Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Video games today are more beautiful than they have ever been. At last month’s Game Awards, we saw cinematic trailers for games boasting stunning graphics. One was Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, from The Last of Us creators Naughty Dog, whose wry heroine was animated with such fine detail that she communicated more through facial expressions than dialogue. Another was The Witcher 4, sequel to the popular fantasy series, where equal artistic attention was lavished upon the fur of a monster’s six hideous arms as on the delicate play of firelight across the protagonist’s face.It all looks undeniably gorgeous. Still, a casual onlooker could be forgiven for confusing the graphics of these games for others that came out five, or even — if you squint — 10 years ago. Once a medium where each console generation marked a seismic shift in visual fidelity, today gaming is approaching a graphical plateau. You could justifiably argue that Red Dead Redemption 2 or Cyberpunk 2077, which came out in 2018 and 2020 respectively, are the best-looking games released to date. So when graphical advancements each year seem incremental at best, is it time to finally give up on the graphical arms race?Those who remember the jump from 8-bit to 16-bit visuals or 2D to 3D will recall the thrill as whole new possibilities for adventure and storytelling opened before them. Yet as hardware advanced, making graphics better became a case of diminishing returns, requiring exponentially more resources for only minor improvements. The latest console generation’s advances were the slightest yet. Technical upgrades such as higher frame rates and ray-tracing lighting effects are prized by hardcore gamers — the target market for Sony’s new PS5 Pro console, which offers marginal upgrades at a steep £700 price tag — but these concepts matter little to the gaming mainstream. In the words of former US PlayStation head Shawn Layden: “We’re at the stage of hardware development that I call ‘Only dogs can hear the difference.’”Meanwhile for game developers, a perceived demand for better-looking games increases pressure on an industry already struggling with rampant lay-offs, frequent game cancellations and a pervasive culture of overwork. In a leaked memo from Insomniac, creator of the recent Spider-Man PlayStation series, one developer asked whether the budget of Spider-Man 2, which was $300mn to the first game’s $100mn, was a sensible use of resources: “Is 3x the investment evident to anyone who plays the game?” It certainly didn’t result in triple the sales. In fact there’s little evidence that better graphics result in higher profits. Minecraft and Roblox, two of the most lucrative game franchises in the world, look as if they could have been made 25 years ago. They are beloved for their design and communities, not their looks.Developers might learn from Nintendo, which decided decades ago that it wasn’t going to compete in the hardware race, instead prioritising creative design and the pursuit of pure fun. This did nothing to damage sales — the Switch outsold its more powerful counterparts, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Nintendo also proves that games running on less powerful hardware can still look gorgeous. Anyone who has played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild can see that, despite its low-resolution textures, it remains one of the best-looking games around.The fiercely creative world of indie games also shows that it’s artistic style, rather than graphical firepower, that determines whether a game looks good. Titles such as Journey, Cuphead, Monument Valley and the Ori series have left outsized impressions in gaming culture, in large part for their stunning art direction. In the past 12 months alone, beautiful new indies include the painterly Neva, the perfect imitation of Saturday morning cartoons in Blud, and striking games that look as if they’re made entirely of paper and Plasticine.Among the many big announcements at the Game Awards, there was one that made presenter Geoff Keighley get choked up with emotion during his introduction. It was not a flashy shooter, but instead an unexpected sequel to Okami, a beloved 2006 game in which you play through Japanese folkloric tales as the Shinto goddess Amaterasu in wolf form. It is styled to look like an animated sumi-e ink-wash painting, and is rightly remembered as one of the most beautiful games ever made. That the original has aged so well is entirely due to the artistic choices of its design team, not the technical specifications of the now-ancient PlayStation 2. It proves that games can keep getting more handsome, but that will be achieved through human creativity, rather than marginal upgrades to processing power.
