this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
1129 points (98.5% liked)
memes
21646 readers
2173 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is exactly what's happening. Its been going on for a long time, and is in some ways holding back the industry from progressing in other areas, such as new and innovative forms of actually interacting with game worlds and their narratives.
I'd personally say once 3D graphics were able to represent things without it looking abstract from too few polygons (say, around 2006 or so?), the medium could've slowed down the pace of graphical advancements significantly, and the industry would've benefited enormously.
Modern indie games that do not have AAA budgets for graphics instead have focused on unique and attractive art-styles, sometimes with retro aesthetics, and are generally able to create far more compelling experiences due to the lack of emphasis on graphics.
I think to myself, only half-ironically, "textures were a mistake" (pre-rendered cutscenes, too). Or at least the practice of unique textures on every model being the standard rather than the exception. It adds a lot of workload, and IMO is probably diminishing returns in many cases.
Sure, I get that it was a logical/necessary step when a texture/sprite saved on polygon budget. These days I think (visible!) vertex color is a very practical technique that didn't really get used to its full potential. It even makes a lot of sense when making a model to think about color via geometry. There's a lot of room for aesthetic choice with meshes, colors, materials/shaders, character/map design, and yes textures if they don't become bloat.
This is also why I dislike the idea of many remasters/remakes. Losing arguably the smartest* and most scalable solutions and switching over to much heavier (data and rendering-wise) replacements. Sure they made it visually stunning, but now I don't know if I can comfortably download/store/run a game that probably still has game-design warts from 20+ years ago (and new glitches added).
* For example, Spyro's vertex color skyboxes being replaced in Reignited. The original were iconic, aesthetically pleasing, they had a gamefeel reason (portals, seamless fly-into portal+fly-into-level), free by modern standards (so a toggle should be viable) they're just mesh globes! I could even see even some verts added to improve, or use of layers or more distant geometry to give it more depth.