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Your earliest memory saying, "games can't look better than this!"

Rosenkrantz

Rosenkrantz

Member
Jan 17, 2018
4,950
I don't have a concrete example of the game, but somewhere around the end of the last gen/beginning of the current gen I thought that there won't be much improvement before we achieve a full fotorealism. That being said, real-time animation, lighting and physics will obviously be rapidly improving with a new technology.
 

TacoSupreme

Member
Jul 26, 2019
1,732
Never quite went there with my thought process, but Half-Life 2 or the early media for STALKER are probably the closest.

I distinctly remember feeling that Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II was a super realistic graphical representation of the Star Wars universe though.
 
brinstar

brinstar

User requested ban
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,351
Soul Calibur on Dreamcast lol. Most DC games in general blew me away at the time.

 
Perfect Chaos

Perfect Chaos

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,353
Charlottesville, VA, USA
PGR3 on the 360. Not that I was super young at the time, but it was definitely the first time where I saw a game's graphics and went "man, what the fuck."

I remember walking around the garage in that game, looking at the environment and the cars, and being so floored.
 
JamboGT

JamboGT

Vehicle Handling Designer
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
1,454
Astra Planeta said:
GT3 Aspec on PS2. I couldn't believe it was real.
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Yeah this for me, the first time I saw footage was on TV and it was the SuperGT Calsonic Skyline and I thougth it was a SuperGT race. CRT TV's hid a lot of issues!

Also the Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec sparks are still my favourite use of that effect in all racing games.
 
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ChoklitCow

ChoklitCow

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,189
Muncie, IN
It's ridiculous, but I remember Sony's E3 for the PS3 and I wasn't all about the Killzone 2 trailer, I was all about those rubber ducks. I thought that was the greatest thing I had ever seen.
 
GuEiMiRrIRoW

GuEiMiRrIRoW

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
3,530
Brazil
Maybe RE4 or Metal Gear 4. One of them. When the jump from n64 to ps2 came, I knew there would be almost no limits to next gen.

I actually think games can look so much better, but it will be expensive as hell to make it.

I expeced Final Fanasy 7 Remake to be the norm this gen, but it is arriving much later than expected.
 
The Albatross

The Albatross

Member
Oct 25, 2017
39,212
Same for me with the original Resident Evil. I just thought like... that's photorealism, there's nowhere else you can go from that.

I think this effect is best done just at the start of a generation... Like when that first really graphically amazing game gets announced. Madden 2001 was this for me with PS2, it was one of the big launch titles for the console (imagine that... a Madden game being a super important launch title for a Playstation console...), and Sony was eager to show it off. I remember that issue of NextGen magazine, a magazine that in retrospect woudln't have cared about sports games at all, just GUSHING over the game.

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I really wish I could find the actual article, but I think I remember them having an icon on one of the screenshots being like "This isn't real life, it is an ACTUAL INGAME SCREENSHOT" or whatever.
 
VariantX

VariantX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,934
Columbia, SC
Thats easy, for me it was the first screenshots of Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2. Lost my shit at the addition of grass on the beach and the fake reflections on the night version of city stage. They had NPC's in the background that werent cardboard cutouts and I was pretty much thinking "oh shit they got the cg intro graphics into the real game" back then.
 
exodus

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,958
Possibly Final Fantasy X. It felt so far ahead of anything else I had played at the time.

The Doom 3 leak was also mindblowing. As was Half-Life 2 and Everquest 2 media (especially the cloth simulations).
 
TheMan

TheMan

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
3,264
Probably one of the first times I was fooled by prerendered bullshots back in the very early ps1 days. Since then I've been impressed of course, but I know that improvements will keep coming, if only incrementally these days.
 

Deleted member 8861

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
10,564
I grew up in a period where I saw a couple gen transitions when I was quite young but not too young so I ever felt anything I saw was the peak of graphical fidelity
 
TickleMeElbow

TickleMeElbow

Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,668


When I saw this, and then later played the demo that came with ZoE, I thought to myself "I'd be cool if these were peak graphics".
 
VariantX

VariantX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,934
Columbia, SC
RoninStrife said:
I was watching tv one day, tired, just got home from school and... well.. an ad like this played..
And there was one that featured a whole lap on Special Stage Route 5 and a Viper GTSR that just blew my mind.

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This is is damn good too. I lost my shit because it was 60 Fps, on all the tracks and theres more than one car on the track lol. The whole game was now hi-fi mode. You had to unlock a lot of shit in GT1 to unlock the hi-fi mode.
 
Jeeves

Jeeves

Member
Nov 21, 2017
411
I think I whispered under my breath that Soul Calibur II looked better than real life. That may have been in reference to the opening CG.
 
RoninStrife

RoninStrife

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,002
VariantX said:
This is is damn good too. I lost my shit because it was 60 Fps, on all the tracks and theres more than one car on the track lol. The whole game was now hi-fi mode. You had to unlock a lot of shit in GT1 to unlock the hi-fi mode.
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The feels this game brought!
Not to mention I watched, re-watched the intro EVERY single time!

Do do doodo do do doodoo do do doodoo do do doodoo!
That intro with the spark plugs firing. Mind blowing!
 
Unaha-Closp

Unaha-Closp

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,746
Scotland
A little different but when I played Uncharted 2 there was a moment when I put down the controller and thought about the little me who played ZX Spectrum games and how this would blow his tiny little mind were he to be here to see it. Before that though - holding up on a solid surface corner in Metal Gear Solid and having the camera swing round to look around the corner had me thinking - this is it. Can't get better.
 
TransEuropaExpress

TransEuropaExpress

Member
Dec 6, 2017
11,034
US
TheFallenSaboteur said:
Oh, lol. Damn, that must've left such a huge impression on you. Are you a fan of series today?
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You have to think too that at the time it's not like we all had the latest systems or even information. At that time most of us were still playing SNES and had maybe seen a Playstation in shop window. Resident Evil was fucking mindblowing not only for the graphics but being a Horror fan, it was just insane to me how graphic it was with gore etc.

Oh yeah, I love Resident Evil, some of my Top 20 games in that series for sure.
 
Ebnas

Ebnas

Member
May 15, 2019
366
Never felt that way until I saw wet clothes in Uncharted. Funny enough, that was the only impressive technical aspect of that entire series.
 
Alavard

Alavard

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
5,373
I was born in 85, so I'd been playing games as a kid on Atari systems, the NES, gameboy, SNES, Genesis, and Playstation, but when the PS2 came out, hoo boy!

Tekken Tag Tournament. I couldn't believe my eyes. Everything looked so polished and slick. My eyes and brain were somehow entirely ignoring the remaining jaggies. Somehow it just looked like perfection to me.
 
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