One of the problems with the modern gaming industry is the huge budgets of AAA projects. Studios and publishers often point out that the cost of mistakes has become too high, so fewer truly big-budget new franchises are being made. The cost of a game is directly dependent on the number of employees working on the project, and the more detailed the graphics requirements, the more people involved in development.
Thief and System Shock 2 designer Randy Smith Evergreen believeModern industry has become too obsessed with high-quality graphics. In his opinion, the project had already achieved the required level of realism since the original Alan Wake in 2010, and there was no need to develop the game further in this direction.
The graphics quality curve has reached levels that are simply unimaginable. I remember when Alan Wake came out and I was like, “Okay, this is relatively real. I’m 100 percent sure I’m on a ferry. I see myself sailing to an island in the Pacific Northwest. Why do we need more graphics? After all, it’s very expensive.” That’s when it all made sense 100 percent to me. I felt the atmosphere. Everything seems reasonable. Why do we need this graphics arms race, right? I think Alan Wake is the level of realism we should strive for.
Developers believe that further improvements in image quality often bring no real benefits. Modern projects use ray tracing, complex lighting and reflections to strive to look better than the real world, and high detail often requires image upscaling technologies such as DLSS.
Let us remind you that Thief: The Dark Project Remastered is currently in development, an updated version of the original Thief co-produced by Randy Smith Evergreen.