What an Oblivion mountain lion actually looked like:
Kinda crazy how we remember games to look better than they actually did. Like the remastered version is as good looking as I remember the game, but obviously the differences are huge. Weird how that works!
I hold the belief that once you are immersed in the game, your brain accepts it as “reality” and will remove the questionable bits from visual processing. Being the player really makes a difference to me, as opposed to just watching a video of someone else playing. They can have their graphics at a much higher res than me but I am still sort of shocked and put off by how ugly/unrealistic things are when watching someone else, and always surprised of how much I don’t notice while playing the same game myself.
And then years pass, you play games with better graphics.
When you try to recall the old game, your brain reconstructs the game from the associative data (of events, relationships etc) but with updated visuals.
I remember Freedom Fighter to be much better looking. But maybe that was due to the low res CRT and that the game visuals were designed for being blurry.
Suspension of disbelief is definitely a thing. It’s also a lot easier to catch things going on when you’re spectating vs playing yourself, kinda like tunnel vision.
Yeah. A CRT at 1280x1024 looks just as good as my 4K TV in terms of clarity in TV/movies/video games. Really, text is the only thing that’s worse. Hell, even 720p looks amazing in a side by side comparison with native 4K content on my relatively high end 4K TV (Hisense U8 series).
What an Oblivion mountain lion actually looked like:
Kinda crazy how we remember games to look better than they actually did. Like the remastered version is as good looking as I remember the game, but obviously the differences are huge. Weird how that works!
Characters and creatures looked like such a weird mess of polygons in Oblivion.
Christ, remember how Khajiit looked like melted plastic!?
I hold the belief that once you are immersed in the game, your brain accepts it as “reality” and will remove the questionable bits from visual processing. Being the player really makes a difference to me, as opposed to just watching a video of someone else playing. They can have their graphics at a much higher res than me but I am still sort of shocked and put off by how ugly/unrealistic things are when watching someone else, and always surprised of how much I don’t notice while playing the same game myself.
Your brain is always filtering stuff, that’s a thing.
And then years pass, you play games with better graphics.
When you try to recall the old game, your brain reconstructs the game from the associative data (of events, relationships etc) but with updated visuals.
I remember Freedom Fighter to be much better looking. But maybe that was due to the low res CRT and that the game visuals were designed for being blurry.
The brain is the best GPU
Suspension of disbelief is definitely a thing. It’s also a lot easier to catch things going on when you’re spectating vs playing yourself, kinda like tunnel vision.
You probably played Oblivion on a CRT television. 480i is a lot more forgiving of blocky geometry than 1080p or 4k
It’s not just the resolution but also the CRT tech. It smooths out the image because the pixels themselves are different.
Yeah. A CRT at 1280x1024 looks just as good as my 4K TV in terms of clarity in TV/movies/video games. Really, text is the only thing that’s worse. Hell, even 720p looks amazing in a side by side comparison with native 4K content on my relatively high end 4K TV (Hisense U8 series).
Funny you mention that! I was actually playing Oblivion when I went from CRT to 720p and the difference felt like putting on glasses.
It’s when I realized there was actually a border around the loading screen that had sketch-like art.
That mountain lion is prime meme format.