Why is everybody saying that the Oblivion remaster isn't well optimized? Probably just console peasants jealous that they'll never have the power that my glorious PC has. Old video game graphics and particularly old 3D video game graphics have fascinated me for a really long time because they consistently lie to your face and look great while doing it. While it's certainly convenient having the power of ray tracing at our disposal, which undeniably look shadowtastical, I think there's definitely been a drop in picture perfect strategy when it comes to the visuals of modern video games. since we have the power now to load so many assets into one area.

I mean, seriously, how are game developers supposed to cram an open 3D environment on a console that only had 128 kilob of RAM and 64 kilob of video memory? Oh, I hope Nvidia didn't hear that. The Super Nintendo was the first Nintendo console to feature 3D games, but the console couldn't actually handle 3D. This nested seven graphics modes, and most of the conso's 3D games utilized mode 7. Mode 7 allowed a background layer to be scaled and rotated in a way that emulated true real-time 3D.

Using this graphics technique, developers could put 2D sprites over the seemingly 3D environment to simulate a believable virtual landscape. In Super Mario Kart, Nintendo's sprite artists drew so many different angles of the characters so that they appeared natural while turning or if they were being seen from an unconventional perspective. So even though the new 3D graphics thing was cool, it was incredibly timeconuming.

So Miiamoto Mario Kart Nintendo said, "Gentlemen, the SNES can't run 3D, and it is costing us time that we could spend making actual 3D games. What we need is a new video game cartridge that is more powerful than our conso's built-in processor. Star Fox was the first game to utilize the Super Effects chip, or as it was known by its code name, Mario, mathematical augur, rotation, and input output. The Super Effects chip shot Nintendo right back into the innovation playing field because it allowed the SNES to load multiple 3D assets at one time while still utilizing the conso's built-in 2D functions.

Star Fox on the SNES is instantly recognizable because of the visual enhancements of the Super Effects chip. Enemies, buildings, allies, you, and certain props are all true 3D models, while the background and effects are two-dimensional. The background rotates and corrects itself based on where you are positioned. And to sell the innovation of True 3D even more, Agronaut designed the sound to change volume depending on how close you are to a sound source.

Using the uh official SNES, I can show you guys how Nintendo and Agronaut utilize the SNES's layering system to create an authentic 3D environment. As we can see, they use the traditional mode 7 graphics technique to render the two-dimensional background that, as I stated earlier, adjusts itself to the player's position. Another layer was used for the HUD. And last, but definitely not least, the Super Effects chip's 3D models and effects are resigned in its own layer as well.

When I first learned about Star Fox's very interesting development, my first thought was, is this the same Nintendo that I know? But to clear the air, it is in fact the same Nintendo we all know and love because the innovative 3D technology stuff was done by Agronaut, while Nintendo was responsible for the plot and general design of Star Fox. So, moral of the story, Nintendo will never change. So, if you just shake your right.

[Music] But speaking of Nintendo, I think now is the perfect time to talk about their 3D oriented console, the Nintendo 64, and specifically the most graphically demanding game on it, Skyrim. Perfect Dark was a firstperson shooter developed by Rare and one of the 28 M for mature 17 plus games released on the system. It's also one of those games that was so ahead of its time, it resulted in half the employees leaving the studio after development because of burnout and in kind of a [ __ ] up way just screams good media.

It's common for video games at the end of a console's lifespan to stretch the capabilities of what the system can handle and Perfect Dark is an excellent example of that. The first level takes place on the top few stories of a skyscraper in the middle of a dystopian city. Throughout the level, the inaccessible exterior remains loaded in, so you can still see the skyscrapers from really far away. The N64 is only able to handle this because the skyscrapers are textures placed perpendicular to each other.

So from where the player is allowed to explore, they appear as full-fledged buildings. Unlike its spiritual predecessor, Golden Eye 007, the game features a more advanced lighting system that adjusts where certain areas lighten up and go dark depending on what's happening, like if a gun is being fired or if there's a light nearby. Perfect Dark also handled exterior rendering in a strategically optimized way by allowing transparency on windows only when the player was a couple feet away.

If the player goes too far, the windows become dark and turn into a texture that moves depending on where the player sets the camera. Interestingly enough, physically moving doesn't affect the texture. Only the camera does. While it looks like a big black dump because I'm playing at 1440p at the intended 480i resolution, the effect still looks like dog [ __ ] I can't even lie. The reason that this game was able to accomplish so much on the Nintendo 64 was because it pretty much required the expansion pack for the console, which added an extra 4 megabytes of RAM to the conso's base 4 megabytes.

Like I said before though, on a scale of Valve to Rockstar, Perfect Dark's development was definitely more Rockstar. So, a lot of content ended up getting cut from the final product. The multiplayer mode, which surprisingly enough still holds up well today, originally had a feature where you could take a picture of someone's face with the Game Boy camera and uploaded to the game to slap on the models of the multiplayer characters.

After Rare realized they would have absolutely no control over who somebody decided to use as a face to shoot at, they cut it out and still to this day believe it was the right decision. I don't think it was the right decision, but that doesn't mean it wasn't still impressive by 2000 game standards. Windows could be smashed, couches could be moved, people would dynamically speak with the player. In the last year of development, the studio acquired tech for motion capture, which was used for a variety of the animations, and in some cases, the limitations of the N64 actually helped the game visually.

For example, the reflections in the game are just copies of the same room upside down under a transparent texture. but it's so sharp and natural looking that you could say it looks better than a lot of screen space reflections we see in video games today. That said, kind of unfair to compare the two since modern games are reflecting a whole lot more than a couch and a couple walls. But still, when you think of old video games in terms of optimization, your mind probably immediately goes to Silent Hill 1.

Everybody knows that Team Silent used fog to cover up the distances that the PlayStation 1 couldn't load. And even today, some games use fog to hide Poppin. But some games did so much in terms of post effects that it not only covered up hardware limitations but actually made the game look better. Shadow of the Colossus was one of the last PlayStation 2 oriented games to come out before the seventh gen takeover. And it also, no offense to my Shadow of the Colossants, has the most rageinducing horse since Roach from The Witcher 3.

In Shadow of the Colossus, you're tasked to navigate a variety of dramatically open areas in hopes of hunting down all of the colossi. Because Shadow of the Colossus is a lot of landscape, the developers used clever tricks to amp up the cinematicness of each area and distract the player from the PlayStation 2 [ __ ] dying trying to run it. The developers incorporated a built-in HDR technique that simulated light in a way that it would appear as if a camera was picking up on it.

In dark enclosed spaces, the outside areas shine so bright that you can't see the spaces that aren't loaded in correctly. And when riding aggro, the brightness shifts from very light to very dark depending on where you go on the map. Shadow of the Colossus' art direction makes the game screenshot material at all times. Most areas consist of an impressive amount of space with large rock faces decorating the horizon. While it may seem like loading extreme distances like this would be impossible on the PlayStation 2, you'd be completely right.

There are multiple different loading stages that the distant areas go through depending on how far the player is from them. At the farthest distance, the game renders them in 2D, similar to how most out-of-bounds areas were done on the Nintendo 64. And notice how the developers used fog and lighting to obscure the distance, making the two-dimensional formation less identifiable as true 2D. If the player ventures closer to the cliff faces, they shift to a low poly model and then of course a more detailed one when up close.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is another example of a game that used its art direction to cover up blatant hardware limitations. The islands that the players can see in the distance are extremely low poly, but they're tinted a dark blue that contrast nicely over the bright ocean. What's interesting is the islands on the horizon can only be rendered so far away. Most of them sit the exact same distance away from Link because the engine can only load so much space at a time.

When on an island, the ocean surrounding it is usually this peaceful blue instead of the distorted wavy texture that's seen far out in the ocean because one, it looks more natural, and two, it saves performance because it allows more detail to be focused on the island Links on and not the big empty ocean surrounding it. I'd argue the only thing holding Wind Waker back from a modern perspective is the fact that its old ass code hardlocks it to 30 frames per second.

Otherwise, a lot of the graphical tricks that's present in the game would go right over the player's head just because it's consistent with the art style. In Shadow of the Colossus, shadows are also rendered very sparingly across the landscape, but the player wouldn't even notice because the gloomy design of the game makes the lack of darkness and shadows in the scenery believable. Shadows were instead focused almost entirely on the player, aggro, and the colossi.

The game had separate shadow map models that the developers would use to accurately texture where a shadow would appear on each important model. And because of the amount of detail they spared just so it could be used on the main character, Shadow of the Colossus is one of the few PS2 games to use realtime shadows on player characters. Some of you guys may be thinking, Justin, you are an idiot. Go back to Pizza Hut and get off YouTube.

What are you talking about? Players won't notice the 2D rock faces in the distance. Are you blind? The resolution and frame rate that I'm playing the game at on this video was not the resolution or frame rate standard at the time. The normal PlayStation 2 classic version of the game plays at 480p. And at that resolution, the graphics appear way more realistic. You wouldn't even notice the flaws in the environment. That's why all of those realistic indie games have this body cam filter over it because the distortion makes it look more real.

But to be honest, 99% of you probably already knew that. What I really want to talk about is the fur in Shadow of the Colossus and how the developers made it look so good on the ancient PlayStation 2 hardware. On the raw stripped down vertex model of the Colossi, the developers painted shadows where there would be real-time ambient occlusion in a modern video game, and the fur is colored a light greenish brown to act as a foundation for the final version.

The fur on the Colossus was made in a very convenient way where it looked great, but wasn't too demanding on the PS2's GPU. For the long sections of fur on a colossus' back, for example, the developers used four to eight polygon layers, but six was the common number depending on the boss. The layers on top were lighter, while the ones closest to the colossus were darker. The texture of the fur is 64x 64 pixels, and each layer uses the same texture, but just changes the brightness to give a feeling of depth.

And some parts of the textures are transparent, making the strands of fur look individual. Now, to be fair, I broke this process down into very simple terms for the sake of entertainment. But basically, the fur technique in Shadow of the Colossus isn't anywhere close to individually rendered strands of hair, but it doesn't have to be because it looks amazing, but also saves performance. And fun fact, they use the same technique on the grass, too.

Keep in mind, sorry about the hair. I just got back from a walk. It's kind of shitty outside. It was raining. Keep in mind, this game ran on the same console that could only play Silent Hill 2 at 25 frames per second. The big lesson about today's video is that a lot of the time with video games, it's less about the console and more about the optimization of the product. Without stylization, Silent Hill 2 wasn't exactly crisis when it came to graphics.

Because of Silent Hill 2's gloomy atmosphere, Team Silent didn't have any pressure to decorate the world with a bunch of shadows. Just like what we talked about with Shadow of the Colossus, the game does use real-time shadows in minimal amounts, and we can see this in the room where you get the flashlight. Using a free camera hack, we can see the other side of James that isn't hit by the light, and his model reacts appropriately to this scene.

Real-time lighting is also used in the hallways, but it's very clear to see when it starts and when it cuts off. Another blatant performance saver with the real-time light is how smaller objects don't cast shadows. Where Silent Hill 2's optimization falls flat is how it renders off-creen objects. Using the free camera hack from before, we can see the objects in the fog that weren't previously visible. For some reason, the game renders them in full detail instead of loading lower res or even 2D models to save performance.

Silent Hill 2's models were also pretty high quality for the time. And it's not just the models. Light sources and shadows are visible, too, even though the player can't even see them. Something Silent Hill 2 does well, though, is how much it fakes its shadows. Pretty much every stationary model in the game is painted dark around the edges where it touches another object. This is a lighting technique in video games that's as old as time.

And even though it's inaccurate, I really hope developers keep using it. The Last of Us Part One and two are great examples of modern games that use excessive ambient occlusion to its advantage. The darkness around the highquality models makes the brighter spots stand out and makes each area seem more detailed. Wind Waker from 2003 also used inaccurate lighting to its advantage, like how only one light source can affect Link at one time.

Nintendo didn't even design the graphics like that because of a GameCube hardware limitation. The GameCube can handle up to eight light sources at one time. They only did it because it made Link stand out more to the player. And in older consoles like the PlayStation 2, developers really had to choose between accuracy or what looks good. I will say that the opening scene for Silent Hill 2 is optimized pretty well. The developers made sure to tweak it so nothing unnecessary was loaded in.

And that's probably because of the open space with the 2D background in the distance. Only what's necessary is loaded in. And we can test this by flipping the camera around, revealing that most of the models are only half loaded. But what if I told you that only 2 years after Shadow of the Colossus, a game would come out that threw the idea of working around real-time graphics right out the window and into a KPA soldier's face.

Can it run Crisis? Is a saying that we've all heard because back in 2007 when the game released, it was so advanced that the large majority of people could not run the game at a playable frame rate. Almost everything in Crisis is real time and is meant to stretch your computer's simulation capabilities to their absolute limit. Throwing a grenade into a building will result in it caving in into itself in a way that reacts accurately to whatever materials are holding it up.

Trees can be broken up into individual parts. You can pick up almost everything and throw it at an enemy. This game is so advanced that I thought my computer was struggling to run it because it was so ahead of its time. But actually, Crisis was built for single core CPUs. And probably what happened was while developing the game, the creators assumed single core processors would just get more powerful. But what actually ended up happening was CPU manufacturers just kept adding cores into processors.

So Crisis still only uses one core to run. Which is why no matter how good your PC is, it probably can't run Crisis, or at least not consistently well. Of course, not everything in Crisis has proper physics because it was still a game from 2007. But because of its use of pretty much every single modern visual achievement at the time, from screen space reflections to material physics to shadow mapping on environmental and human objects, Crisis was in some ways the end of an era.

It's not that developers don't incorporate graphical tricks in their games to showcase beautiful visuals without using as much power anymore. But designing visuals just isn't as tight as it used to be. A lot of iconic games are remembered for their art style, but most of the time they got that beloved art style because they were working around hardware limitations. So, does this mean that new video games are facing a decline in original art direction since there's not nearly as many boundaries as there used to be?

No. Shut the plenty of AAA games with fun and original art styles come out every single year. And although there's certainly a collection of bad apples releasing junk that doesn't work on launch, those companies have been pumping out slop since 2002. Anyways, I don't want this video to become another circle jerk of negativity dogging on modern gaming like the other one. Sometimes I regret posting that video to the internet because even though I did address a lot of problems with the current era of tech and graphics, there's still a ton of value and beauty in modern gaming that I didn't talk about enough to balance out the criticism.

In the last few years, it's become the new thing to dislike video game graphics because hot take, I actually prefer gameplay over graphics and so do you. And so does Cletus next door. I see the same opinion posted everywhere as if it's this rebellious assertion of individuality. Even though it's about as hot a take as saying, "Boy, do I love clean air, but I don't like breathing in my own carbon monoxide." So, I'm going to take this moment with you guys to appreciate how far graphics have come.

Red Dead Redemption 2 always felt like a painting to me. Some people say realistic games don't have style, but Red Dead 2's exaggerated western lights beg to differ. This game is so dramatic and I love it. [Music] Night City is the most depressing place on Earth, but probably one of the best game cities to spend 100 hours in. Only in Cyberpunk do I look at garbage and say, "Damn, that looks amazing." Mario Maker is a really good game.

I just wanted to throw that in there while I was at it. But what do you guys think about all this? What older game do you think looked really good for its time? Let me know what you think in the comments below and I'll check them out as soon as I possibly can. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to watch this video and make sure to have the best [ __ ] one