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

Am I the only one who doesn't really like how, for lack of better word, 'Higher Definition' characters look nowadays? Don't get me wrong, there are some times when they can look right and not feel like generic copypaste male protagonist but there is something about the older models that despite having things like fingers smashed together or the face being a 256 x 256 texture that is charming compared to their more updated counterparts.

that's nice user thanks for sharing

The more polygons you have, the harder it is to be more expressive.

Take a cartoon character and draw it hyper realistic, it would look disgusting. If you go for realism you're only being held back by reality

Does someone still have that image of a head statue of some guy at different polygon levels?

It's not the pixels' fault. Sam Lake did put on a really unique expression. The other Max Paynes look and act like generic middle aged crime flick actors.

As for Dante, I think the old Dante looks like a twink. I like the newer one better.

I've seen it. The more polys you add, the level of detail is improved less and less. I'm saying that the more polys you add, the closer you get to a "human form", so if you try to be expressive, you land in the uncanny valley

You're referring to this image

The problem with this image is how it was generated. It was generated by taking the 60 000 poly model and subdividing it

The problem is that, that's not how you design models. Adding more polygons magically doesn't add more details. When you add more polygons you have to manually add details yourself. Someone even made a mockup of how he was able to add more details to the higher poly mesh.

In reality games have very complex systems now where they dynamically shrink and raise the amount of polygons as you get closer to them. So we don't live in an era where polycounts really matter as much as how much stuff you're trying to render.

I'd suggest downloading Blender and trying to make a person model and you'll see exactly why the diminishing returns image is false.

This

Something people don't usually realize is it's not the poly count that really matters but the art style and the art direction. Max Payne had a charming art style that was largely because of how low budget the game was.

With Max Payne 3 and Rockstar they have a deliberate look where they want the game to resemble an action movie that the developers are fans of. Like when I first saw screenshots of Max Payne 3 it reminded me a lot of various modern Die Hard movies.

Pics very related, OP. even if two of the games on the list a shit, they're excellent examples

I fucking love older, low-res graphics to the point of it becoming autistic. It's got an emptiness, a clarity and a honest to goodness beauty that modern games just cannot grasp.

Nowadays, games are usually nothing but a visual clusterfuck, or at best, bland - and the end result is a real lack of iconic imagery and striking vistas. A few manage to look beautiful - and more often than not, guess what?

They don't overcrowd the screen with unnecessary visual filler.

It's not false though, you just didn't get the point and started grasping at straws.

You can model every single hair on that guy's head separately, and every single piece of string from his suit, but it'll barely look any better. We reached the maximum practical amount of polygons over 10 years ago, yet the devs keeps bloating the models more and more each year because the normalfags fall for the same marketing trick every damn time, and no-one believes the emperor has no damn clothes on.