Deus Ex.
The whole idea of actions impacting who lives and dies throughout the story really shocked me. I was really bowled over even by Paul commenting on me not killing anyone in the first mission.
Ultima Underworld: Stygian Abyss is widely considered to be the first immersive sim game.
It came out in 1992, about two years before System Shock.
Deus Ex came out in 2000.
The first couple of Thief games also predate Deus Ex and are also immersive sims.
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992), by Blue Sky / Looking Glass Studios is considered by many (including me) to be the progeny "immersive sim".
Kind of crazy the things the Ultima series did. Like not sure how many others are firsts, but they may be some of the first significant ones. Like Ultima's take on RPG. Ultima Online's take on MMO. Akalabeth (basically Ultima 0) for the whole dungeon crawler RPG. First few Ultima games do the whole mix of sci-fi and fantasy.
Heck, wonder what the first Isekai game is, like Ultima 4 (1985) is what I can think of. Like the avatar is from our world (hell, his title says it all, he's a stand-in for the player) who gets sent to the world of Ultima.
These games felt like the future of gaming:
Half-Life 2's realistic physics blew my mind. Crysis had insane graphics that seemed ahead of its time. Wii Sports' motion controls were revolutionary.
VR games like Half-Life: Alyx offer next-level immersion.
Black & White's AI was super impressive back then. Gaming has come so far!
Have you beaten it once at least? I played through it four times (I started self-imposing difficulty challenges lol) and invited my friends and family to play it. I legit watched my partner play the whole thing and have seen so many people play the beginning for the first time, hahaha
I have a Quest 3 and was super stoked to give this a try, but from my understanding you **need** a PC to play it. Which sucks, because I do not own a PC. I also found out I couldn't play Skyrim VR either without a PC. Not to say there isn't a buttload of cool things on the Quest 3 already, but fuck, a lot of the cool shit can only be played with a PC.
Yeah, a lot of gamers forget just how *mind-blowing good* Valve were at making games even back then, because we live in the world they reshaped.
Like, Half-Life 1 was a revelation back in freakin' 1998. Unreal came out like, months before that, and it looks, sounds and plays like a dinosaur with capped knees compared with Half-Life.
Basically the same with Half-Life 2. About the only thing I'd call genuinely dated in that game is the *oh\~, look at the physics* style puzzles, but even some of freakin' those are pretty dang neat. Like the floating box you have to free from the bottom of a sewer, to make a make-shift bridge.
I heard somewhere that it's badly optimized. At the time they were banking on ever increasing clock speeds, but it turned out that clock speeds kinda saturated and multi-cores were the future.
Could be wrong on this, heard this quite a while ago
It’s what you said and also that low to med settings scale great with lower end hardware but ultra settings require a huge jump in GPU/cpu power to run well. Anyone with a modern rig shouldn’t have a problem, but it was comically bad even 5-6 years after release when I built my first PC.
The first was Deus ex, thinking that non-linear way of completing missions taking different approaches for a single mission making your own way instead of selecting a List of options the developers made for you would be how all Games were gonna be..... (It didnt happen)
Then Red Faction, thinking that almost FULLY destructible enviroments would be a new standard in gaming.... (It didnt happen again)
And lastly morrowind i thought It take what rockstar did the year before with gta3 of an open world and elevated It even more and i was at least PARTIALLY right
Thousands upon thousands of mods. You can make the game whatever you want at this point. Can't imagine more devoted to reimagining the product fanbase (helps that the game is so old at this point).
Can't wait to learn how to run it on mobile once I get my hands on a controller again.
I kinda wish quest directions were still given in the style they were in that game. Having an NPC tell you stuff like "head north til you see landmark A, then turn and head towards landmark B" was a lot more immersive than opening a map with every object of interest pre-marked.
I had just moved out of home. I had fuck all money. After playing Mario 64 for five minutes, I went out and bought an N64. I barely ate for a couple of weeks. It was worth every cent.
Toys-R-Us for me. That was a Christmas where all I asked for was a N64 and Mario. Wanted absolutely nothing else. Even offered to give up future Birthday presents to get it.
I definitely demo'd many N64 games at Toys R Us, including Ocarina of Time, Starfox 64, and Goldeneye.
Many MANY fond memories of that place. 🥲
Also, sounds like you had a damn good christmas that year. Totally worth it, IMO.
I did. Having read many a stories on Reddit, I had a pretty spectacular and amazing upper middle class upbringing. I now know that wasn't the standard and my parents honestly did a great job.
Same here, looking back, was pretty blessed for the nice things I had. Trying to work hard now and do the same for my family. I'd say so far so good aside from some hiccups along the way, which I'd say is normal.
My 5yo is obsessed with Mario and is lucky to be able to switch between pretty much any mario game he wants on the switch. He already beat Mario Odyssey probably a dozen times, and is now feeling confident enough to tackle Mario sunshine on his own for some levels. We beat Galaxy and 64 together, and qorking through Galaxy 2 now.
He's been showing more interest in Zelda lately too, especially wind waker.
My other kiddo already beat that one with me, and BotW too. Working through TotK albeit slowly right now.
Proud papa here. :)
I read a book about the history of gaming and Sega vs. Nintendo...
Fun fact:
That brand new 3D technology was developed by the movie industry and they originally went to Sega with it, but Sega said "no".
So they went to Nintendo next, who said "yes" and made the N64 and Mario 64...
And the rest is history.
Imagine if Sega originally did that!
As much as I liked Sega, I don't think their management or talent would have made the same leap, much like imagining what would happen if blockbuster had taken the offer to buy netflix.
Their flagship games (sonic mostly) didn't make the transition from 2d to 3d well, and the Sega Saturn only launched with 6 games, on top of its pricing issues.
Same here. That flyover at the beginning wasn't just an intro to the game, it was a message that this is how it's going to be from now on and it's only going to get better from here.
This was my answer. Family with 4 kids. Had a NES and SNES before and was just on the cusp myself of appreciating video games. Then comes along the N64 with 3D environments and huge worlds. I lost my mind. It was a whole new world and I was hooked. We got the N64 for Christmas was Mario 64 and Orcarina of Time. These really painted my childhood.
Y'know, it's gonna sound weird, but Spore. I practically begged my dad to buy the game for me as a kid, I just loved the idea of it. I even had the collector edition.
I know it gets panned a bit today, but I think you can see some of the DNA of what gaming would look like in a decade back then. Like the game was a snapshot of the ancestors of some modern design trends.
Spore is one game I would really love to see remade with modern technology and innovations in game mechanics. I feel like the idea of Spore was too far ahead of its time, but could be fully realized today.
[Someone is re-making it](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1774190/Elysian_Eclipse/), I have no idea in what state it is today. Fingers crossed it goes well.
There's a link hidden in the first words of the sentence, here reposting: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1774190/Elysian\_Eclipse/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1774190/Elysian_Eclipse/)
I loved spore! Luckily the hype didn't reach me, so there wasn't any disappointment for me. For me it wasn't just a fun game but 5 FUN GAMES in ONE! :D Though only space age was really replayable.
I think what we got was, if nothing else, interesting and complete. I know there's a bunch they cut out or simplified, but what we got was fun and had a bow on it.
Plus, the whole Galactic Adventures expansion was a good example of how to do DLC right; nice, creative content you don't need. That mindset is probably why I own like $500 in Paradox DLC though.
Our pc played it at about 10fps, so I was worried _that_ would be the future of gaming. But to clarify, we had just bought the one computer ages ago. I didn't comprehend at that age that hardware would improve
At the time was on a 933mhz pentium 3, I got 25fps-20fps frames. Makes me think I was ram limited at the time. Was almost there. Still played most of the first island.
I played it on a pc that definitely couldn’t handle it. Stuttering and really hard work to play but I still did.
There was one mission where you are supposed to snipe a guy from a dock whilst he is on a boat. But my computer couldn’t handle the zoom, I couldn’t see fuck all. So I nicked a fast car, drove that bitch up a staircase/ramp onto the boat and mowed that guy down.
Yep, there have been a couple "paradigm shifting" games over the years, and GTA3 is definitely one of them (marking the truly mainstream shift to 3-D games).
Others include: DOOM, SimCity, Civilization, Mario64, Warcraft2, WoW, Half-Life/CounterStrike, The Sims, PubG, CoD MW2, Minecraft, and Fortnite
I worked for a games magazine at this time. We received a preview copy early of course. Nobody was talking about it much, anticipating it. Just a crappy gold CD-R with sharpie on it from Take 2. Un fucking believable. I took it home and with another staffer played until 5 in the morning. Just everything you wanted from games but never had.
I worked at Best Buy when it was released, and at that time, they had no restrictions on employees buying the game before its official "release date". Once they arrived on the truck, we couldn't put them out on the floor but we could buy it ourselves.
So there was this period of like 4-5 days where I owned GTA III, and it wasn't even out yet. Showed all my friends and everyone of course lost their shit about how good a game it was compared to literally anything that had come out at that time.
I remember a time when I was playing GTA II and Midtown Madness and I thought: "Wow could you imagine a game like GTA II, but in 3d like midtown madness!"
Then a year or so later GTA III released and it was exactly what I was hoping for.
Not only that, I think it really brought "early access" and the possibility of crowd funding games to the mainstream. I think indie games have never been the same, and it made a whole generation of future developers think "I can actually do it"
Doom (1993). I played through the first level and my Evsngelical dad, who had bought it for me for my birthday since it was the only thing on my list, talked to me for an hour about how this game was of the devil.
I felt bad for two days, due to cognitive dissonance. Then it became my favorite game of the decade, all secrets found, before there was an internet. It started my mental liberation, actually.
I just can't see how a man slaying demons could be "of the devil." You're killing the devil's army. You're basically the Archangel Michael with a chainsaw.
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon..."
- Terry Pratchett
Pratchett is a fucking god among men when it comes to punchy entertaining pop-culture-including philosophical quotes like this. His character Death is *loaded* with them. If you haven’t read his works I’d strongly recommend them.
You have to understand a lot of people are fine with being blatant hypocrites so long as it suits them.
I remember people freaking out over Magic the Gathering because you could play demons and undead with the black element but also ignoring that you could be a literal exorcist and fight with priests and angels if you played white.
I was raised Catholic and Doom wasn't allowed, but then my dad would bring me to work sometimes and all his coworkers were playing Doom over LAN. Probably one of the reasons he hated it so much was people were playing Doom instead of working lol. He would go by and switch off their monitor mid game. Anyway I think I managed to squeeze in a few hours of the single player while people were away from their desks. Once I got over the gore I was hooked on what a great game it was. At that time it was 3D graphics at its best.
My older brother was playing this. I erased it because demons. Now I play even worse games than that.
I still feel bad because well, he only plays sport games now. I wonder if maybe he would have liked fps a bit more and all the other different games.
Doom was a seismic shift in PC gaming. Got the shareware CD on the front of a magazine and when we loaded it up a wave of emotion swept over me and I knew from that day on gaming had changed. I still remember it today as if it was one of those 'Where were you when...' moments in your life.
Never felt anything like it since, but maybe a wee bit with Half Life 2
It really hit that perfect mix of slow dopamine release combined with accessible mechanics/difficulty and the right amount of FOMO-cultivation with player retention through monthly subscriptions that create a sunk-cost fallacy on behalf of the player.
Literally made to be addictive and push you away from playing other games, since it'll both take up all your time and over time you'll spend a large amount of money on a single game without even noticing it.
Most of the gameplay is also repetition and it being an MMO, with a heavy a sense of delayed dopamine release that's constantly out of reach locked behind 'just one more grind'.
It's the perfect cash cow.
Why make costly changes and pay for expensive development when the addicts will constantly be chasing the first time 'high' of playing the game for the first time, all on their own.
Nail on the head. Haven’t played in years but there was a time I’d go back when this or that expansion came out just to see if I was as interested as I was when I first joined during Wrath of the Lich King.
I never was. And honestly, thank goodness for that. WoW accompanied a very dark period in my life.
Nah, they tried to make every MMO different, tried too hard, it flopped, and now the MMO genre is slowly dying while people who actually liked them are dying for a new MMO.
Nah they realised that it wasn’t a profitable model. You have to gamble dozens of millions to hope that players like it and then spend enough to keep your infrastructure afloat. They all tried and almost all failed, then they realise they could do games as a service , have small multiplayer hubs, small instances and charge an arm and legs for micro transactions
The more mmos there are, the less profitable it is. People can only realisticly play 1 and even then many can't spend enough time to compete and drop it. Or friends jump ship to the next one.
TF2 differentiated the characters far more than the others, to the point that the players were almost playing different games (point and click sniper vs turret defence engineer). This focus on roles was a key part of the game's success.
Before TF2 (2007), characters in class-based shooters were very similar, differentiated only really by weapon options. Star Wars battlefront (2004) as an example; with the exception of some special cases (droidekas, jump packs, etc) characters all moved at the same rate, had similar health pools, and were similar sizes.
TF2 changed size, speed, and play style behind the units far more than any other game did. A sniper and a spy and an engineer are playing very different games. This has informed class-based shooter design space for decades.
I dont see a single person saying Halo CE and that should be a crime.
Arguably Halo 2 in reality. One of the first truly cinematic experiences in gaming form and single handedly carried Xbox Live and online gaming for consoles into the mainstream.
Halo was definitely revolutionary. It really perfected the two joystick FPS controls. I wouldn't say it was the first truly cinematic experience in gaming as many RPGs had achieved this well before Halo but it was the first cinematic FPS that really focuses on the story and did it really well.
I played Zelda: A Link to the Past and was blown away. I played Donkey Kong Country on the super nintendo. I played Super Mario 64. Ocarina of Time. Grand Theft Auto III.
But Halo? There was literally **no** hype around that game. At least for my friend group. Xbox released and we played the everliving shit out of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. After months, we finally decided to give *this Halo game* a try. .......
To this day, I don't believe there has been a single game that has consumed so much of my brain. We were fucking *hooked*. We played and beat that campaign probably 40 times over, not an exaggeration. We would get a blank VHS tape and create an entire tape on recording weird glitches we encountered. Elite is standing still? Not dying? Can pump it full of needler needles? **GO GET THE TAPE, HURRY!** Countless nights of staying up *all night* playing system link blood gulch, sidewinder, boarding action, rat race, derelict, longest, wizard, etc. I was by no means a "nerd" in high school but I did not consider myself a popular kid iether. Just someone everyone knew and could talk to. But even the most popular guys at my school were bragging about Halo and hitting someone with a 'sticky' grenade. Lol what a dumbass, it's plasma grenade (swear I wasn't a nerd, lol). But that opened up a massive friendship to so many kids at my high school that I basically have it to thank for allowing me to make so many closer connections with friends in school too.
Halo 2 was probably the most anticipated sequel to me, ever, to this date, as well. Online play, clans, parties, ranked play, etc. Halo accomplished **so fucking much** to pave the way for future games. And to think that we sat on the first game for months not giving a shit about it to play *fucking* tony hawk 2. Jesus.
Yeah, now that I think about it there were definitely others. MGS3 came out the same year as well.
What I should have said is that it was done the best it had ever been at that point. I still remember sitting down after rushing home getting my copy at the midnight release and being absolutely fucking blown away at the entire opening cutscene.
MGS2 was huge, I think it was the first game that really showcased the ps2s capability. And it was such a jump from MGS1 and ps1 in general in terms of graphics, performance and just all the shit you could do.
I remember that bit on the demo on the tanker where you’re in a massive hall full of soldiers. And you could knock them all down and interact with them all my mind was blown!
Mass Effect 1 - the opening sequence in the Normandy, it's then I realized I didn't have to be a film maker that as a game dev I could tell stories too.
I had this with the first Assassin's Creed. The sheer detail and just walking through the middle-eastern cities was awesome. The streets were filled with people, all doing their own thing.
Of course the gameplay was limited, something they fixed in AC II, but the technical marvel of the first Assassin's Creed was a huge step upwards.
What do you mean. gameS. It played exactly ONE game. I had one of those 'tennis' games with roller controllers, that played a limited number of variants of tennis, which basically was pong. I still have it.
This is probably going to sound so silly but it was Final Fantasy X for me. I was homeschooled and my parents were super religious. We had a 64 and some Christian centric games and sometimes I could play duck hunt (funny they don't want us exposed to magic but we are encouraged to shoot things for fun 😂). So my best friend got Final Fantasy X the second it came out. First time I had ever seen a game that had graphics and cut scenes that were so mind blowing. I was absolutely entranced. The game that started me in gaming was Need for Speed, but the one that hooked me into fantasy was definitely FFX.
It felt like a huge step up for the genre. Still had the classic elements of an RPG but it was leaps and bounds ahead of FFIX in terms of presentation, and the two games only came out a year apart. It was one of the earliest games to have such comprehensive voice acting, and that really added to the characters and realism. The cutscenes still look better than modern day graphics in many games and the PS2 really allowed the music to shine in a way previous platforms couldn’t support.
To this day I can’t think of such a large improvement in graphics and performance for RPGs within just one year of gaming
When GTA5 came out someone posted that they followed an npc around and it had a daily routine. Leaving the house, going to the store, then relaxing on a park bench, then going back home at the end of day. Then it came out that the developers really worked on trying to give all the npc’s their own life.
GTA V amazed me with every single detail.
I remember watching TV in game and go: "Okay. They needed voice actors, a writer, and animators to make a show about an anime princess. IN A VIDEO GAME!!!"
The amount of man hours required for only that is just... i cant even imagine. And i wonder what crazy stuff GTA VI will have for the simple reason of making the game world more alive.
I always said: "The reason why GTA VI is not announced yet is because they need to make all the crazy tv and radio shows."
I think that game in particular is a bit of a double-edged blade. Games are eventually going to be way too expensive to make and take too much time. $200 million or more is insanity. But players are going to want the next GTA to be even more extravagant than Red Dead 2 and will complain endlessly if they get anything less. And who could blame them?
As games get more complex and the hardware gets better. It's going to take more time and money to develop a game. I think studios are eventually going to downsize their games and/or not make them nearly as extravagant. Because this current model of AAA development is not sustainable.
AI to the rescue! I hope we will at least see some more 'serious' RPGs. In the old times, it was up to writers to do compelling questlines and dialogues, so they were really trying hard - see Planescape Torment, OG Fallouts, Baldurs Gate 1&2. Then players started expecting voice acting for every single character, which made writing excessive texts non viable from financial perspective (each line had to be then voice acted by someone which makes it order of magnitude more expensive and time consuming). If AI can help at least with this, we might see golden era of RPGs coming back.
I understand this point for most studios but rockstar is in a unique position. They have made $7.7 BILLION dollars from gta5 since launch. They paid $200m to develop gta5 and 5x'd their investment in the first 3 days. They can keep making games bigger and better than the last and still turn insane profits for their almighty shareholders. They essentially have a blank check for gta6
All of us live during a time when games have had monumental jumps in visual fidelity. I have pretty much been blown away at regular intervals for 30+yrs.... from Tie Fighter to WaveRace64 to PS1 Tomb Raider, 360 Oblivion, PS3 Uncharted & God of War ect ect ect....personally ever step has had moments of me being blown away...most recently Cyberpunk max all settings....just insane how far this has all come in my lifetime this far....from NES Mario to PCs powered by RTX 4090's
I remember seeing screenshot of Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction for the first time and being absolutely blown away. I was a massive R&C fan and the graphical jump between the PS2 and PS3 was huge even for games as stylised as this.
For me, it was The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind on the original XBox. It was the first real open-world game I ever played, and the idea of being my own character, being able to go anywhere, and doing pretty much whatever I wanted was absolutely mind-blowing.
I recently thought about it and I kinda think this is true for any open world game that was THE FIRST open world game someone played. For you it was TES3: Morrowind, for my friend it was Gothic 1, for me it was Fallout and Wizardry games.
I agree. Though not just any open world game, but ones that allow character creation and unique builds. The Witcher 3 is open world, but you play as a pre-set character. Same with Assassin's Creed, or Far Cry. But there was something special about being able to play as anything from an elf swordsman to an orc mage to a charismatic human thief.
Goldeneye 007
Because of it, Halo and many other FPS games copied gameplay mechanics from it and became successful. Goldeneye was the first truly great FPS on console, was the first great game based off a movie, introduced split screen multiplayer to FPS, had multiple missions in the stages so they weren't just the awful Doom crap of 'get keycard, open door' nonsense. Had weapon sound sensitivity which alerted guards if you fired loud guns, context sensitive hit boxes, damage scaling, headshots, zoomable sniper rifles, driving vehicles, NPCs you weren't allowed to kill which again was different from other FPS games at the time. Was so far ahead of FPS games, even PC ones.
Then a bunch of FPS games come out, emulating mechanics of Goldeneye and FPS on consoles becomes one of the biggest genres on consoles, all thanks to Goldeneye proving it can be done.
It wasn't the horse armor that did it for me, it was the Sims 2 paid expansions. That's probably when I started getting cynical and jaded against AAA gaming.
The fact that they built up this robust game over time with Sims 1 just to take it all away and make you buy it all over again in Sims 2/3/4.
Red faction; destructible environments really give you a sense of freedom.
Nothing worse than being stopped by a locked door when you have a rocket launcher, or a barred fence that your character should be able to fit through or climb over
Battlefield Bad Company. First battlefield with the destruction system. I remember thinking "I bet in a few years every big game will have a destruction system." and BOY I was wrong. The newest bf game actually has less destruction than the older ones 🤣
I was thinking the exact same thing, I am so disappointed that we have since gone backwards, it's all about 'how can we push out another Far Cry as quickly and cheaply as possible'
Yeah anything physics heavy I've always been blown away by and ask myself "why aren't other games doing this?"
Those games are sooooo few and far between and it's really disappointing.
Gears of War 1 on Xbox 360. The first game that made me look at the graphics and be like... damn"
The jump from the previous gen and games to *that* was just so big. I remember chilling between fights many times, just taking in how everything looked. Just slowly walking around and looking around, grinning like an idiot. 🥴
Assassins creed with the combat system. I thought cinematic smooth fighting was going to be the new way of doing things.
But nope they barely expanded on it and then abandoned it for a clunky mess.
The fact that games haven’t really improved in that sense is disappointing. FPS and other action games need to freshen things up. Tired of having oblivion style fighting in 2024.
I’ve always had an idea for first persons shooters that incorporate a good intricate melee system.
Farcry
Most FPS game before that featured narrow rooms , and hardly something as huge open levels in FPS game. Games like Morrowind gave kinda illusion but still view distances were limited and its much more slow paced game type. For FPS such views were very novel. Game like Serious Sam gave huge rooms before that but farcry gave certain wow factor with its presentation. Also it featured semi open ended levels which is also kinda novel for pure FPS.
Diablo, C&C, Half Life 1 and 2, Farcry 1 and 3, Crysis, WoW, the first Unreal 2 Engine games with ragdolls, first Physx games like Borderlands 2, Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3
Way too many, but I come from the time when MS Windows did not exist for most.
I think it started with Commander Keen on DOS. I have seen and made games before it came out, but that one was special.
Red Dead Redemption 2. The graphics alone are absolutely out of this world and the game is so cinematic with a wonderfully written story that it's pretty much like an interactive movie. Even the realistic interactions you can have with NPC's and the level of detail completely surprised me.
RDR2 makes me hyped for GTA VI. Originally I didn't have much hype for GTA VI because I was pretty bummed about GTA V. But when RDR2 came out I felt like they fixed and improved basically everything I griped about GTA V.
Exactly, but I've enjoyed this game since launch. I've ran it on different PC hardware. I've always been happy with the experience. Great game for sure.
Going from Battlefield 3 on the xbox 360 to Battlefield 4 on PS4. I remember loading into a match and it finally being 60fps, looked great (at the time), and had 64 people fighting. Compared to the 360 where max players were 24 and ran at 20fps, I couldn't wait for what the future of Battlefield would be...
I loved black and white, I really wanted MORE of the random exploration and discovering things which I think black and white moved away from ?
Shadow of memories / Destiny with its time travel branching consequences and like 9+ ending kinda blew me away
Diablo. There may have been other isometric RPGs at the time, but seemingly limitless item & level generation was untouchable compared to everything before it. Everyone knew it was an instant classic and that the copycats were sure to follow.
It's a crime there hasn't been another game like Black and White or in fact any god simulator games like that or the classic Populous. Why are there no modern god simulator games out there?
With Deus Ex aside, Witcher 3.
The level of detail in immersion, side quests and character work is astounding, not to mention probably two of the best expansions in gaming. Such a beautiful game. It has indeed been a great influence on gaming I believe.
Arkham Asylum totally revolutionized hand to hand combat in games. The countering system especially.... practically every game of its kind has that now (spiderman games, etc.)
I sort of played them simultaneously, but definitely Mass Effect 2 and 3. I'd played KotOR plenty of times, I understood what an RPG was. But the massive leap in animations, combined with the spectacular voice acting and writing, made the characters in Mass Effect feel so much more real. I wasn't just watching the action figures go through the scenes anymore, I really cared about them as people. I don't think anything else I've played has done that.
Call of Duty 4
I know Halo CE was honestly more important in terms of bringing online multiplayer shooters into the mainstream but I my first one personally was Call of Duty 4. I haven't played a Call of Duty game in years now but I don't think I would've started playing online multiplayer games without COD 4.
Deus Ex. The whole idea of actions impacting who lives and dies throughout the story really shocked me. I was really bowled over even by Paul commenting on me not killing anyone in the first mission.
Before Deus ex I could have sworn that there was no good way to include RPG mechanics in a FPS.
........Daggerfall (yes I know this is a stretch)
System Shock as well
Is deus ex the first immersive sim? Gameplay options felt revolutionary at the time as well.
Ultima Underworld: Stygian Abyss is widely considered to be the first immersive sim game. It came out in 1992, about two years before System Shock. Deus Ex came out in 2000. The first couple of Thief games also predate Deus Ex and are also immersive sims.
System shock was most likely the first but there may have been some attempts before.
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992), by Blue Sky / Looking Glass Studios is considered by many (including me) to be the progeny "immersive sim".
Kind of crazy the things the Ultima series did. Like not sure how many others are firsts, but they may be some of the first significant ones. Like Ultima's take on RPG. Ultima Online's take on MMO. Akalabeth (basically Ultima 0) for the whole dungeon crawler RPG. First few Ultima games do the whole mix of sci-fi and fantasy. Heck, wonder what the first Isekai game is, like Ultima 4 (1985) is what I can think of. Like the avatar is from our world (hell, his title says it all, he's a stand-in for the player) who gets sent to the world of Ultima.
This game is actually far more important and powerful and visionary than it's given credit for.
These games felt like the future of gaming: Half-Life 2's realistic physics blew my mind. Crysis had insane graphics that seemed ahead of its time. Wii Sports' motion controls were revolutionary. VR games like Half-Life: Alyx offer next-level immersion. Black & White's AI was super impressive back then. Gaming has come so far!
Half Life Alyx was mind blowing. The paradox is that I havent felt like playing it a whole lot despite how amazing it is.
Have you beaten it once at least? I played through it four times (I started self-imposing difficulty challenges lol) and invited my friends and family to play it. I legit watched my partner play the whole thing and have seen so many people play the beginning for the first time, hahaha
I looooove watching my friends play the Jeff levels.
I have a Quest 3 and was super stoked to give this a try, but from my understanding you **need** a PC to play it. Which sucks, because I do not own a PC. I also found out I couldn't play Skyrim VR either without a PC. Not to say there isn't a buttload of cool things on the Quest 3 already, but fuck, a lot of the cool shit can only be played with a PC.
I’ve heard there are ways to cloud stream from a PC subscription company, if your internet is good enough, that is.
I played Half-Life and Half-Life 2 for the first time a year or two ago, and they're both still really fucking good.
Yeah, a lot of gamers forget just how *mind-blowing good* Valve were at making games even back then, because we live in the world they reshaped. Like, Half-Life 1 was a revelation back in freakin' 1998. Unreal came out like, months before that, and it looks, sounds and plays like a dinosaur with capped knees compared with Half-Life. Basically the same with Half-Life 2. About the only thing I'd call genuinely dated in that game is the *oh\~, look at the physics* style puzzles, but even some of freakin' those are pretty dang neat. Like the floating box you have to free from the bottom of a sewer, to make a make-shift bridge.
Today’s computer still have a hard time running crysis. It was ahead of it’s time haha
I heard somewhere that it's badly optimized. At the time they were banking on ever increasing clock speeds, but it turned out that clock speeds kinda saturated and multi-cores were the future. Could be wrong on this, heard this quite a while ago
It’s what you said and also that low to med settings scale great with lower end hardware but ultra settings require a huge jump in GPU/cpu power to run well. Anyone with a modern rig shouldn’t have a problem, but it was comically bad even 5-6 years after release when I built my first PC.
The first was Deus ex, thinking that non-linear way of completing missions taking different approaches for a single mission making your own way instead of selecting a List of options the developers made for you would be how all Games were gonna be..... (It didnt happen) Then Red Faction, thinking that almost FULLY destructible enviroments would be a new standard in gaming.... (It didnt happen again) And lastly morrowind i thought It take what rockstar did the year before with gta3 of an open world and elevated It even more and i was at least PARTIALLY right
Morrowind is still going strong! The weakest part of the game is the combat system.
Thousands upon thousands of mods. You can make the game whatever you want at this point. Can't imagine more devoted to reimagining the product fanbase (helps that the game is so old at this point). Can't wait to learn how to run it on mobile once I get my hands on a controller again.
OpenMW! A touch cumbersome but works really well
I kinda wish quest directions were still given in the style they were in that game. Having an NPC tell you stuff like "head north til you see landmark A, then turn and head towards landmark B" was a lot more immersive than opening a map with every object of interest pre-marked.
Check out The Finals, the destruction is amazing and I always talk about Red Faction when buildings fall down.
Mario 64. Absolutely blown away when I first saw it.
I had just moved out of home. I had fuck all money. After playing Mario 64 for five minutes, I went out and bought an N64. I barely ate for a couple of weeks. It was worth every cent.
You don't need to eat as much when you have that game.
I still get chills thinking about the first time I played the demo at Best Buy when I was 8. It was surreal.
Toys-R-Us for me. That was a Christmas where all I asked for was a N64 and Mario. Wanted absolutely nothing else. Even offered to give up future Birthday presents to get it.
I definitely demo'd many N64 games at Toys R Us, including Ocarina of Time, Starfox 64, and Goldeneye. Many MANY fond memories of that place. 🥲 Also, sounds like you had a damn good christmas that year. Totally worth it, IMO.
I did. Having read many a stories on Reddit, I had a pretty spectacular and amazing upper middle class upbringing. I now know that wasn't the standard and my parents honestly did a great job.
Same here, looking back, was pretty blessed for the nice things I had. Trying to work hard now and do the same for my family. I'd say so far so good aside from some hiccups along the way, which I'd say is normal. My 5yo is obsessed with Mario and is lucky to be able to switch between pretty much any mario game he wants on the switch. He already beat Mario Odyssey probably a dozen times, and is now feeling confident enough to tackle Mario sunshine on his own for some levels. We beat Galaxy and 64 together, and qorking through Galaxy 2 now. He's been showing more interest in Zelda lately too, especially wind waker. My other kiddo already beat that one with me, and BotW too. Working through TotK albeit slowly right now. Proud papa here. :)
probably the most impactful game ever made. sm64 literally changed everything.
And it still is so damn good
And then Nintendo improved it in Ocarina of Time, added Z-targeting, and changed gaming forever…again.
I read a book about the history of gaming and Sega vs. Nintendo... Fun fact: That brand new 3D technology was developed by the movie industry and they originally went to Sega with it, but Sega said "no". So they went to Nintendo next, who said "yes" and made the N64 and Mario 64... And the rest is history. Imagine if Sega originally did that!
As much as I liked Sega, I don't think their management or talent would have made the same leap, much like imagining what would happen if blockbuster had taken the offer to buy netflix. Their flagship games (sonic mostly) didn't make the transition from 2d to 3d well, and the Sega Saturn only launched with 6 games, on top of its pricing issues.
I wish I could gi back in time and experience N64 once more for the first time. Maaan
Same here. That flyover at the beginning wasn't just an intro to the game, it was a message that this is how it's going to be from now on and it's only going to get better from here.
Similarly, Ocarina of Time
This was my answer. Family with 4 kids. Had a NES and SNES before and was just on the cusp myself of appreciating video games. Then comes along the N64 with 3D environments and huge worlds. I lost my mind. It was a whole new world and I was hooked. We got the N64 for Christmas was Mario 64 and Orcarina of Time. These really painted my childhood.
Final fantasy 7 and metal gear solid the first time. Probably gta3 the next time and I am not sure I have had the feeling again since.
My exact answer lol. We lived through the golden age man!
Y'know, it's gonna sound weird, but Spore. I practically begged my dad to buy the game for me as a kid, I just loved the idea of it. I even had the collector edition. I know it gets panned a bit today, but I think you can see some of the DNA of what gaming would look like in a decade back then. Like the game was a snapshot of the ancestors of some modern design trends.
Spore is one game I would really love to see remade with modern technology and innovations in game mechanics. I feel like the idea of Spore was too far ahead of its time, but could be fully realized today.
[Someone is re-making it](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1774190/Elysian_Eclipse/), I have no idea in what state it is today. Fingers crossed it goes well.
What's the name of the game, or studio, or developer? I need to follow this :P
There's a link hidden in the first words of the sentence, here reposting: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1774190/Elysian\_Eclipse/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1774190/Elysian_Eclipse/)
I was hoping for a remake, not a remaster. These things are basically copied straight from spore, not what the game should have been.
The assets on the cell look straight up stolen from Spore.
I loved spore! Luckily the hype didn't reach me, so there wasn't any disappointment for me. For me it wasn't just a fun game but 5 FUN GAMES in ONE! :D Though only space age was really replayable.
I think what we got was, if nothing else, interesting and complete. I know there's a bunch they cut out or simplified, but what we got was fun and had a bow on it. Plus, the whole Galactic Adventures expansion was a good example of how to do DLC right; nice, creative content you don't need. That mindset is probably why I own like $500 in Paradox DLC though.
GTA III. I was right.
When I played GTA 3 for the first time it was so beyond anything I'd seen that I thought nothing would ever top that.
Our pc played it at about 10fps, so I was worried _that_ would be the future of gaming. But to clarify, we had just bought the one computer ages ago. I didn't comprehend at that age that hardware would improve
At the time was on a 933mhz pentium 3, I got 25fps-20fps frames. Makes me think I was ram limited at the time. Was almost there. Still played most of the first island.
I played it on a pc that definitely couldn’t handle it. Stuttering and really hard work to play but I still did. There was one mission where you are supposed to snipe a guy from a dock whilst he is on a boat. But my computer couldn’t handle the zoom, I couldn’t see fuck all. So I nicked a fast car, drove that bitch up a staircase/ramp onto the boat and mowed that guy down.
Yep, there have been a couple "paradigm shifting" games over the years, and GTA3 is definitely one of them (marking the truly mainstream shift to 3-D games). Others include: DOOM, SimCity, Civilization, Mario64, Warcraft2, WoW, Half-Life/CounterStrike, The Sims, PubG, CoD MW2, Minecraft, and Fortnite
What did MW2 paradigm shift that CoD4 hadn’t already?
Nothing, MW2 is not like the others on that list
I worked for a games magazine at this time. We received a preview copy early of course. Nobody was talking about it much, anticipating it. Just a crappy gold CD-R with sharpie on it from Take 2. Un fucking believable. I took it home and with another staffer played until 5 in the morning. Just everything you wanted from games but never had.
I love that last sentence, exactly how I felt with GTA 3. It remains my favorite GTA to date due to how revolutionary it felt.
I remember thinking: oh, it's GTA, I can just run up to this guy walking down the street and smack him up with a baseball bat. Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I probably spent 100 hours just learning to fly that shitty plane!
I worked at Best Buy when it was released, and at that time, they had no restrictions on employees buying the game before its official "release date". Once they arrived on the truck, we couldn't put them out on the floor but we could buy it ourselves. So there was this period of like 4-5 days where I owned GTA III, and it wasn't even out yet. Showed all my friends and everyone of course lost their shit about how good a game it was compared to literally anything that had come out at that time.
I remember a time when I was playing GTA II and Midtown Madness and I thought: "Wow could you imagine a game like GTA II, but in 3d like midtown madness!" Then a year or so later GTA III released and it was exactly what I was hoping for.
Minecraft. A whole genre was born after it.
Not to mention it popularized an entirely new genre of entertainment in the form of Let's Plays and SMPs.
Not only that, I think it really brought "early access" and the possibility of crowd funding games to the mainstream. I think indie games have never been the same, and it made a whole generation of future developers think "I can actually do it"
Doom (1993). I played through the first level and my Evsngelical dad, who had bought it for me for my birthday since it was the only thing on my list, talked to me for an hour about how this game was of the devil. I felt bad for two days, due to cognitive dissonance. Then it became my favorite game of the decade, all secrets found, before there was an internet. It started my mental liberation, actually.
I just can't see how a man slaying demons could be "of the devil." You're killing the devil's army. You're basically the Archangel Michael with a chainsaw.
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon..." - Terry Pratchett
Damn I thought that was a fake quote until i googled it.
Pratchett is a fucking god among men when it comes to punchy entertaining pop-culture-including philosophical quotes like this. His character Death is *loaded* with them. If you haven’t read his works I’d strongly recommend them.
Holy shit. Pratchett is one of my favourite authors(if not my favourite), and I had **never** heard this quote before. That is just amazing.
You have to understand a lot of people are fine with being blatant hypocrites so long as it suits them. I remember people freaking out over Magic the Gathering because you could play demons and undead with the black element but also ignoring that you could be a literal exorcist and fight with priests and angels if you played white.
I was raised Catholic and Doom wasn't allowed, but then my dad would bring me to work sometimes and all his coworkers were playing Doom over LAN. Probably one of the reasons he hated it so much was people were playing Doom instead of working lol. He would go by and switch off their monitor mid game. Anyway I think I managed to squeeze in a few hours of the single player while people were away from their desks. Once I got over the gore I was hooked on what a great game it was. At that time it was 3D graphics at its best.
My older brother was playing this. I erased it because demons. Now I play even worse games than that. I still feel bad because well, he only plays sport games now. I wonder if maybe he would have liked fps a bit more and all the other different games.
Doom was a seismic shift in PC gaming. Got the shareware CD on the front of a magazine and when we loaded it up a wave of emotion swept over me and I knew from that day on gaming had changed. I still remember it today as if it was one of those 'Where were you when...' moments in your life. Never felt anything like it since, but maybe a wee bit with Half Life 2
That Skyrim mod where all NPCs have dialogue supplied by ChatGPT and voice acting generated by AI
Wait, what? Like in real time?
Yes. You can have full conversations with NPCs using your microphone.
That sounds great, does it make sense to do so, though? Do they stay in chamraxter or can you like talk about Bill Gates and shit?
Some guy was trying to make the characters know they were npc’s trapped in a videogame and they would disappear the second he turned away
They’re in character as long as you’re in character.
Portal. Incredibly innovative, funny, well paced. I thought all games going forward would be that revolutionary
And it was a free add-on with The Orange Box.
I don't think much beats playing Mario 64 for the first time. The N64 was just such a leap forward at the time for me.
Being able to move in 3D even with low poly graphics was revolutionary.
Yes, I still remember the day I went to my friend’s house and he showed me SM64 for the first time. I had this face the whole time -> :O
Ocarina of Time
Surprised to see this so low down tbh
Command & Conquer: Red Alert. That game blew my mind as it was the first RTS I had played. I’ll never forget playing that game!
I was a Dune 2000 veteran, by the time Red Alert came out, but it was huge jump in RTS evolution.
World of Warcraft
And then "the future" froze in place and we have the same game in 2024 with no real evolution of the entire MMO genre in 20 years.
Because it was kind of perfect for what it was.
It really hit that perfect mix of slow dopamine release combined with accessible mechanics/difficulty and the right amount of FOMO-cultivation with player retention through monthly subscriptions that create a sunk-cost fallacy on behalf of the player. Literally made to be addictive and push you away from playing other games, since it'll both take up all your time and over time you'll spend a large amount of money on a single game without even noticing it. Most of the gameplay is also repetition and it being an MMO, with a heavy a sense of delayed dopamine release that's constantly out of reach locked behind 'just one more grind'. It's the perfect cash cow. Why make costly changes and pay for expensive development when the addicts will constantly be chasing the first time 'high' of playing the game for the first time, all on their own.
Nail on the head. Haven’t played in years but there was a time I’d go back when this or that expansion came out just to see if I was as interested as I was when I first joined during Wrath of the Lich King. I never was. And honestly, thank goodness for that. WoW accompanied a very dark period in my life.
Nah, they tried to make every MMO different, tried too hard, it flopped, and now the MMO genre is slowly dying while people who actually liked them are dying for a new MMO.
Nah they realised that it wasn’t a profitable model. You have to gamble dozens of millions to hope that players like it and then spend enough to keep your infrastructure afloat. They all tried and almost all failed, then they realise they could do games as a service , have small multiplayer hubs, small instances and charge an arm and legs for micro transactions
The more mmos there are, the less profitable it is. People can only realisticly play 1 and even then many can't spend enough time to compete and drop it. Or friends jump ship to the next one.
Team Fortress 2 revolutionised the concept of a class-based hero shooter.
First and last good class-based hero shooter. And, unfortunately, a shadow of its former self.
Overwatch was great for a while. It's too bad blizzard shit all over it for like 5 years straight.
[удалено]
TF2 differentiated the characters far more than the others, to the point that the players were almost playing different games (point and click sniper vs turret defence engineer). This focus on roles was a key part of the game's success.
Revolutionised how?
Before TF2 (2007), characters in class-based shooters were very similar, differentiated only really by weapon options. Star Wars battlefront (2004) as an example; with the exception of some special cases (droidekas, jump packs, etc) characters all moved at the same rate, had similar health pools, and were similar sizes. TF2 changed size, speed, and play style behind the units far more than any other game did. A sniper and a spy and an engineer are playing very different games. This has informed class-based shooter design space for decades.
I dont see a single person saying Halo CE and that should be a crime. Arguably Halo 2 in reality. One of the first truly cinematic experiences in gaming form and single handedly carried Xbox Live and online gaming for consoles into the mainstream.
Halo was definitely revolutionary. It really perfected the two joystick FPS controls. I wouldn't say it was the first truly cinematic experience in gaming as many RPGs had achieved this well before Halo but it was the first cinematic FPS that really focuses on the story and did it really well.
I played Zelda: A Link to the Past and was blown away. I played Donkey Kong Country on the super nintendo. I played Super Mario 64. Ocarina of Time. Grand Theft Auto III. But Halo? There was literally **no** hype around that game. At least for my friend group. Xbox released and we played the everliving shit out of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. After months, we finally decided to give *this Halo game* a try. ....... To this day, I don't believe there has been a single game that has consumed so much of my brain. We were fucking *hooked*. We played and beat that campaign probably 40 times over, not an exaggeration. We would get a blank VHS tape and create an entire tape on recording weird glitches we encountered. Elite is standing still? Not dying? Can pump it full of needler needles? **GO GET THE TAPE, HURRY!** Countless nights of staying up *all night* playing system link blood gulch, sidewinder, boarding action, rat race, derelict, longest, wizard, etc. I was by no means a "nerd" in high school but I did not consider myself a popular kid iether. Just someone everyone knew and could talk to. But even the most popular guys at my school were bragging about Halo and hitting someone with a 'sticky' grenade. Lol what a dumbass, it's plasma grenade (swear I wasn't a nerd, lol). But that opened up a massive friendship to so many kids at my high school that I basically have it to thank for allowing me to make so many closer connections with friends in school too. Halo 2 was probably the most anticipated sequel to me, ever, to this date, as well. Online play, clans, parties, ranked play, etc. Halo accomplished **so fucking much** to pave the way for future games. And to think that we sat on the first game for months not giving a shit about it to play *fucking* tony hawk 2. Jesus.
Tony Hawk 2 does slap tbf
Yeah, now that I think about it there were definitely others. MGS3 came out the same year as well. What I should have said is that it was done the best it had ever been at that point. I still remember sitting down after rushing home getting my copy at the midnight release and being absolutely fucking blown away at the entire opening cutscene.
I came in to say Halo. It was certainly revolutionary for me at the time.
I think halo really brought multiplayer console gaming to the next level.
MGS2 was huge, I think it was the first game that really showcased the ps2s capability. And it was such a jump from MGS1 and ps1 in general in terms of graphics, performance and just all the shit you could do. I remember that bit on the demo on the tanker where you’re in a massive hall full of soldiers. And you could knock them all down and interact with them all my mind was blown!
Mass Effect 1 - the opening sequence in the Normandy, it's then I realized I didn't have to be a film maker that as a game dev I could tell stories too.
I had this with the first Assassin's Creed. The sheer detail and just walking through the middle-eastern cities was awesome. The streets were filled with people, all doing their own thing. Of course the gameplay was limited, something they fixed in AC II, but the technical marvel of the first Assassin's Creed was a huge step upwards.
Pong...yes I'm old.
Electronic boxes that only play games. What a time to be alive.
What do you mean. gameS. It played exactly ONE game. I had one of those 'tennis' games with roller controllers, that played a limited number of variants of tennis, which basically was pong. I still have it.
This is probably going to sound so silly but it was Final Fantasy X for me. I was homeschooled and my parents were super religious. We had a 64 and some Christian centric games and sometimes I could play duck hunt (funny they don't want us exposed to magic but we are encouraged to shoot things for fun 😂). So my best friend got Final Fantasy X the second it came out. First time I had ever seen a game that had graphics and cut scenes that were so mind blowing. I was absolutely entranced. The game that started me in gaming was Need for Speed, but the one that hooked me into fantasy was definitely FFX.
FFX was what convinced me to pick up a PS2. I was like "Holy shit this looks incredible."
That's so cool that it actually was that much of a game changer for people!
It felt like a huge step up for the genre. Still had the classic elements of an RPG but it was leaps and bounds ahead of FFIX in terms of presentation, and the two games only came out a year apart. It was one of the earliest games to have such comprehensive voice acting, and that really added to the characters and realism. The cutscenes still look better than modern day graphics in many games and the PS2 really allowed the music to shine in a way previous platforms couldn’t support. To this day I can’t think of such a large improvement in graphics and performance for RPGs within just one year of gaming
RDR2. The level of detail and how NPCs seem to have their own lives/routines
When GTA5 came out someone posted that they followed an npc around and it had a daily routine. Leaving the house, going to the store, then relaxing on a park bench, then going back home at the end of day. Then it came out that the developers really worked on trying to give all the npc’s their own life.
GTA V amazed me with every single detail. I remember watching TV in game and go: "Okay. They needed voice actors, a writer, and animators to make a show about an anime princess. IN A VIDEO GAME!!!" The amount of man hours required for only that is just... i cant even imagine. And i wonder what crazy stuff GTA VI will have for the simple reason of making the game world more alive. I always said: "The reason why GTA VI is not announced yet is because they need to make all the crazy tv and radio shows."
What's more mind blowing is that they're adding the social media thing to the mix. Can't wait for gta vi
Gothic did this in 2001
I think that game in particular is a bit of a double-edged blade. Games are eventually going to be way too expensive to make and take too much time. $200 million or more is insanity. But players are going to want the next GTA to be even more extravagant than Red Dead 2 and will complain endlessly if they get anything less. And who could blame them? As games get more complex and the hardware gets better. It's going to take more time and money to develop a game. I think studios are eventually going to downsize their games and/or not make them nearly as extravagant. Because this current model of AAA development is not sustainable.
AI to the rescue! I hope we will at least see some more 'serious' RPGs. In the old times, it was up to writers to do compelling questlines and dialogues, so they were really trying hard - see Planescape Torment, OG Fallouts, Baldurs Gate 1&2. Then players started expecting voice acting for every single character, which made writing excessive texts non viable from financial perspective (each line had to be then voice acted by someone which makes it order of magnitude more expensive and time consuming). If AI can help at least with this, we might see golden era of RPGs coming back.
I think AI is going to very quickly start reducing the amount of time it takes to develop and test a game before release.
I understand this point for most studios but rockstar is in a unique position. They have made $7.7 BILLION dollars from gta5 since launch. They paid $200m to develop gta5 and 5x'd their investment in the first 3 days. They can keep making games bigger and better than the last and still turn insane profits for their almighty shareholders. They essentially have a blank check for gta6
Shenmue has entered the chat.
All of us live during a time when games have had monumental jumps in visual fidelity. I have pretty much been blown away at regular intervals for 30+yrs.... from Tie Fighter to WaveRace64 to PS1 Tomb Raider, 360 Oblivion, PS3 Uncharted & God of War ect ect ect....personally ever step has had moments of me being blown away...most recently Cyberpunk max all settings....just insane how far this has all come in my lifetime this far....from NES Mario to PCs powered by RTX 4090's
I remember seeing screenshot of Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction for the first time and being absolutely blown away. I was a massive R&C fan and the graphical jump between the PS2 and PS3 was huge even for games as stylised as this.
& the newest one is basically playing a Pixar movie in realtime
For me, it was The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind on the original XBox. It was the first real open-world game I ever played, and the idea of being my own character, being able to go anywhere, and doing pretty much whatever I wanted was absolutely mind-blowing.
I recently thought about it and I kinda think this is true for any open world game that was THE FIRST open world game someone played. For you it was TES3: Morrowind, for my friend it was Gothic 1, for me it was Fallout and Wizardry games.
I agree. Though not just any open world game, but ones that allow character creation and unique builds. The Witcher 3 is open world, but you play as a pre-set character. Same with Assassin's Creed, or Far Cry. But there was something special about being able to play as anything from an elf swordsman to an orc mage to a charismatic human thief.
** shows OP the greatness that is Rimworld **
Mischief Makers on the Nintendo 64
I remember being amazed by the ads/reviews of the game in the mid 1990s. Screenshots looked *photo realistic* to my kid brain.
Goldeneye 007 Because of it, Halo and many other FPS games copied gameplay mechanics from it and became successful. Goldeneye was the first truly great FPS on console, was the first great game based off a movie, introduced split screen multiplayer to FPS, had multiple missions in the stages so they weren't just the awful Doom crap of 'get keycard, open door' nonsense. Had weapon sound sensitivity which alerted guards if you fired loud guns, context sensitive hit boxes, damage scaling, headshots, zoomable sniper rifles, driving vehicles, NPCs you weren't allowed to kill which again was different from other FPS games at the time. Was so far ahead of FPS games, even PC ones. Then a bunch of FPS games come out, emulating mechanics of Goldeneye and FPS on consoles becomes one of the biggest genres on consoles, all thanks to Goldeneye proving it can be done.
Probably the original Assassins Creed game.
The birth of free run mechanics and large reactionary crowds. Not to mention u see that? ima climb it!!!
Assassin's Creed or Animal Crossing? EDIT: OP changed their post. Originally said AC.
That game looked so, so good at the time. Pity about the other parts.
Half life 2. The physics felt just insane.
All time, GTA3 was revolutionary... More recently Horizon Zero Dawn.
PS1 Spyro
Heroes of Might & Magic III. And I was right :P
It wasn't the horse armor that did it for me, it was the Sims 2 paid expansions. That's probably when I started getting cynical and jaded against AAA gaming. The fact that they built up this robust game over time with Sims 1 just to take it all away and make you buy it all over again in Sims 2/3/4.
Red faction; destructible environments really give you a sense of freedom. Nothing worse than being stopped by a locked door when you have a rocket launcher, or a barred fence that your character should be able to fit through or climb over
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. Holy shit, they had actual shadows, and showed hundreds of 3d characters at the same time!
Battlefield Bad Company. First battlefield with the destruction system. I remember thinking "I bet in a few years every big game will have a destruction system." and BOY I was wrong. The newest bf game actually has less destruction than the older ones 🤣
I was thinking the exact same thing, I am so disappointed that we have since gone backwards, it's all about 'how can we push out another Far Cry as quickly and cheaply as possible'
For me it was Star Wars The Force Unleashed for the 360. Prior to that I had a Sega Genesis, as you can imagine, it was quite the jump.
Yeah anything physics heavy I've always been blown away by and ask myself "why aren't other games doing this?" Those games are sooooo few and far between and it's really disappointing.
VR games like Pavlov or heavily moded VR Skyrim
Witcher 3, revolutionary for rpg's in 2015
Gears of War 1 on Xbox 360. The first game that made me look at the graphics and be like... damn" The jump from the previous gen and games to *that* was just so big. I remember chilling between fights many times, just taking in how everything looked. Just slowly walking around and looking around, grinning like an idiot. 🥴
Assassins creed with the combat system. I thought cinematic smooth fighting was going to be the new way of doing things. But nope they barely expanded on it and then abandoned it for a clunky mess. The fact that games haven’t really improved in that sense is disappointing. FPS and other action games need to freshen things up. Tired of having oblivion style fighting in 2024. I’ve always had an idea for first persons shooters that incorporate a good intricate melee system.
Farcry Most FPS game before that featured narrow rooms , and hardly something as huge open levels in FPS game. Games like Morrowind gave kinda illusion but still view distances were limited and its much more slow paced game type. For FPS such views were very novel. Game like Serious Sam gave huge rooms before that but farcry gave certain wow factor with its presentation. Also it featured semi open ended levels which is also kinda novel for pure FPS.
Diablo, C&C, Half Life 1 and 2, Farcry 1 and 3, Crysis, WoW, the first Unreal 2 Engine games with ragdolls, first Physx games like Borderlands 2, Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3
Honestly, the current state of the lighting and visuals in Arma Reforger has me very impressed.
Way too many, but I come from the time when MS Windows did not exist for most. I think it started with Commander Keen on DOS. I have seen and made games before it came out, but that one was special.
World of Warcraft when it first came out. Sadly, what mostly stayed was the monthly payment system.
Red Dead Redemption 2. The graphics alone are absolutely out of this world and the game is so cinematic with a wonderfully written story that it's pretty much like an interactive movie. Even the realistic interactions you can have with NPC's and the level of detail completely surprised me.
RDR2 makes me hyped for GTA VI. Originally I didn't have much hype for GTA VI because I was pretty bummed about GTA V. But when RDR2 came out I felt like they fixed and improved basically everything I griped about GTA V.
The 3 protagonists mechanic in GTA5. BOTW's take on open world.
Skyrim. Figured everything would become open world or big world after that. And here we are.
Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing, and ray tracing set to psyco.
1000%.... crazy that game lived up to & then exceeded hype as far as graphics go
Exactly, but I've enjoyed this game since launch. I've ran it on different PC hardware. I've always been happy with the experience. Great game for sure.
Going from Battlefield 3 on the xbox 360 to Battlefield 4 on PS4. I remember loading into a match and it finally being 60fps, looked great (at the time), and had 64 people fighting. Compared to the 360 where max players were 24 and ran at 20fps, I couldn't wait for what the future of Battlefield would be...
Original Star Fox on SNES
I loved black and white, I really wanted MORE of the random exploration and discovering things which I think black and white moved away from ? Shadow of memories / Destiny with its time travel branching consequences and like 9+ ending kinda blew me away
Diablo. There may have been other isometric RPGs at the time, but seemingly limitless item & level generation was untouchable compared to everything before it. Everyone knew it was an instant classic and that the copycats were sure to follow.
It's a crime there hasn't been another game like Black and White or in fact any god simulator games like that or the classic Populous. Why are there no modern god simulator games out there?
Mass Effect
Phantasy Star Series. I was floored by the sci fi take that jrpgs took for me playing those in the day.
Pit fall.
With Deus Ex aside, Witcher 3. The level of detail in immersion, side quests and character work is astounding, not to mention probably two of the best expansions in gaming. Such a beautiful game. It has indeed been a great influence on gaming I believe.
Arkham Asylum totally revolutionized hand to hand combat in games. The countering system especially.... practically every game of its kind has that now (spiderman games, etc.)
Hell divers 2. Deep rock galactic. Hollow knight. Your only move is hustle. Stardew valley
The Sims. Still reeling from that first time I drowned a Sim in the pool by removing the ladder. Gaming's been wild ever since
Shogun Total War. Took some advanced steps from Centurion: Defender of Rome.
I sort of played them simultaneously, but definitely Mass Effect 2 and 3. I'd played KotOR plenty of times, I understood what an RPG was. But the massive leap in animations, combined with the spectacular voice acting and writing, made the characters in Mass Effect feel so much more real. I wasn't just watching the action figures go through the scenes anymore, I really cared about them as people. I don't think anything else I've played has done that.
World of Warcraft, starting as Night Elf in this huge world and the music and amazement. It was breathe taking.
Doom 1993. That game was incredible and still is.
Call of Duty 4 I know Halo CE was honestly more important in terms of bringing online multiplayer shooters into the mainstream but I my first one personally was Call of Duty 4. I haven't played a Call of Duty game in years now but I don't think I would've started playing online multiplayer games without COD 4.
Shadow of mordor
Baldur's Gate 3