Two FPS Games So Realistic They’re Scary
Oftentimes in gaming spheres and reviews, the first thing we leap to criticize in a game is the graphics, for being broken, or too stylistic or buggy, but I’ve got a feeling that’s all soon to change.
So, in a changing world of deepfakes so realistic and uncanny that it can make AI presidents play Minecraft together, it only makes sense that gaming would start to follow the future and get real.
Two new games have been released this past week, with graphics so high-definition, that some claim that they will bring about a new genre altogether.
Unrecord is a ‘Go-Pro’ story-driven shooter, rich with equally intricate moral choices and ever-intensifying action. The game uses it’s hyper-realism to make the tension all the more real, the death of NPCs and enemies alike more heavy, and the player all the more immersed.
Upon the trailer’s release, the internet did what it does best. Floods of comments were in disbelief and skepticism of the trailer’s realism, aside from some blurred faces and dialogue options.
The developer even had to release footage of the game from Unreal Engine 5 to prove to the online masses that it was in fact. Real. Or not real. Realistically fake. Yeah.
On the other side of the Uncanny Valley coin, Paranormal Tales is a found-footage, first-person horror game, drawing inspiration from Kojima’s P.T. this makes use of it’s hyper realism in a different way, to f@~# with the player basically. (EXPAND)
One commenter puts it best:
The game is reminscent of games like Slenderman: The Arrival, which used the perspective of a camcorder held by the protagonist.
But how do these games achieve such realism? By making it realistically poor.
Let me explain:
The idea of ‘high-graphics’ as we know them today is the idea of an RTX boosted 4k HD VR experience, and that’s a lot of letters. It is likely impossible to achieve photo-realism with such high settings, however, with a few clever techniques and the use of an in-game perspective like ‘bodycams’ to allow the game’s consumers to blur the lines between what is real, and what is made to look like a realistic, yet in reality we would class as ‘poor’ footage.
For the technically inclined both games make use of a ‘fish eye’ effect, that slightly stretches the edges of the screen (An effect shared with Go-Pro’s and other bodycams). Paranormal Tales builds on this further and makes use of a more static-like effect.
Unrecord takes it a step even farther, by adjusting the exposure level to match that of reality. When a camera is in a bright light like the sun, it tends to over-expose, bringing an abundance of light through the lens. On the other hand when brought into a darker scene, the camera would adjust to bring the shadows into view, lowering the amount of light brought in.
Paranormal Tales doesn’t do this, which isn’t a bad thing, it doesn’t need to. Instead they keep the character in darkness, creating fear by cloaking their surroundings, yet maintaining their edge.
If you are looking for more in-depth technical analysis, Josh Toonen’s (A VFX artist with Unreal experience in Engine 5) video here goes into much deeper dive than I ever could.
What does this mean for the future of games graphics?
Will we get to a Sword Art Online-esqe level of full-body immersion? Probably not for a few years, but I’m eagerly awaiting the release of these games, especially since Unrecord is it’s developer DRAMA’s debut game on steam.
