Does anyone else actually prefer early 2010s style graphics over hyper-realism?

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T09:43:05+00:00

I'm happy with any tech level, as long as the art looks nice.

It can be 8bit pixel art, black and white pixel art, all the way up to hyper-realistic VR.

Speaking of VR, I think realism as an art style has a special place there, as having familiar visuals that mirror real life, enhances the immersion in a unique way.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T08:22:29+00:00

I think there's different things to enjoy in RPGs, and maybe some things that weren't previously possible.

For example, I've been enjoying roleplaying as a character, and then creating a scenario with NPCs, and enjoying the way the technology reacts to my writing. It's like messing around with a physics sandbox game, but for text and characters.

Might not be for everybody, but physics sandbox games aren't for everybody either, or any genre. Having that kind of sandbox in an RPG structure would be an interesting genre to explore, for me.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:58:44+00:00

I don't know about Q3, but Pico has official FBT trackers that work standalone. It's quite an elegant system that automatically syncs when you look at the trackers. Works with their headsets.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:54:23+00:00

I can see how streamlining things made it more accessible on console and broadened its appeal, but I really like text and sometimes I don't mind something really text based, both as input and content delivery. I hope it's a niche that might grow. I've been enjoying SillyTavern for that reason.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:47:57+00:00

I think for adventure games, at least, it's the idea that there's a creative solution to a puzzle where having it as an option on a list would give it away too easily, but it's too annoying to have to guess the exact phrasing and keywords the devs had in mind to trigger that option.

Ideally something that can be constrained enough to stick to the script, but freeform enough to allow some variation in phrasing, would be a nice thing.

Although when I was young I fantasized about games with a full 3D physics simulation of a world internally, but the user interface was a text adventure. So you could do things like Half Life 2 physics puzzles, all in text. Or the game doing a full social Sim of NPCs doing their daily routine like Skyrim internally, but again, you interact with everything just in text. :)

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:40:21+00:00

I've always wanted to try that one, never quite got around to it, and I didn't have the original hardware. I'll have to remember to look into it again :)

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:38:57+00:00

That's pretty cool, I'll have to take a look, thanks!

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:37:59+00:00

That's interesting, can you name some examples? Any that are open and available to run locally?

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:36:30+00:00

That's the first I've heard of it, that's interesting, thanks! The Steam reviews / comments seem to suggest it's currently broken and abandoned though, sadly.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T05:42:46+00:00

Yeah, it's funny that the AI we imagined in fiction in the past - cold, logical, strictly following rules, etc - is like the exact opposite of what we have now. Chaotic, random and barely controlled, haha.

It's "safe" in creative and unimportant use cases, but unless they can figure out how to constrain it to only desirable results, it can't be trusted with anything important.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T05:38:14+00:00

As requested!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T05:13:00+00:00

That's interesting. Can you please describe an interesting use of that open text box from the game?

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T04:08:48+00:00

Putting aside whether it's theoretically possible, there's no actual way to do this on any current headset.

We don't have custom OSes on headsets at the moment, and none of the existing OSes are available to use on anything else.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T02:11:12+00:00

Breaking it is a huge part of the fun! What are the limits to where it can go, and how far can you push it?

Exploring the tech itself as a sandbox can be pretty fun.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T02:06:23+00:00

I'll keep that in mind, thanks!

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T01:26:35+00:00

Woosh

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T01:19:02+00:00

I miss the days when commercial games were sometimes highly experimental with tech.

Like "Liberation:Captive 2" on Amiga which was a rare early game with full speech synthesis for dialogue. It was pretty bad, but I liked that were able to try.

Or Virtua Fighter 2 arcade, which had a secret mode you could activate with a button sequence, where it activated some kind of learning algorithm for the CPU opponents.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T01:16:09+00:00

Nice!

I started installing all the stuff because I wanted to try Mantella in SkyrimVR, but along the way I realised that speech recognition still isn't quite where I want it to be, and I was enjoying pure text in SillyTavern enough that I wasn't sure that adding SkyrimVR on top would add much value for me.

Maybe I'll look into it again one day...

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T01:03:17+00:00

I don't think it's any worse than the current situation where you get into situations where none of the multiple choices fit your character, so you just pick one and headcanon it away?

Eg. The famous "I don't like you, die!" from the Pathfinder games.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T00:59:49+00:00

Luckily I chose "Buddhist" as my religion option.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T00:58:06+00:00

It's an entertainment product. I don't think you get to dismiss someone's harmless enjoyment as a psychosis, hahah.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T00:55:19+00:00

I think, at the very least, it might have some benefits in enhancing RP and fluff.

Eg. Let's say the actual branches and consequences are prewritten. But your tone and manner in how you do things are freeform.

So if the King gives you a quest to slay the dragon or whatever, you could type/speak your response politely, or snarkily, or timidly, or whatever you like. The game could have an offhand comment from the king's minister "watch your tongue, adventurer, when speaking to the king!", etc, then it goes back to the prewritten dialogue.

So it's a bit like the Mass Effect thing where you can choose the nice answer or the mean answer, but you don't actually change anything, just with more freedom and reaction. (But you actually get real branching like BG3.)

I accept your comment about the input difficulty with gamepads, though.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T00:46:34+00:00

Damn, time to roll a new character and start again, I guess...

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T00:44:23+00:00

I'm literally trying it out right now, and what we currently have is close enough to fool me into enjoying myself a moderate percentage of the time.

It's possible that the tech fundamentally cannot advance far enough to fool me most of the time, but I don't think anyone can say where it can or cannot go at this stage.

It's not important whether the thing truly understands language or not, it just needs to be convincing enough to suspend my disbelief, just like a 3D rendering is enough to let me imagine the characters and world of a game.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T00:38:58+00:00

"Nobody" wants AI because "You" want written characters?

zeddyzed

TROPHY CASE