Going against the current of the race for photorealism, current video games offer a deliberately retro aesthetic reminiscent of the titles of the first Playstation console launched 30 years ago, to play with the nostalgic fiber of fans.
The career of Bryan Singh, who worked on box office hits like the last of us (2013) or Unexplored 4 (2016), demonstrates this trend. After the pandemic he became independent to create, together with his wife Crista Castro, Fear the spotlightan adventure and horror production that pays tribute to the first parts of the sagas resident Evil AND silent hill, released on PlayStation 1.
“This nostalgia irrigates our work”
“The graphics weren’t very realistic, but that’s what made them so effective: you had to imagine certain details yourself. That made things even scarier,” he adds. However, this “retro look” is as much “an aesthetic choice as it is a practical decision” and he allowed his wife to handle the graphic part alone, he explains.
In the mid-2000s, the indie scene relied heavily on the technique known as “pixer art”, with a highly pixelated aesthetic worthy of the Super Nintendo console era of the early ’90s. It then evolved into 3D abstraction. from the Playstation era. . From now on, dozens of shooting, horror and platform games adopt this retro style on the PC game sales platform Steam and increasingly take over home consoles.
“For a long time we looked at the graphics of that time with negative eyes,” rewinds Hugo Terra, co-creator of the “Game Next Door” YouTube channel. For this game design specialist, the return of this “ugly 3D” may seem surprising because it refers to “a somewhat complicated era” of video games.
“With the arrival of 3D on the Playstation 1, a technological revolution occurred” to which developers had to adapt, sometimes delivering unstable games, with basic settings and characters that were difficult to handle. A pitfall that their heirs will be able to avoid because they benefit from the experience acquired during the last 30 years in development.
“Break the codes”
The appearance of 3D has also made it possible to invent new genres. “We find this desire to break the codes in the current independent scene,” says Hugo Terra, “particularly in relation to an AAA production (big budget games).editor’s note) which is extremely calibrated.”
This is what prompted Julien Eveillé, developer of the German studio Crytek, to try the experiment with LimitA dark and scary adventure game created in your spare time. Released in mid-November, it sold more than 7,000 copies in a few days, a notable level for this type of production, and received the jury prize at the Indie Game Contest, an independent video game festival.
Its creator took mimicry to the point of recreating the visualization errors of the time with modern tools, “for pure nostalgic pleasure.”
Proof of this openness to a broader audience: Fear the spotlightyou were chosen by Blumhouse Productions, the production company of the films Paranormal Activity (2007) and Go out (2017), as the launch title for its new video game publishing label.
Source: BFM TV
