[grg0]

I think graphics peaked ~2015. But interaction still leaves a lot to be desired; we still have slipping and characters who can't walk stairs in AAA games to this day. Making characters more physically grounded and present seems like the obvious thing to improve to me.

[mfro]

This is something audiences are clearly desperate for today. I think it's obvious when looking at the huge success of Helldivers, Bodycam, Ready Or Not, Arc Raiders, (none of which are particularly innovative) players appreciate high quality, tactile and grounded world interaction.

[jjmarr]

Counterpoint is Roblox, which had one of the most innovative game engines ever. It could multiplayer simulate thousands of blocks of destructible terrain in 2006.

This feature was mostly ignored by the playerbase because developers found it easier to create static setups and focus on iterating on other parts of their gameplay.

[grg0]

The technological innovation still needs to be fun, though. Red Faction: Guerilla (2009) had destructible buildings to the point that they were constructed by laying down blocks in a physically correct way and letting the physics engine handle the rest, and blasting the hell out of them in the middle of open combat was incredibly fun.

[jjmarr]

It was very fun. Brick Battle, Galleons, the game with many towers. The explodey terrain put Roblox on the map initially.

The problem is the opportunity cost of destructible terrain was too high. Developers could get fun for lower effort by creating linear levels with better design/graphics/etc as destructible terrain makes everything "blocky" without significant developer work.

[ColdStream]

This is something 'The Last Guardian' absolutely nailed! Everything was just so grounded.

Yes, as a game it had a lot of flaws that many other games also had, but the things it excelled at were absolutely unique.

[mathgeek]

What did it excel at that hit the right notes for you?

[ColdStream]

It is sort of hard to describe but I would say specifically the animation system.

Everything has weight and flows spectacularly. They used a combination of key framed animations and procedural to have limbs conform to surfaces and have additional physics applied when needed. Combined with the physics system on the characters feathers and clothing, it all just ties together very well. It had a long development time of 9 years, before that became almost a standard, and it was basically just spent perfecting that system.

It also helps that they threw the bulk of the GPU time on the giant character to give it highwaulity shadow and highlights to ground it in the environment so well.

But the environment is a little bit of a let down in that the assets are clearly from the original Ps3 version they were working on. They cleaned it all up well enough with decent enough AA with everything being well 'grounded' but there was only so much they could do. There are a lot of assets that show the original memory limitations.

The problem was that the frame rate would drop terribly due to a lot of their decisions. And this is after they reportedly they had to significantly reduce the animations system capabilities over the Ps3 version because it was original designed to work with the Cell's strengths. Also took over a year just to port from the Ps3 to Ps4 due to the hyper specific tech they had built. Probably one of the few titles where the Cell's strengths shone well over the Ps4's architecture. If feels like if it was done today with modern GPU tech, they could do something amazing with this. But I think it is going to be permanently stuck on Ps4.

If you haven't played it, I wouldn't give it a hard recommendation because the gameplay is very fiddley in trying to conform to the animation system and most people just don't really get into the vibe of it all. But do check out a few minutes of it in action on Youtube and just to see how it all flows.

It is an wonderfully flawed ambitiously frustrating masterpiece. The vision is strong, some of the tech is strong, but the gameplay is a little weak and some parts of the tech is weaker.

I do see that the creator Fumito Ueda with Gen Design has a new title being funded by Epic called "Gen Altus" and it looks like they are taking all their skills over to UE5, it is going to be fun to see.