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Mirror’s Edge (2008) looks like the one on the right, and is an absolute work of art IMO. The sequel sucks tho
Mirror’s Edge is not steampunk. It was futuristic with strong primary colors, and the aesthetic was consistent throughout the entire game including the HUD and menus. That’s why it looks like the image on the right.
doesn’t have to be steampunk, the meme was playing on the fact that games used to have really over-the-top HUDs back in the 2000s
get wooshed
I like the mini debate here about UI. I think less UI is winning, and for good reason in FPS games where visual real estate matters more than status info. I kind of feel we’ve gone too far in 3rd person ARPGs, though-- specially in removing minimaps and to a lesser extent quest log stuff for games with side quests and collectables.
At the end of the day, how important is that visual real estate? MMOs and RTS, yeah, not important. FPS and some other 3D games? Important. But there’s definitely a middle ground I want explored more for ARPGs and any other game with info that goes beyond ammo counts and health.
I’m fine with less info in RPGs as well as ARPGs. In particular I’m kinda happy if there’s no minimap to constantly be glancing at and even moreso if there are no quest markers. Put me in the world and make me learn it! Usually there’s still the big map for when you’re lost.
Kinda depends on if there’s visual cues and how linear things are, too, I suppose. No minimaps and terrible visual cues as to where to go make for an annoying experience, but use of lighting and stuff can do just fine otherwise.
Though I’m a bit of a completionist so missing any little thing bugs me, haha. But that’s a personal taste.
Lmao, we remember 2008 games waaaay differently XD
Fallout 3 GTA IV
The piss colored pile of afterbirth that is the Gears of War series….
The one on the left is BioShock. For the parts where you play as the Big Daddy you even see the insides of your diving helmet.
BioShock was 2007 /reeeee
Also it doesn’t fit because they thoroughly shit that franchise to death more than a decade ago
The whole meme is contrived to begin with, so I doesn’t merit deep analysis, but it just rubs me the wrong way when someone tries to twist the past to fit their narrative, I was there dog, you can’t fool me
And the right is way better. Minus the color thing.
If I wanted a menu simulator, I’d play an RTS or MMO.
Bonus points when left still displays everything in the same number of pixels on your 4k screen as it did on a 480 CRT.
4K monitors are a bad idea. Beyond half a million pixels, there are diminishing returns, new video games don’t look that much better and it makes older games look worse. By the time you get to 8 million pixels, only eagles and fighter pilots might sorta notice a difference.
I noticed this trend when I went from 800x600 to 1024x768 to 1080p. I ain’t touching 4K. It’ll just ruin your life.
Also, we dulled the color palette.
Not sure about that one. 2008 was firmly inside the “make everything brown for realism” era of videogames.
You know, you’re right. We sort of went from dull brown to dull gray since then - at least for first person shooters.
Mayber “darker” is a more apt criticism than duller.
I would say it went from maybe moody (this might not be the right term, but something like it) and more manufactured, to now being more realistic. Better technology has allowed games to have lighting that gets very close to reality, especially with ray-tracing. It sometimes comes with the cost of creative control though.
I wouldn’t say either is bad. They can both be amazing or shit depending on how they’re used. It’s easy to pick the best or worst offenders from either to make whichever one you want to look good though.
The main consistent difference I’m seeing here is contrast. The more modern versions have darker darks and brighter brights, with less midrange.
I miss the midrange in games. I’m tired of half my screen being streaking white or pitch black. Give me the midrange curves again!
I still dislike the piss filter
It works for Demon’s souls because it’s a dark fantasy game and the new graphics absolutely nail that vibe.
You would find more colour in the mud at Passchendale.
laughs in quake
Wait, it’s just brown?
Always has been
The brown thing is a myth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTjGDkDI49I
I think it’s interesting to attempt to analyze and chart this, but his analysis isn’t the end. One notable failure, in my opinion, is he attempts to calculate the average browness (and other variables), not the percentage of games that have a lot of brown. Average browness largely measures outliers.
Also, not excluding sports games, and things like that, is ignoring a large part of what people discuss with this. The argument isn’t that all games were more brown then. It’s largely that shooters, or action games in general at most, were more brown than other years.
Basically, saying it’s a myth (despite it being a well-recognized thing at the time) referencing one source isn’t correct. At most you can make the statement that some data implies it’s a myth. I highly suspect the methodology here is not accurate to what the actual understanding is. It’s a good effort, but it is not the end of the discussion.
Interesting video, but I disagree that it proves that the “brown thing is a myth”. I was around back then and it was definitely a thing that was also being heavily criticized.
The thing is that with the methodology that guy employs, I guess it wouldn’t really be visible. The “brown game” aesthetic, while definitely a trend, wasn’t the only trend during that time. At the same time, you had the explosion of colorful Nintendo casual games on platforms like the Wii and DS. Many of those sold extremely well, so they’d be overrepresented when you only take the top 20 bestselling games of each year. Same with sports games, those never really change much, but they’ll show up heavily on every top 20. But with games that wanted to seem more “mature” and especially genres like first-person shooters (like in the meme), the trend was very real.
deleted by creator
Too bad for you.
It’s also an echo chamber if you only consider the games you played are the only valid options.
Best selling is best selling and represents the general consensus. Whether you like it or not.
If you only consider a platform or a genre, you are narrowing the scope. Which is not the point of an industry average.You think ignoring what games were actually on the market in favour of only the best selling games is the right way to make a conclusion about the general quality of all games on the market?
It’s also an echo chamber if you only consider the games you played are the only valid options.
I mean, you couldn’t be more wrong lol. I played the colorful Nintendo games back then and mostly hated on all the brown PS/XBox stuff (unfairly, there were some gems among those).
If you only consider a platform or a genre, you are narrowing the scope. Which is not the point of an industry average.
Using just the top 20 narrows it too. But my point is more that an taking an average doesn’t prove whether a trend existed or not. And somehow I don’t think that the creator of the meme was thinking of Nintendogs and Wii Sports.
you had a flattening of video game color for sure, wether it was the brown mill sims like COD, the green of fallout 3, or the yellow of deus ex human revolution. and few very influential games ‘color’ our memories.
at the same time you have your oblivion surreal super contrast color explosion. compared to nows muted rerelease. before, the mono coloring was a stylistic choice, and now it’s a tapping into the game engines realism settings
one of the things I like about vr games is generally less ui and if you really need stats you’ll probbly have some watch type thing or even a tablet you can hold up to look at. you can count the bullets you shoot and load and if you fuck up the number it would probably happen in real life too.
you can count the bullets you shoot and load
But in real life, you’re probably (rather painstakingly) loading magazines yourself, so you’re more familiar with how many rounds are in each one. Most video games skip such mundanities, which makes things a lot less tedious, but it does mean you’re not automatically familiar with the magazine capacity of the gun you’re using, especially when switching to a different gun. So it can be helpful to have a reminder of magazine capacity, at least.
Or, if you’ve picked up a gun from a recently deceased enemy… In real life, if you had time, you’d pull the mag and check to see how many rounds it had left. But few if any games have a mechanic allowing you to do that. (Maybe some more realistic VR ones?) So in lieu of that, it’s helpful to simply have a number on screen telling you that important information.
My favourite gun handling mechanics are currently found in into the radius 2. Loose bullets were annoying at first but really grew on me. Also the most fun I’ve had with shotguns and bolt action rifles in a game. The realization I could grab 2 mags, or loose rounds for the shotguns or bolt action in one hand was one of those moments where I just stopped to play with the mechanics. Now I’m just waiting for anyone to come up with a good feeling input for quad loading.
Many mags do have a little view windows to answer this question. For pistols this generally means removing the mag, for rifles, would involve turning the rifle on it’s side briefly.
This is actually an interesting debuff for pistols in a game, as the same action inherently takes longer for them.
Yeah, it’s really different for every gun, though, and some magazines don’t have witness holes (or transparent sections) at all, so the best you can do is to look in through the top of the mag and try to guess how many rows you can see – at least that will usually tell you whether there’s a lot of ammo or only a little in the mag.
When you accidentally grab your main menu item instead of your sidearm mid fight…
games that don’t support at least an optional torso tracker you unfortunately have to just look at what you grab
No wait I like this. Kinda. Less UI in games please!
Nearly every game I’ve worked on since the mid 2000s has started with someone saying “this time it’ll be hudless” We do a bunch of work on some kind of HUD replacement, and then testers and focus groups come back with “I couldn’t figure out where to go,” “I couldn’t see the enemies,” “it’s very confusing.”
You need to do the art very differently to make a modern game readable without UI. To a lot of art directors and focus groups, UI is less immersion breaking than the art changes that readability without it requires. Not saying it’s impossible. Just requires a mind shift that AAA appears unwilling to take.
The only game I’ve played that really managed to pull of HUD-less was Dead Space. They really thought through the game design and interactions, it’s just a masterfully crafted game. I believe Dead Space 2 is almost entirely in a single continuous camera shot as well, kinda bonkers.
The only game I can even think of that’s hudless is Astroneer and it took me like 30 hours to notice. Can’t imagine how hard that is to do well
No ambitions for a hudless, waypoint-less gameplay system survive playtesting. There’s friction and then there’s watching someone do the same loop around for 30 minutes. I once watched a streamer play a game I worked on. The level artists had meticulously and organically sign posted where to go - like pulled out all the stops with lighting and directionality of the environment. Stopping just short of putting any yellow paint anywhere. The streamer still fucked it up.
Why would you watch DSP?!?
(Sorry, couldn’t resist)
Yeah … can UI be overdone? Sure. But in most cases, I still want a HUD-type UI, at least a little bit.
The best games out there give the player granular options to enable or disable specific UI elements, so you can have as much or as little UI as you want, and if some particular element is annoying you, you can disable it.
I love it. I mod out my UIs to be as minimal as possible. Especially games like Skyrim. No map, press button to pull up compass. No numbers or letters on screen. A small health, mana, or stam bar comes up only when not full.
Same. I want my Skyrim to be more like morrowind
My thoughts too. I often try to remove some/most of the UI if the game allows it just for realism and so that I have less distractions
It’s fine so long as they don’t just move it into some pause menu I’m then forced in and out of constantly to get information.
“Gotta find that item”
30 seconds later
“Hmm, that items gotta be around here somewhere”
30 seconds later
“I can’t be messing around right now, gotta find that item.”
This is easily my biggest pet peeve in modern games. At some point major game devs decided players couldn’t be trusted in any way and have to be pushed, cajoled, and hand-held through the game. Nevermind that those same devs spent untold hours and days filling in the game environments and world with details that are well worth admiring - it’s clearly better for players to be nagged at incessantly to keep to the path allotted for the prescribed experience. And if they are on that path, they better be reminded what they’re doing a million times anyhow. Uggghh. 🙄
Also, include these dialogues in a game where there are hidden collectibles, so you have to hear that fuckass dialogue repeat while trying to make sure you don’t miss anything, only to accidentally take the correct path instead of the secret path with the collectible because the secret path was more obvious than the main path so you guessed that the most hidden one was for the collectible…
I’M COMPLETELY FINE
Exactly, lol.
I want my games to have very obvious in-game or UI elements showing me which way is the ‘correct’ storyline path to take. Not because I want it to be easy to find the correct path – because I want to make sure I avoid the correct path while I explore elsewhere, and I don’t accidentally trigger the next storyline event before collecting all the loot in this stage.
5 seconds later
“Hmm, I wonder if the item is in the location it’s in”
I wish ALL games did this.
While I do wish they’d keep the visual styling, I personally feel we should aim for a less cluttered HUD in games. There are so many games where it feels insanely satisfying to rock HUDless and just feel like you’re in direct control of the action.
If you can integrate your HUD into the lore to make it part of the story, you get bonus points.
I really like that about a lot of Helldivers 2. There are screens on workstations that you need to control and the screens show what you need to do. Not a popup in your HUD. Also, there are ammo counters on a lot of weapons visible in first person mode, and a lot of other details to give you hints about your status without having it in the HUD.
The other part of it is that it’s much easier now to dynamically render UI elements when necessary, which removes much of the need for a HUD with dedicated portions of the screen for information.
I’d be interested to see a demake of a modern game on the PS1 or something that packs as many modern QoL improvements as possible into it.
Be sure to pre-order the Ultimate edition to get the exclusive limited edition gold-plated revolver.
Prince of Persia (2008) – Epilogue DLC
The base game ended on a highly impactful, emotional cliffhanger where the Prince chooses to save his lover, Elika, at the cost of unleashing an ancient evil upon the world. It was an incredibly bold ending. However, Ubisoft decided to sell the game’s actual conclusion separately as the Epilogue DLC. Worse still, the DLC managed to completely undo the narrative tension of the base game, making Elika upset at the Prince for saving her before she abruptly leaves him. To add insult to injury, the DLC was never even released for PC players, leaving them permanently stuck with a cliffhanger.
The edgy DmC reboot did the same thing, though I think the DLC was included in the Definitive Edition that was released later for every platform.
Game not included
did we get a new bioshock or dishonored this year?
I thought Clockwork Revolution was set to release this year, but it looks like it’s 2027 now.
I remember when I was in college for game development. At the time Mirrors Edge was in development. My instructor for UI made us study it as the perfect example of a good UI. The dot wasn’t so much a reticle as an anti nausea measure.
This was also a time where UI layers were occasionally just made in Adobe Flash (I think it was just after Adobe bought out Macromedia) so having a UI with crazy out of theme colours and issues syncing with the rest of the game was a real problem.
Designers felt the UI layers were often clunky, mechanical and in the way damaging the immersive experiences that had been becoming increasingly more “life like”. It also saves a lot of localization cost.
I didn’t end up in that industry but it seems like this became the norm for quite a while. Though I am starting to see better accessibility in game UI’s games depending less on audio or visual only feedback. Which is good as we are all getting older.
This was also a time where UI layers were occasionally just made in Adobe Flash (I think it was just after Adobe bought out Macromedia) so having a UI with crazy out of theme colours and issues syncing with the rest of the game was a real problem.
This was the reason early Skyrim mods rarely had custom UI*. Skyrim’s user interface is done in Flash and making even minor changes is a huge pain in the ass.
I believe Skywind and Skyblivion both ran into problems implementing features from the old games due to this. Skywind actually had to scrap an entire feature set (their original implementation of enchanting, IIRC?) very late in development because the feature’s developer left long ago and didn’t share their Flash project files, meaning the team couldn’t change it to work with later mod builds.
* I think there are modder-created UI libraries to make it easier now, but it was a huge problem back in the day.
Skyrim’s user interface is done in Flash
Still true for starfield, mind you.
Ugh, of course it is. What’s one more outdated component in an engine that’s just a quarter century of hacks duct-taped together? I wouldn’t be surprised if Bethesda are still battling technical debt from its NetImmerse/Gamebryo days.
Fallout 4 does have a bug that I first encountered in Morrowind.
On the flipside a game with a well made HUD nowadays immediately grabs my attention. As soon s I saw the blue butterfly select indicator in the Lies of P demo I knew these people were cooking.
On a side note this also convinced me to play Eternal Strands another game I love dearly.
I don’t get it. 2008 was the time where most games had a puss filter and i don’t think bloated ui has ever been a plus.
Real YMMV situation.
Some UIs added a lot of flavor and atmosphere. Others got in the way of the action or garbled the display in a way that felt distracting.
WoW famously had an interface that could easily consume most of the screen during raids. Elder Scrolls IV: PC port’s interface was notoriously text heavy.
