liljiggy wrote on Jul 11
th, 2022 at 3:30pm:
tl;dr - don't blame the age of the game, blame their hiring practices or the fact they fired the most qualified members of their team years ago.
Why not both? I maintain that 1) there's only so much you can do doll up a 2006 game
and 2) even if such methods exist, Turbine probably can't be assed to do so. (As I mentioned previously.)
noamineo wrote on Jul 11
th, 2022 at 3:45pm:
Agreed. There are 20 year old games that still look absolutely beautiful.
Like what? The early-mid 2000s was probably one of the more awkward phases in gaming, if we're just talking graphically. 2D sprite graphics peaked in the mid 90s as exemplified by Genesis/SNES classics like Chrono Trigger, Shining Force 2, the Lufia games, etc. (I guess GBA games sort of count too: Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, and so forth.) That style is almost universally looked upon fondly, to the point that countless indie developers are returning to the "retraux" pixel-art style with games like Wargroove, Into the Breach, Chroma Squad, Shovel Knight, SacriFire, and many others.
But then the first 3D consoles came out in the late 90s and everything looked horrible. I can't take seriously anyone who claims that FF7 still looks great today. It doesn't. It looks godawful. And sure, 3D
did look better in the mid-2000s than it did in the late-90s... yet, even so, I'm not seeing any nostalgia from people saying "omg GTA 4 was beautiful, we need more games that look like it!" Hell, even some of the better looking games like Wind Waker, FF10, or Resident Evil 4 look dated by modern standards. People would rather play the "HD" versions of them. There's no urgent demand for ANYONE to create more games with the graphical style of that era.
All that comes to say: no, I don't think DDO looks markedly shittier than other games of its time. Could it benefit from a HD remaster? Probably, but I believe the game has much more pressing issues regardless. And personally, I don't really care, because graphics are one of the least important things to me in any game.