Edit: just wanna add I’ve watched the full 8 min or so trailer and it actually is very faithful to the original like colour/art style wise so I’m all for it.
Also, what the fuck are you talking about? Are you saying you can see into complete shadows? Are you able to stare directly at the sun? Cuz thats definitely not a universal experience.
I’m from tropical Brazil. Out in the sun with white or glare surfaces, things do look blown out enough to make you squint. And as a consequence as your eyes try to adjust to that brightness, shadows look fairly dark.
The contrast feels correct to me when I am back in Brazil.
The other person replied with a good answer but I also want to add to it: Most tropical places are located in areas that tend to get way more direct sunlight than other locations. This means that the sun will spend most of its time beaming it's light straight down as opposed to at an angle. This can be so extreme that some objects, like a pole, can look like it has no shadow at all at the right time of day (noon). This results in harsher sunlight overall.
I stepped out of my office room into the sun, and I saw pure white for a good 2 seconds before I started seeing anything. Even now, the cement road looks like an overexposed photo from 5 m distance.
Indeed! Living in some countries with a different climate, I can say that for the southern one, it was neatly captured in the original game - when the sunlight makes the surfaces overexposed until you put 3-4rd cat sunglasses. It literally blinds you - harsh, burning your skin and eyes SUN. That's it!
Not how real-world eyes work? Have you never needed to squint before? I literally left work yesterday and a particularly bright spot outside looked exactly like the footage in the video.
I was thinking the same. Ive never played the original (only ever played AC1) but the remake looks brighter and more alive but I like the dingy grungey look of the original.
Then you have the inverse-- Warner Archive releases an old animated release saturated in color and people say they messed with it. Nope, that's how the 35mm master looks. Dark Turner color-grading and deteriorating station copies became the accepted standard. Lol.
None of this relates to 35mm film though. Them choosing a new color grade for a video game has nothing to do with “achieving the original look,” it’s just an appeal to modern audiences.
Omg it's ok to just admit that a remake looks better, you don't have to make up reasons for why you like the original more. If they had made it "grungier" (which the original isnt) you would have said you like the brighter feel of the original more
Its the gameplay that needed updating more than the graphics. Every time I go back to the original I'm surprised by how dated the gameplay feels, even though the world still looks good.
Just because it is old, doesn't mean it looks bad. While obviously graphics have advanced, the advancement in the last 13 years is nowhere near the jump from 2000 to 2013. Many games from 13 years ago look more than good enough today except in the eyes of people who think anything without ray tracing is utter crap.
and I don't see a problem with that. If that means games are made to look great and still run exceptionally well, then where's the harm?
Also division 2 also had day night cycle and it looked impeccable, even if they had to place fake lights sources to artificially recreate bounce lighting.
Thats not how that works at all. The AC team even said if they wanted to achieve the lighting fidelity of unity without RT at the scale of a modern game like AC shadows, with all its dynamic time of day and weather, the game would take up Terabytes worth of disk size.
Spiderman 2 has completely static lighting and lightmaps take up one third of the entire install size. I'd rather have my games be dynamic than static.
Yes it does. Games from the early 2010s hold op the worst. Older games weren't trying to (or simply couldn't) be photorealistic, meaning they all have more unique/fun/retro graphics that can still be enjoyed. Games from the late 2010s onwards look almost perfect and photorealistic, so they still hold up.
It's just that a lot that released between then is in that awkward situation where it's not retro and stylized, but also not realistic. I don't like playing those games. Similar to early 2000s movies that used a lot of CGI, they all look significantly worse than older movies without CGI or newer movies with realistic CGI.
Does that mean bad? Or old/dated? Because many games from 10-15 years ago were far enough along graphically that the differences are, even if noticeable, arguably minor.
Other games went for an actual art direction instead of photo realism and hold up even better.
With the amount of "Damn, can't believe x game released in 2015 and looks THIS good" posts on Reddit, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the people that think these games look "bad" are likely either a minority or are brain-rot AI chuds waiting to upscale their goonbait into Maralago faced aryan trad-wife bullshit while screaming SIX SEVENNNNN
Assassins Creed IV had a problem a lot of games at the time had that I can only describe as "Call Of Duty Brown". It's more obvious when you look at characters but Edway Kenway was almost bronze in certain lighting, the animation looks exceptionally dated and, for lack of a better word, stretchy. They were aiming for a more realistic art style at the time.
And that's just a consequence of it being on an older engine. Look at Black Flag vs Unity, a game that came out a year later on a newer engine targeting more modern platforms and looks better than games that came out in the last month. Now, AC Unity was buggy as fuck and ran like shit until recently so maybe that was a bit ambitious but side by side you can tell there was a major leap between the two.
AC Unity might not need retouching but AC4 is as new as you can get while also benefiting from a remake. It's like comparing RE4 vs RE4 Remake, two great games that still offer different experiences with similar skeletons.
Yeah I went through and played all the ac games a couple years ago, Unit was the first assassins creed i played where I stopped and just enjoyed the beauty.
Well the game had a horrendously buggy PC port, and the limitations of the X360/PS3 made loading screens mandatory, so no truly open world, no seamless transitions between ship gameplay and island gameplay. The textures were noticeably pixelated on even the highest settings - which is bad when the game tries to go for photorealism. Character models, especially npc models had barely more polygons than AC1, a title from 2007, and when those characters are in motion (which they always are) the janky constantly clipping models would take you out of the experience, again because of the game's explicit intent of photorealism.
The original doesn't look bad, but this is more than a visual update. I'm looking forward to this as, as much as I love the original, the gameplay feels like a chore by modern standards. And I hope they've cut the modern day sections completely.
You ain’t wrong, I guess I just don’t require more and more realism to think a game looks good. I mean Dark Souls 1 looks amazing to me so I’m probably not the norm lol.
Might be generational but I actually don’t like the look of hyper crisp ultra realistic games. Idk if uncanny valley or what but I prefer less realistic or less super crisp graphics
Having an art direction means your game is timeless. Going for hyper realism means that when you can spend another $2000 on one part in a rig strong enough to render two extra freckles with 5% more polygons and eight more Ray of Gods coming out of nowhere to lensflare your not-a-lens eyeballs for the CINEMATIC QUAALLLLITTTYY -
You know, it goes quite a ways. The having an artistic style, that is.
Very few modern games try to look photo realistic. Cyberpunk, alan wake and RE9 with path tracing are the best looking games I've ever played, and none of them look photo realistic, yet their lighting is pixel perfect.
Pixel movies arent photo realistic, yet their lighting is physically correct.
I think most people want to be the kind of person who ignores graphics, but I think it has a bigger impact on most people than they think. Above a certain level, I can adjust to whatever, but there's no substitute for the wow factor of great art direction + shiniest graphics.
Ghost of Yotei still leaves me breathless every time I look at anything, which is something I don't get from older games.
I can live without top notch graphics, and without story if the gameplay/systems etc are top tier. Say, dwarf fortress, soulash 2, ostranauts, RimWorld, Stardew Valley, to name a few. Gameplay first, we have movies for graphics and books for stories.
Now, the wow factor in Crimson Desert, in Ghost of Tsushima (graphics are quite standardish there though, but art direction is great), in CP2077, that is undeniably there and I enjoy it a lot.
I'd say art direction is several orders of magnitude more important than the graphics themselves though.
I agree with most of this (I disagree on stories as games enable some unique approaches to storytelling that you can't get in any other medium). Good graphics are a plus, not a requirement.
Yeah, no, I agree with you on that part about stories, but only when they are told through gameplay and mechanics. The reason videogames allow telling stories different is precisely gameplay, I think. So it still would come second in my opinion there.
But maybe I'm not getting what you are referring to, care to give some examples?
I think that's one way to do it, but the ability to make choices that affect the outcome is also massive. BG3 does things no movie or book can do.
I also think it's true even in the case of the standard "story game" like Metal Gear Solid or The Last of Us where you don't make choices and it tells its story through cutscenes. Even when most of the storytelling is disconnected from the gameplay, there's an additional bond with the protagonist and the world when you, personally, are the one who's been navigating it and overcoming the things they're overcoming. Everybody loves Shepard even though Shepard's characterization isn't exactly well-defined.
Ultimately, though, even in the case of games that don't really do any of these things any more effectively than a movie could, I just appreciate the way story games blend two things I love.
Yeah, but this is basically why Assassin's Creed needs the graphics focus.
Which isn't meant as a diss. Assassins' Creed is a game about places.
The whole appeal of the franchise is "you are a real historical person in this real historical place". Each entry is such an effective tourism advertisement that government tourism boards have been doing cross-promotions.
It's highly likely that they had some amount of institutional support since II, even if it's just in the form of "oh you're making a video game about our cathedral? that's so cool here here, let me show you the nonpublic areas..."
Yeah, definitely. They need strong city/environment artists, it's part of the charm, and good graphics help. I'm putting Resynced straight up my arse with no lube, that's for sure.
But I think my point stands regardless in the grand scheme of things.
Those are not comparable at all. You can't move around, explore and get immersed in a movie.
But I do agree art direction matters a lot more than just pure realism. Still having a cohesive art style is important. For example, WoW is completely stylized, but you can clearly see an improvement in model/texture quality over the years and it looks far better now, even without looking realistic.
Every time anyone even mentions graphics, the immediate wave of responses are unanimously about how it’s not as important as story and gameplay. And… maybe. But they’re still important and play a huge role in a game’s presentation and immersion. Everyone acts like graphics are some overhyped element, and that might have been true once but now they’re absolutely under-appreciated (from what I’ve witnessed).
A good game with good graphics will have a better audience reception than a good game with bad graphics.
A bad game with good graphics will have a better reception than a bad game with bad graphics.
If you don't think graphics affect the way people receive games, look at Crimson Desert and tell me anyone would give a single fuck about it if it didn't look pretty.
The AC Shadows was absolutely lovely as well. Playing Ghost of Yotei now, and its an interesting compare and contrast. Both equally beautiful, but Shadows is grittier, dirtier, overall in the world. Still taking a million photos, and stopping for the dawn though.
You know its a good immersive game when you start looking up how to make hakama trousers. Funnily I found a really good pattern by Folkwear patterns, and when I looked it up on the review site, the only person who had made them, was a 40-something bloke who had just finished Ghost of Tsushima 😂 So yeah, warning, too many soulful Japanese historical fantasy games and you’ll be trying to dress like a local.
I completely disagree with this take. I think it's, in fact, the opposite. More people are obsessed with graphics and "realism," but in the end it's great game play and a fun story that makes all the difference to folks. All the bells and whistles of great graphics are just shining a turd on a bad game (aka, why the FUCK did we spend any money on Anthem). On the other hand, the Zelda games keep coming up with refreshing new ideas on gameplay despite having graphics not nearly as stunning (perfect for their style, but certainly not at the level of modern triple AAAs by most other developers).
You're disagreeing with me as if I'd said graphics are all that matters. I'm saying that, despite the fact that everyone says graphics don't matter to them, graphics have more of an influence than most people think.
Your position is the standard one. I think it's what we all want to believe about ourselves. The fact that something like Zelda can overcome the allure of great graphics is still a testament to the power of great gameplay.
If people actually didn't care about graphics we'd all be playing games made with colored ovals and plain text
Graphics, story, gameplay - they all exist to serve each other, that's what a collaborative art form is all about. Imagine saying a movie's visual language doesn't matter as much as its story... The visual language is how you consume the story, of course it matters!
Yea agreed, at some point even games attempting realism become a time capsule for that generations graphical capabilities and aesthetic sensibilities
Those assassins creed games are like quintessential xb360/ps3 era games to me, there’s a lot of interesting design choices that serve to make those games look more realistic when they came out. Now with modern graphics those choices become more like the defining aesthetic of the game
Yeah I tried about a half dozen work around to try and get the game to run on a 'modern' pc and it would crash constantly during the beginning cut scene. The only AC game I really wanted to play and never got it to work so refunded it a few months back. I think I'll wait to see if it can run on a modern pc again lol.
WTF are you on bro? Don't come at me. It was made for the ps4, which came out in 2013. Both the game and system came out the same year. Where the hell are you getting 20 years from? Don't ask me to make you look like an idiot again.
It was natively designed and released for the ps4 in 2013, the year the system came out. That is obviously the version we're looking at and comparing to here. By your logic Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 was "made" for the PS1 just because a terribly inferior version of the game was made for the prior generation.
The original AC: Black Flag came out on both the Xbox 360/PS 3 generation AS well as the Xbox One and PS 4 generation a month later. The games shipped with different textures and the step up in appearance on the later generation was very notable at the time.
What you are seeing on the left is almost certainly from the later generation of consoles or a high end PC. It might even be the older game running on a more modern PC at the highest possible settings… settings that were maybe very hard to achieve in 2013 for most people.
The point I am making is that the recording on the left was not done on 20 year old hardware. It was done, at worst, on 12.5 year old hardware that was cutting edge at the time of its release.
Fuck Im old I remember spending the entire summer of 2013 playing Last of Us, Romb Raider reboot, Metal Gear rising and Bioshock infinite while waiting for Black Flag and GTA 5
No, I go through it again every couple of years, but it'll be nice to go through it again with a bit of a fresher look.
As for those that think it's madness to pay for the same game with updated visuals, I agree but I'm so underwhelmed with the current gen of gaming I have plenty to spare in my gaming pot.
Edit: I've just watched the full video, there's a lot more than just how it looks. I'd suggest if you haven't watched it do so.
I mean, people thought Spyro looked bad (Spoiler alert: it didn't). And even dumber one: Alan Wake. People are mindless, especially gamers. Create a remake, raise the price to twice as much as the original, and you strike it rich. Works every time.
Not if you want a pirate game, where the only other recent release that’s any good is an early access survival crafter. Also not if you want Black Flag’s story or fundamental gameplay.
I'm saying that a new AC pirate game doesn't exist, and as the other guy above said, he wants more pirate games and doesn't have them.
While 'new games' as a general concept will of course keep being made, each remake is a specific team and resources being used on one less actual new game that could be a sequel, or spiritual sequel, or even something completely new and interesting rather than something we already know.
I an author released kept releasing books that were just the exact same as the old book but with a new epilogue or some dialogue changes here and there, he'd be called a hack. If a director kept releasing remakes of a film that was exactly the same but with added CGI here and there on some scenes he'd be mocked (hello George Lucas). Games are the only medium where the fans have so little self respect they keep falling for this
Gamers will see a remake that is the exact same game but with 1 extra visible pixel and loudly start explaining this makes all the difference and they cant look at the original anymore without puking
That's not really the point of the remake, but Black Flag does look dated on consoles and the PC version could definitely benefit from some QoL hardware/settings improvements.
The textures are definitely dated and they’ve added some ambient lighting and other small features like animals/sounds.
Did it need it? No. But it does look better. Here’s to hoping they didn’t break a lot of the collision mechanics with the world but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Personally I’d be happy with the updated mechanics with the old graphics. But at least in my eyes the updated graphics don’t deviate too much from the original aesthetic. People should also keep in mind with the new weather mechanics, the lighting in certain places and scenes will vary a lot more than in the original.
While watching this I was thinking what a waste of time remaking this game was. The original is completely fine graphically. I still hope it sells well though cuz we do not have enough pirate games out there
I don't think anyone would say the original looked bad. It looked fantastic for the era and it still holds up very well given it's age.
But I'm even happier that we don't need to settle for "holds up well" since it looks like we're getting an updated version that looks great while keeping the original aesthetic
Hmm, how do I say this without sounding horrible. I think they were going for the tanned to hell look, but they went a bit too far. Plus the teeth were really bright and the older lighting models didn't help. Looked really goofy and uncanny. Graphics wise that was my only complaint at the time it came out. The rest of the game far over shadowed that minor thing.
It’s meant for a 480p tv. only reason I stopped playing it because it looks like hell on a 4k tv. Same with GTA IV. which also absolutely needs a remaster.
I'm also curious as the original was released on both ps3 and ps4/Xbox one x. And the PS4/Xbox one x version was amazing , had stellar graphics, there really isn't much room for improvement. I think they are showing ps3 here but between the PS4 version it won't have a big enough difference
i like the original's looks but afaik yes, people said it looked bad. i think it used a version of their engine that was obsolete by the time the game came out or some shit like that
No but times change, people used to think ocarina of time looked amazing graphically. Does that mean it needs a remake? No, but what people thought on release is irrelevant to graphical remakes given enough time.
Looking back on it. And having played it recently for Cartridge Club. I’d say the faces were the biggest bad factor. Everyone had raccoon eyes and blotchy skin.
I played it for the first time just last year and I thought it looked fantastic. It's definitely an HD game but it has a little bit of a painting-esc flair to it, especially on the characters
I’m definitely in the minority but I thought the lighting on the original just felt off when I played it. Felt overly saturated and the colors felt a bit too harsh on the eyes for me
I think the biggest update has more to do with gameplay. Bringing the gameplay up to date with something closer to unity is going to do wonders for replaying it. Combat in the original is really date, but this remake also stopped short of fully updating it to the RPG combat of the newer titles. So it’s like a nice middle ground when it comes to combat and climbing
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u/Imwaymoreflythanyou Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
Did people think the original looked bad?
Edit: just wanna add I’ve watched the full 8 min or so trailer and it actually is very faithful to the original like colour/art style wise so I’m all for it.