@susie i'd agree for a lot of devs, but this is naughty dog at the absolute top of their game we're talking about. they were so damn meticulous about everything this game. joel is about the same age as tess and looks pretty much his age (which they still pushed further in the remake anyway). the person who originally designed these characters surely had the intention of doing it this way.

and that's part of the problem. for the remake, they redesigned all the characters. new art director, as far as i'm aware. it really just reeks of "we did your job better" mentality and is disrespectful to the vision of the original game. not just druckmann's vision which is apparently not what tons of players believed while playing the game, but the entire team's vision. each moving part.

on top of that, the character no longer looks unique. she loses all, well, character... just blends in. in the push for heavier "realism" in games, so much has been lost. if i saw that picture of her without the logo plastered on top i would never guess that it was tess. i wouldn't even be able to tell you it was last of us related because it just looks exactly like everything else does. i guess "ugly" isn't exactly the right word for it, but just bland? uninspired?

maybe they could have aged her up a little bit but at least kept her same general look. gone with a more "in-between" situation. it's just sort of character assassination as well as shitting on the legacy of the game and the work the old devs did.

nobody got it worse than sarah though. holy shit. she looks so much worse, like bordering on uncanny valley looking. criticize that though and you have people jumping down your throat asking you why you want a child character to look good in a video game.

it's like yes, on paper, it looks theoretically "better." better skin textures, higher quality mesh with more bones for animations, new lighting techniques that respect materials more, etc and whatever the fuck. it just looks WEIRD though. and it loses the quality that the original game had of looking almost hyper-realistic in a video-gamey way that almost sold the illusion to you, but now since they've pushed for way more "realism-accurate" graphics it just looks strange and uncanny.

i think the original game's graphics are just going to age a lot better because they still had style to them. the artists realized that. new shit has no style.

@beardalaxy @susie man

Why are do games now try to be so hyper realisti

All these pictures look like those gross zimeckas mo cap animated movies

@ZRDR_DelRio @susie limitations breed creativity. less limitation = less creativity. less style. less reliance on good game design.

@beardalaxy @susie

I wanna go back to where you had to put the special code word and then this little guy with a hammer beats the shit out of old ladies and belches and I didn't have to pay taxes

@ZRDR_DelRio @beardalaxy I'd be happy with just a code to avoid the taxes

@susie @beardalaxy the code is "Aaah, jeeze dude"

@beardalaxy Again I personally much prefer the later versions in this still image. The PS4 one has that shiny smooth skin going on and the kid looks like she is wearing theater makeup. The PS5 one however does look a bit uncanny too, but that could be because kids look uncanny to me lol Weird little goblins.

Remember I'm just judging from these stills. I haven't played any of the games. So idk might look weird and out of place in a GAME compared to the rest of the textures/models/world/lighting or whatever. Just in these pictures I can't say they look in any way objectively worse than the older versions.

I do agree that art direction is clearly different. However it is hard for me to judge how much that is intentional drifting from the original or just fulfilling what the original devs couldn't do with the hardware at the time.

Personally I find that simple graphics age the best. These PS3 and PS4 realistic 3D games however won't age well at all. All of the PS3 characters tend to look like smooth dolls with painted on features. Add stiff hair and clipping clothes to complete the janky look. I'd argue PS2 games age better with the low poly look, especially with CRT/scanline filters.

Pixel art and intentionally low poly games age the best, especially if they got smooth animations. No need for realism. Or well, text-only games age even better lol