For me it was the face detail and animation in Halo 4. The way the pores and lines on Halsey's face were visible.
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025
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While it wasn't an "indistinguishable from real life" experience, my first really mind blowing experience with graphics was installing my new 3dfx Voodoo and turning on GL
Me playing Rome:Total War for the first time as a child in an internet cafe. I thought "wow this is so realistic! I feel like I am in the Roman era fighting epic battles!"
That game looked so good for its time they made a whole-ass TV show where they used it to recreate famous historical battles. Even my dad who hated video games loved that show. It was one of the only things we ever bonded over.
For me, the first game I was truly like “HOOOOOLY SHIT” was the very opening scene of Final Fantasy 8.. the waves crashing on the beach blew my (16 yo?) mind.
Yes! It was a huge deal. It was mind bogglingly cool at the time.
To be fair those cut scenes were unbelievable.
I just watched it for the first time and I could totally see that intro being mind blowing in 1999. I remember my friend showed me Final Fantasy X when that came out and that was how I responded to it as well.
Not sure if you played on a CRT in the past, but nonetheless it’s interesting how different things looked. Here is my favorite example.
How tf does one red pixel get blurred into like 20 wide, but only like 4 tall? That seems sus
If you look closely you can see it really does only bleed to the 2 pixels right next to it (horizontally, because that’s how the scan line travels). The dots you see don’t represent a single pixel. For example the hair, on the right in the sharp image you can see a single lone bright pixel for the hair, but on the CRT it’s 4 dots. I’m assuming 3 are probably the original pixel and the 4th is a bleed, but that’s just me guessing :P
There are countless more examples online and youtube videos about it, highly recommend ^^
I'm with you. This doesn't seem right. I know CRTs have an anti-aliasing effect, but this seems to have increased detail. Look at his ascot, for example. It seems to have more detail than the image on the left.
I don’t see any detail I can’t find in the sharp image. Except for the off screen stuff at the very top and bottom, since CRT pixels aren’t perfectly square and who ever made this image decided to fit by width. Nonetheless there are countless more example online and videos dedicated to this on youtube. Highly recommend :)
The scan lines are horizontal
Frankly, it does look exactly like every sword-wielding, walking skeleton I've seen IRL. No notes.
I thought Final Fantasy: Spirits Within looked almost photorealistic when it came out, and now it looks like Toy Story or Shrek compared to modern 3D animation.
Final Fantasy: Spirits Within
Oh, I remember watching that one as a kid, being annoyed that it had nothing to do with the games I knew and it having a weird plot I could barely follow.
To give full credit to this movie, Final Fantasy games are just as convoluted. You try to condense the plot of the amnesia child soldiers who fight demons from the moon summoned by their teacher/mother in hopes they'll defeat the reincarnated witch who's destined to take over her body (FF8) in an hour and a half with Steve Buscemi, Alec Baldwin, and tell me if it's Oscar worthy. (I have no clue whether the original Japanese cast was as star studded)
I hated that movie as a kid, but I think I hated it more because it didn't follow any of the other convoluted stories I forced myself to understand already.
The best Final Fantasy movie is Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
I really believe Laputa to be the most Ghibli movie of them all, while Nausicaa's story resembles the most Final Fantasy.
The first few Final Fantasy games have a hell of a lot in common with Castle in the Sky. The heavy emphasis on airships, the ancient, powerful civilization of which the female lead is the last descendent, the mid-story villain switch, etc.
I haven’t seen that in ages. The main thing I remember being wowed at was her hair.
Brave probably still wears that crown now, though.
Got eyes fixed after optometrist diagnosed the x-ray vision
Looks like a normal night out with the lads to me.
Still seems pretty solid. The background and UI could be more interesting, but the skeletons don't need improving still.
Fun fact, on release, the UI for Morrowind did not even have health bars for enemies, this was patched in later.
I think this is the most uninteresting part of Morrowind, it's a DLC that is basically "go to this island and kill a metric fuckton of skeletons".
I think these are more representative of the game. It's a bit dated, but insanely atmospheric and modders are still keeping it alive.
Back in the day we called them "expansion packs" instead of DLC because you went to the store and bought them on CD-ROM discs (or DVD-ROM if you had rich parents) because nobody's Internet was fast enough to download a whole photoshopped nude of Cindy Crawford in less than 20 seconds, let alone a whole game expansion.
Funnily enough this particular island was available via download and later as part of the GOTY pack, so technically speaking it was downloadable content before it became common. It was also free though.
It all started with that shitty horse armour
I laughed when they brought it out. They warned us and we shrugged them off. Its just fun. Its not going to get out of hand.
How wrong we were.
And then they sold us Skyrim. And then they sold us Skyrim. And then they sold us Fallout. And then they sold us Skyrim. And then
There's also horse armor dlc for skyrim lol
I had to search far and wide in my area for a new graphics card just so I could have the "realistic water" for Morrowind. It was glorious seeing it in action back then.
Looks like only the innermost textures have loaded.
This looks better than real life.
As of lately? Absolutely.
Tbh it is if if you have undiagnosed myopia
I remember being very impressed with Bioshock Infinite. I played it again recently, and... well, it's not horrible, but not like I remember it, either.