XtremeXpider
Member
Different games, we are talking about the same franchise.
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Biggest graphical leap in a series in a single generation?
- Thread starter Mineshaft_Gap
- Start date
Different games, we are talking about the same franchise.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
My guess is that they started out as a cross gen game, not expecting next gen to do as well as it did. But then realized that was a horrible idea, because if ANY games benefit from going from 512mb of ram to 8000mb of ram, its Bethesda games.
Falllout 3, and New Vegas were both plagued with loading cells. And the Elderscrolls series has been held back by city cells and indoor outdoor cells for way too long.
I want to be able to see through windows. Sit by a fire and watch the thunderstorm outside of the inn I am staying at, every time lightning strikes wondering if that shadow was a vampire, or bandits come to kill me in my sleep.
I want to wait outside a victims home, watch him eat dinner with his family, blow his candles out, and crawl into bed. Then I want to break into his second floor window and rob him blind.
/Tangent.
If FO4 is cross gen, God help us all.
Earthpainting
Member
Most other examples in this thread were games whose first entries were considered to be quite good looking at the time already. I'll do you guys one better, and pick a series that went from downright laughably ugly to something quite impressive looking.
Leaps don't get much bigger to me than this. Far from the best looking game on the system, but jump of quality between Dragon Quest 5 and 6 is astonishing.
Leaps don't get much bigger to me than this. Far from the best looking game on the system, but jump of quality between Dragon Quest 5 and 6 is astonishing.
That somehow slipped my mind for a moment there, but my pick IS Mario still. Mario Bros. to SMB3 definitely shows the same level of difference roughly, and even disregarding Mario Bros SMB1 to 3 is pretty damn close.
Although, Startropics had a pretty insane jump from 1 to Zoda's Revenge for games that came right at the end of the generation and when it should've been dead, respectively.
call of duty 2 ---> ghosts
This
I've still played more Call of Duty 2 than any of the others this year though
I'm 23 so my first gaming memories were of the SNES and Dreamcast. There were some pretty big graphical changes in a number of their series, especially when we started getting closer to the end of their era.
XtremeXpider
Member
Poimandres
Member
Oh! I Have a good one!
Street Fighter 2 SNES
Street Fighter Alpha 2 SNES
Street Fighter 2 SNES
Street Fighter Alpha 2 SNES
Noisepurge
Member
Come off it, was released for 360 same time as the othersP
yeah super-early 360 games are kindof easy as they were practically PS2 ports
Same goes for that Resident Evil Code Veronica, isn't that a Dreamcast game originally.NumberThree
Member
Call of Duty is hard to beat, but Tomb Raider seems to have improved quite noticeably during the last generation.
e: Hotlinking not working, reuploading..
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Well, it is the same type of gameplay, and the same characters, although I do kind of think the Super FX 2 chip throws a wrinkle in. Well, it probably could've still done MOST of those graphics anyway.
It's why CoD2 was probably a better example than most early games given it was a PC/360 exclusive. And while not as extreme as a full on cross gen title versus a high end last gen exclusive (or where that too is cross gen but the LESSER version) that IS entering the PC-esque territory where you had stronger computers from one point to the next, where a computer could run game great (Witcher 1) but not its sequel (Witcher 2.) I think they're kind of fascinating to look at anyway, but my Ultima example there... well, can't run Ultima VI on an Apple II, and probably not the computers that could run the DOS port of Ultima IV when it was contemporary either.yeah super-early 360 games are kindof easy as they were practically PS2 ports
EDIT: Oh yes, for just how crazy of a jump Startropics did for something that was already late gen:
StarTropics (1990)
Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II (1994)
... Although the time gap between those is at least half a generation anyway, damn. And the dungeon graphics aren't as dramatically improved.
xenogenesis
Member
I remember posting this in the old consoles screenshots thread a while back.
Oblivion:
Skyrim:
Pretty big jump between these two games.
Gaiaknight
Member
Red steel to red steel 2 but thats more art style than anything.
Probably helps that the first was a rushed launch title and the second notably wasn't.
You beat me to this. I worked in a game store when the Saturn hit, and I remember the game itself (2) had a demonstration of the improvements as the attract mode introduced each character.
Found it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLL_9EC-hmg
This is better than pics. Skip to about :35 to get to it.
SPACECADET
Member
Gears of War and Gears of War 3
Another big step between each other.
yeah probably this one for me. i don't know how much or if judgment looked better than 3, but it doesn't exist to me anyways.
playing the first to the third was definitely an eye opener on how much better looking it got each time, gameplay aside.
ResidentDante
Member
Resident Evil: Code Veronica
Resident Evil 4 (GC)
This is a little unfair. Code Veronica was indeed ported to the Cube but it's really a Dreamcast game.
Incidentally the fairer comparison probably won't impress much, might actually look BAD in comparison: REmake to RE4. If you forget the backgrounds are pre-rendered I'd think REmake could be argued as looking superior to RE4 out and out.
. . . Although come to think of it RE1 to RE3 is a great example in and of itself.
SystemUser
Member
Say a game comes out relatively early in a consoles life cycle and it gets a sequel (or several). Well often times those sequels have improved graphics, as to be expected as developers spend more time learning the ins and outs of a particular console.
It isn't always the case but oftentimes it is. This thread is dedicated to games who leaped an enormous amount in quality from one game to the next.
For example. Halo 3 - Halo 4
343 Halo was... not so good... but the graphics were leaps and bounds over Halo 3 IMO.
Screenshots would be nice.
SAME GENERATION. SAME CONSOLE. FOR FUCK SAKE.
You picked a boring picture from Halo 3. Halo 4 looks like they turned of a bunch of the light tech and added a bunch of lense flair. The muzzle flashes and grenades aren't even light sources. Halo 3 is really awesome when multiple dynamic sources fly by in the dark and trigger their sweet HDR stuff. Reach looked even better. Halo 4 ripped all that out for slightly higher res textures. If you Halo 4 screenshot was in Halo 3 that guns muzzle flash would lighting the gun and the enemies. Halo 3 really looks better in motion than in screenshots. The complexity of the light and shadows really immerses me more than the flatter higher res textures of Halo 4.
Halo 4 can't do this:
Or this:
TJP
Member
I agree 100% and entered this thread to post this! The difference is very noticeable when playing PGR 3 and PGR 4 back to back.PGR3:
PGR4:
I'd also include a leap from PGR 4 to Blur. The graphical engine for Blur was a lot more advanced than PGR's based on the Digital Foundry face off and interview with the Blur dev team.
Blur has 4xMSAA vs PGR 4's 2xMSAA & a lot more cars on screen etc. Digital Foundry state:
AlienKebab
Neo Member
Sly Cooper 1
Sly Cooper 3
I remember Sly 1 looking even worse than that in the first pic, and the gameplay felt clunky.
Sly Cooper 2-3 are amazing improvements.
That's... wow, yeah, I swore the gap wasn't that big but if it isn't then we at least have the most improved character model from start to end of a generation.Jak and Daxter to Jak 3:
Khalifa Jayy
Banned
Maybe your other examples fare better, but 7 >>>>> R&F aesthetically. By far, if those screenshots are to be the barometer.Mega Man games often do this.
MM to MM6
MMX to MMX3
MMZ to MMZ4
And my favorite:
Mega Man 7:
Rockman & Forte (Super Famicom):
MrCunningham
Member
Oh! I Have a good one!
Street Fighter 2 SNES
Street Fighter Alpha 2 SNES
Street Fighter Alpha 2 isn't entirely using stock hardware though. The game uses a heavy amount of compression in the cartridge to store all the game data. Because of this it had a special decompression chip in the cartridge. This is also the reason why the game has loading present before each fight.
All of the sprite scaling and rotation and transformation effects were done with the SuperFX2 chip, there were also some polygons thrown into the game as well. There's no way that the SNES could achieve any of those effects on its own.
SFA2's kind of an awkward example because it was primarily a PS1/SS game. Was a miracle they got the game on SNES by all accounts, though looking at those screens the difference seems pretty tame compared to other games listed. I'm sure in motion it's a different story, but I haven't played SFA2 SNES for myself to know for sure.
m_shortpants
Member
CoD2 to Black Ops 2
Never played Ghosts but BlOps2 was a pretty big difference.
Never played Ghosts but BlOps2 was a pretty big difference.
Dude, you gotta provide screenshots. MGS3 was a downgrade in plenty of areas. Textures and attention to detail was better in MGS2, the rain and water effects were better. MGS2 didn't have grass, so that comparison is weak. Character models were better in MGS3, the fire effects were awesome in MGS3. Shadows didn't seem to exist in MGS3, whereas MGS2 has plenty of areas with shadows. Lighting is either a tie or leaning towards MGS2.
The leap wasn't insane, different things were prioritized. MGS3 has massive areas compared to MGS2, MGS2 has insane attention to detail due to how small the environments were.
You're the same person that argued that MGS4's Solid Snake model was on par with Big Boss's model in the 360/PS3 versions of Ground Zeroes, until a lot of people asked for screenshots.
Not the same generation, 2D to 3D is generally subjective, and most any same gen 2D to 3D example is probably going to be ESPECIALLY subjective. At best you get going from SSFII Turbo HD to SFIV, at worst you get Alundra to Alundra 2, and if you seriously want to argue that one you may be blind.
SystemUser
Member
The SNES was designed to interface with the extra chips though. You can look at the bottom of a cartidge and see if it has an extra chip since there are extra contacts.
b&jy77VjiKn$#F
Member
Yeah the graphic leap is great. Too bad world design of SRTT can't touch that of SR2. I keep saying that SR2 has one of the best open world maps in any open world game I've ever played. I love it.
Regret Upon Approval
Member
call of duty 2 ---> ghosts
One of the biggest and starkest leaps from pretty much any perspective. Very fitting, good choice.
And Ghosts was the first CoD of this generation, I'm excited to see the Ghosts to CoD 2014/2017/whatever transition.
T
TrueMenace
Unconfirmed Member
From the games I played:
TES Oblivion -> TES Skyrim
Mass Effect 1 - > Mass Effect 2
TES Oblivion -> TES Skyrim
Mass Effect 1 - > Mass Effect 2
Pops Maellard
Member
Yup.
I still don't understand why everyone keeps posting this picture when they want to show of Uncharted 3. Yes, U3 is visually stunning and one of the best looking games of last generation. That said, this screenshot is not representative of what it actually looks like, particularly when it comes to IQ.
endlessflood
Member
The big ones that come to mind:
Infamous --> Infamous 2
Tomb Raider Legend --> Tomb Raider
GTA IV --> GTA V
In all of those examples the later game looks like it's running on the next generation of hardware, the improvement in graphics is so dramatic.
Infamous --> Infamous 2
Tomb Raider Legend --> Tomb Raider
GTA IV --> GTA V
In all of those examples the later game looks like it's running on the next generation of hardware, the improvement in graphics is so dramatic.
SystemUser
Member
The change in Gears is pretty crazy when you consider much more Gears 3 puts on screen and all of it looks better. More effects, more light, more cloth, more meat, more space and more enemies. Now I not sure Gears or CoD made a bigger leap. I think those two are the frontrunners for me.
Since no one has quoted this yet, this is actually probably my favorite one yet ITT, except for the CoD one which probably isn't actually fair.
Wrong. I'm currently replaying the game and it actually looks like that.
Here's a better Cod2 vs Ghosts comparison.
Yup.
I'd argue this and Halo 3 to Halo 4 are the single biggest jumps. (Uncharted 1 was still good looking... Uncharted 3 was jaw dropping, but the jump between the two was smaller than the jump between COD). Resistance definitely should get a mention because that first game was ugly.
