I replayed Portal 2 last night, and honestly? I couldn't stop thinking about how good it looked. Why is that? It's a (comparatively) low-poly, low-res texture game from 15 years ago.
>>736852550graphics age, art style is forever.
>>736852550Kinda li ke Mirror's Edge, the engine was far enough to develop the artstyle they were achieving.
>>736852550>the decaying facility with the plants taking over and the sunlight peaking through It's the power of good visual direction.
>>736852845>muh engineME was on fucking unreal engine 3, you tech illiterate nigger
>>736853184I did appreciate the slow restoration as GLaDOS repaired the facility after her wakeup, and subsequent re-deterioration when Wheatley takes over.
>>736852550Baked-in lighting is allowed to be striking and cinematic. Automated "realism" lighting has actually created laziness on this front so devs mostly don't do it anymore. Then on the "without RTX" screenshots they can pretend that the alternative was nothing at all, for free Nvidia bux.
Mirror's Edge does this very well, too.
>>736852550source engine is a miracle. I replayed hl2 for its anniversary and it still looks better than most of the current games because of baked lighting and realistic textures. portal 2 is source 1 engine at its peak and while I do love source 2 in alyx, it kind of lost the realism for more stylized look (especially characters)
