I just played Dragon Age Veilguard, and I'm now playing Dragon Age Origins, which was released 15 years ago. The difference in graphics and animation are startling. And it has a big effect on my enjoyment of the game. Origins is considered by many to be the best in the series, and I can see that they poured a ton into story options and such. But it doesn't feel nearly as good as playing Veilguard.

Amazing graphics might not make or break a game, but the minimum level of what's acceptable is always rising. Couple that with higher resolutions and other hardware advances, and art budgets are going to keep going up.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 5 points 1 day ago

Agreed; Veilguard has pretty okay graphics. Not great, but acceptable - the high mark for me is BG3. But moving back to the earlier entries, they may have had stories that felt more 'real' (e.g., the setting felt more internally consistent) and gave more options, but the graphics and gameplay haven't aged well.

Similarly, Fallout: New Vegas hasn't aged so well. It was a great game, but it looks pretty rough now, unless you load it down with hi-res mods.

I don't demand photorealism, but I'd like better visuals than PS3-level graphics.