Comment on What are some eras of gaming that you've stopped feeling nostalgic for?
canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Most of them, honestly.
When you look back, it was cool what they were doing at the time, but progress is such that all newer games have iterated on those groundbreaking formulas and improved upon them, making the older games seem less spectacular than they were at launch. I have fond memories of playing PS2, N64 and Dreamcast, but when I go back to play some of those games I enjoyed as a kid, I find that there’s always something super sub-optimal like the controls or some arcane mechanic that doesn’t make much sense. I find this to be the consistent issue going back to PS2 era and earlier.
I think the PS3/360 era is the one I have the most nostalgia for all things considered. There were a lot of stellar RPGs like KOTOR and Mass Effect that generation. Stuff like Red Dead Redemption was coming out. Control schemes finally became generally standardized and understandable. Tutorials, saves and decent graphics were really finally all combined properly for the first time.
I find the same sort of issue with movies. When you go back passed the 80s, you start hitting pacing issues. Same with video games. When you go back passed the mid-2000s, you’re going to run into early installment weirdness.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is broadly true, but I think that many older games that were much simpler, with a narrower focus and more fleshed out presentation have a spot on the leaderboards that won’t be knocked off any time soon. One example is the Legend of Zelda series. With Breath of the Wild and its sequel, it did some pretty innovating things. But in the process it sacrificed much of what made the earlier Zelda games great. We figured out how to make a game with “more dungeons” but they were uninspired and they all looked the same. Gone were the huge, sprawling, uniquely thematic dungeons with memorable bosses and iconic music. The overworld got much larger and they crammed more overworld activities into it, but now those activities were just the same four or five things copy pasted to every inch of the world, none of which did much individually besides making one of a few numbers go up by a tiny fraction.
New games innovate in what is technically possible, but they move backwards in other areas that don’t get the same attention. It’s more than just “These old games were good for their time”. In many cases they are still unsurpassed by modern games because the focus changed.
canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I agree.
Even using my examples of KOTOR and ME, comparing them to (relatively) modern counterparts, Jedi Survivor and Andromeda, you can see that the storytelling has taken a back seat to the open world. ME 1-3 were all very tight corridor cover shooters, going from fully constructed combat environment to another. KOTOR has more deep RPG mechanics and overall a better story than Jedi Survivor, and I would agree it’s because the focus changed on providing sprawling open worlds over more bespoke environments.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Breath of the Wild’s equivalent to dungeons were the beasts, not the shrines. The activities in the overworld were only the same in that they ended in a shrine, but the things you did to unlock them were generally very different. Half of them aren’t even visible at first. The people who thought that world was empty just didn’t find what was hidden in the negative space.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Breath of the Wild doesn’t have an equivalent to dungeons. There are only four divine beasts, and just like the shrines they are identical in appearance. They were just slightly more complex shrines with an animal theme. And the overworld doesn’t realistically have an awhile lot to find, by design. Since the game is entirely unstructured, you can’t put anything to find in the game, because you don’t know where the player will go and nothing to stop them from going anywhere. Thats why nothing amounts to anything more than a fractional stat boost or a temporary weapon. The outfits and the master sword are the only things worth actually finding in the game.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The divine beasts are not identical, though they are shorter than traditionally Zelda dungeons. The overworld has a ton to find; you just didn’t find it.