Am I the only one who doesn't really like how, for lack of better word, 'Higher Definition' characters look nowadays...

...

Prove me wrong.

After the Ps2/Xbox development costs have skyrocketed because of muh' grafix. Sure, having Max's leather jacket wrinkle according to his movement looks nice, but imagine the hours of work it must have taken, just to look nice.

This particular example is extremely misleading, rather than false. There's a rule that most modellers use for this; if it's going to be seen as a silhouette it needs to be modeled with polygons, otherwise it's a texture map. Subdividing that characters face will give you no more detail than it already has, but if you add the newly acquired polygon budget to another part of the game - maybe the environment, maybe it's his weapon or maybe it's a part of the detail on his costume - that's when you'll find your budget bloating.

Yes but as I said, there is a rule for this. That type of detail is better off as a texture, but perhaps adding more shape to that model (which is badly budgeted and would never get past any real qc for various reasons. Separating the different items of clothing into different meshes would have been a good start) might make it look better. Regardless, you would never need to use 40 thousand polygons for a simple bust, and even if you did - modern graphics processing is less constrained by polygon budgets and more reliant on systems like texture streaming as has touched on.

I think it's the opposite. Devs are trying to cram as much shit as they can, but also have to optimize it to look as realistic as possible because they're marketing on 3rd rate hardware so they resort to doing all sorts of tricks and shit to get it to run at a stable framerate and also look practical, as opposed to just coming up with a algorithm that can randomize a bunch of detail in logical locations.

Dante was an example of GOOD modern model, right?

What if… you're both right?

I've always felt that but never thought about it, thanks for the post.

I suppose.

Pic related is another one of the modern models that I don't mind (Maybe not so much RE4 for the too gray outfit)

Burden of proof, user.

He already explained his reasoning. You now need to refute it.