Notice how Sound Design isnt even mentioned on the meme. That’s how far down that is in everyone’s minds.
But it should because we’ve been suffering for over a decade of flat non surround or abysmal volume mixing. Dialog that is just too quiet while everything else is loud. But I guess as long as we have separate volume sliders in game that’ll fix it. If only every game came with em.
Also we’ve been pushing graphics all the time but Sound has basically tanked since the invention of the Sound Blaster AWE64 or something. What’s a sound blaster? Well kids we used to buy sound Cards for our computers much like you do GPU cards. That’s how much sound tech has stagnated. We had 5/7.1 setups in the late 90s had games with EAX support now everything is just whatever, play sound.wav. I guess Dolby Atmos is a thing but it’s a thing with a subscription fee.
TLDR: what about sound
Totally. That’s why Nintendo games always review poor- oh, wait
The reviews still have a strong focus on graphics, but based on the hardware limitations of the Switch.
Also, the aesthethic is not just about how photorealistic the game looks or what cutting edge technologies it uses. That’s why some games age differently than their peers, simply because their art style is not or less diminished by technological advances.
I don’t care very much about the cutting edge graphics, I rather have something with a round aesthethic than dry looks with ray tracing.
“It’s a technical wonder, never seen before in the industry. Completely unique dialog trees and interactions with NPCs. Elaborate upgrade system. Crafting mechanics. Full open world sandbox experience. Planned DLC for the next 2 years. BattlePass”
Holy fuck I’m tired of this shit
Which part of that has never been seen before?
It’s just schlock that every AAA developer pads their ad campaigns with. You see those accolade trailers with cherry picked reviews toting it’s game of the year, claiming it “reimagines everything” or “sets a new standard” , when it’s a game built on a 12 year old engine that is showing its age.
