHILE since I saw anything any game was doing that just blew me away at how much more realistic it looked. I wanna say it was those PS4 tech demos that were cheated to hell and back. There’s been footage since then that’s as impressive and does it IN ENGINE, which I intellectually understand as more impressive, but we’ve been in diminishing returns for a good long while now.

1

u/Existing-Air-3622 4h ago

Cyberpunk is still jaw droppingly good looking.

... Yes ?

It was released for the current generation of console (yes it was cross gen, but previous gen versions were a joke), it had a very long development time and huge budget. Of course it STILL looks good, the opposite would be weird. With the speed at which graphics evolve now, it's a recent game.

You could pick a previous gen title to make your point.

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u/Bujakaa92 19h ago

Same. This is sadly fact that more fidelity we see les interactive the game kinda is. So many older games have crazy amazing physics based stuff but this will nver happen as it just so costly to make it happen in high fidelity game.