When the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S finally arrived, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the big selling point was ray-tracing. Or, in layman’s terms, better reflections. The idea is that games can simu𒊎late lighting in real-time to look even more realistic than they already did. It’s boring, overly technical for a console pitch, and worst of all, a huge tax on performance.

Frankly, I don’t think ray tracing ever looks ‘better’. You can see 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man reflected perfectly as you scale a skyscraper, but I still think the older games with cel-shaded, comic-inspired art have m꧑ore character. Realism is a dull ro𓆏ad, which RTX is only exacerbating.

Video Games Have A Realism Problem

Gaming has long been obsessed with getting a🍨s close to reality as possible, and we’re seeing inflated budgets and development times at their worst. But it’s a snake ea🍸ting its own tail, as the big publishers and consoles are cultivating expectations from gamers that are impossible to meet by constantly pushing for generational leaps and improved graphics in every single sequel.

The outrage that Spider-Man 2 looked the ‘same’ despite costing over $200 million sums up the industry p🐬erfectly. We’ve hit the ceiling, and incremental changes — however expensive — aren’t enough to satiate an audience conditioned to expect far more.

Xbox and PlayStation tried to break through the ceiling with better lighting, whic💞h is hardly as significant as the leap fro🥃m 2D to 3D, the introduction of joysticks, or revolutionary online features. Sometimes you can see things reflected in a puddle. Yay? It’s endemic of gaming’s future, chasing hyperrealism into the inevitable abyss when developers should instead dial things back.

Gaming Needs To Slow Down

The PS6 doesn’t need to be revolutionary - and there’s no way it can be without pricing out gamers. Just look at 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:how costly the PS5 Pro was for insignificant changes that are barely noticeable. We should be looking at Ni♑ntendo for inspiration, and how it seeks to revolutionise mechanics and gameplay, exploring the bizarre and wonderful things you can do with the medium’s unique interactivity as opposed to rendering every single pore in Link’s skin.

That’s what makes games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate 3, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elden Ring so much more memorable than the latest action-adventure PS5 exclusive. It’s why 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Astro Bot stuck out so much this year — we’ve been craving for Sony to retu🌼rn to that mindset.

But broadly speaking, that’s not what we’re seeing. Astro Bot was an exception to the rule. Just look over the pond at Xbox with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. It has mandatory ray tracing: there’s no option to turn it off. You need an RTX 2060 to even play it on PC, although many suggest using a 4000 series for the optimum experience. Gaming is a luxury, sure, but it’s becoming more and more pricey to ac🦹commodate these unrealistic expectations, and when it becomes mandatory, countless are locked out.

Consoꩲles are expensive, graphics cards are expensive, video games are expensive, even subscriptions like Game Pass — once the way to make gaming affordable — are expensive! The fault doesn’t lie squarely at ray-tracing’s feet, but it’s a microcosm of the industry as a whole. We’re chasing these tiny yet incredibly costly technological improvements in an unending race to make the best-looking game of all time.

Yet the best-looking games that spring to mind are never the ones that look like they could be a photograph. It’s the stylish painterly art of Okami, the classic rubberhose animation of Cuphead, or the beautifully handpainted backdrops of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 9. Style always triumphs over realism, and looking back at generations past, tho🙈se a💖re the games that have aged the best, because they tried to do something more than just capture reality. They told a story in their visuals.

Ray-tracing is cold, mechanical, and bland. Yet it’s the bedrock of this entire generation, one where games take ten years to develop and budgets are so high that one failure can spell the end of a studio. Hyperrealism cannot be the future of gaming, and as we look forward to the next generation a🌄nd the next, these expensive bells and whistles need to take a backseat.