Why are Games So Dark?

By far, the most impressive visual achievement in modern videogames is the lighting system. It can turn fairly unremarkable settings into eye-popping visual feasts for the eyes. But far too many times I have to wonder- where is the lighting??

I have posted pictures of a few games for reference.

Crysis 3 for Xbox 360

Last of Us Part 2

Resident Evil 4 remake

Notice how much more pronounced the lighting is in the first game? It gives a level of depth and contrast which gives a "Wow" effect that the others are lacking

Resident Evil 4 especially- where is the "wow" factor? With the incredible contrast ratios televisions are capable of, and the graphics that modern consoles and PCs are capable of producing, why are developers resorting to such drab settings?

Technology is still a long ways away from realistic character models or animations. But they can certainly produce convincing lighting. I just wish more games took advantage of it.

hide weakness in game engine.

most tv passable contrast.

(hdr and display tech a rabbit hole subject)

Resident Evil lack of color and focus on the darkness is to heighten the tension which is an artistic/ aspect of horror. The lack of light is intentional. Suppose to make the game look lifeless and unsettling.

This isn't new to the recent RE Engine games either. Here is a game from 2002_

The original Resident Evil Remake on Gamecube.

@RSM-HQ: that game also utilized lighting moreso than RE4, so that the contrast made the darkness seem even darker while making the image pop. RE4 is desperately in need of some lighting

I wouldn't say games are necessarily dark as a matter of nature, but by artistic choice.

Many games tend to be serious or grim or horror, and all those benefit from a darker palette. It also makes more sense for games set in pre-industrial setting, or games that take place during a post-societal collapse where there is no electricity.

There's plenty of bright games as well.

Also this.

The more fog and darkness there is, the less distant detail needs to be rendered. At least that's what I've read.

It's not really a negative, it's just making the best with what you have. You can render more detail up close and then just say it was an artistic choice to have everything so dark, win-win.

look at early ps 1 and 2 games. Hardware just was not their for enough draw distance.

I doubt that is true for Resident Evil, as it uses the RE Engine, which is also used for Street Fighter VI and is that game lacking in color? hardily. The demo is proof of that.

(not related but the character creator seems pretty ambitious for a Fighting game)_

Every current and upcoming game from Capcom runs of the RE Engine. This includes Monster Hunter, Exoprimal, and Dragon's Dogma 2.

Resident Evil happens to be dark and foggy because it fits the games tone.

@patriotplayer90 Resident Evil 4 Remake looks great in my opinion, but its clearly a cross-generational title. It's not winning any "best graphics eva" awards am sure, but the art direction is spot-on and very good as a long-time fan of the franchise.

@RSM-HQ: Those images from REMake actually reenforce the point @patriotplayer90: is making. Dark scenery, but with lighting that adds contrast to the image.

Back in late gen 6/early gen 7, there were lots of complaints about overuse of bloom lighting. I never got it, bloom lighting is awesome. Same with lens flair. It's why Blur holds up so well visually.

Old games that make good use of lighting hold up well visually.

@judaspete: I'm not really familiar with various lighting techniques, I just look at the tone and mood Resident Evil games are aiming for, and seems both games captured that really well artistically, for its franchise few games in the series can claim to be on-par. And I don't think either is known for being particularly colorful, and they are both notably dark.

That's why both use a light source for various sections of both games. They are not intending to pop with vibrant colors.

@RSM-HQ: They don't have vibrant colors, but the REMake images you posted have high contrast. Most of scene is dark, but the harsh bright lights create highlights around objects in the image. You don't get as much of that in the RE4 pictures posted here. Despite being fully rendered in 3D, the image looks kinda flat. Ironically, the 2D backgrounds in the pictures from REMake seem more 3 dimensional here.

@judaspete: Well I would be lying if I found OPs screenshots a good representation of the recent remake. I've played both games pretty extensively and find them both graphically appealing games and fit the tone of what the franchise aims for. And they both do spend most the time in the darkness scrapping and any sign of lighting in the distance. Furthermore I just don't think the lighting in 4R is that bad. It's just rare because it wasn't designed to be a colorful game.

The ones I picked for Gamecube Remake are admittedly shots that I think are really nice, as some one who has played that game countless times. I had my eyes on some others but I restricted it to three lol.

The ones OP picked for the thread are just not very good honestly, outside the low-res small image, the others are from the opening hour too so representing little the game offers in terms of setting and day/night transitioning. The low-res one is based during the first night scene and actually has some impressive use of lighting, rain and fog effects are more than I expected. It's all very nice visually.

I'll share some variety in Remake 4 though so you can better decide for yourself_

Screenshots can only show so much when it was intended to be explored and seen in motion, both games look great for what they aim to achieve and that's the hill I will die on ツ

It more logical to me that game supposed to maintain the players to stay for long time. bright light seems not really comforting for a long run. i also frequently need some companion to talk in the game to maintain my sanity. if there is no friend along, i usually turn on my streaming device and start playing eventho there is no one watching. i also explore some gaming tools, my favorite one is eklipse.gg to convert my gaming clip into shareable social media format.

Big boy games have to be dark to pander to adults.

I think it comes down to one of two reasons. 1. Artistic choice or 2. to hide mediocre textures and lack of detail in the surrounding environment. If the devs are proud of the work they've put into the details of the levels then they'll want it lit up to show it off.

Don't you know? Dark=mature!

Also, with the obvious exception of RE4 (which is horror, as mentioned), the dark games tend to be American developed. Japanese devs continue to acknowledge the utility of brightness, much like how they kept the rest of the color spectrum alive when the west was making every game as brown as possible.

I think it’s because of the proliferation of OLED TVs, images with very dark levels can now be displayed fairly well; but of course that means anyone with a regular LED/LCD set is out of luck.

Its the small text that gets me. We dont all play at a monitor. Gaming on consoles should have the options

Sometimes it's a design choice but I suspect a lot of the time it's to hide mediocre graphics work.

@judaspete said:

Old games that make good use of lighting hold up well visually.

Hey, Spielberg was doing lens flare decades before Abrams 😋😁😂

Are OLED's really that much better in that regard? Do they make OLED monitors, or do you kind of need to get a larger TV?

but then you have games like hfw2,ratchet and clank and more very colorful and bright.

those are dark type of games you listed

you expect res4 and last of us have candy land colors lol?

@mrbojangles25: Ha! There probably isn't anything JJ Abrams has ever done that Spielberg didn't do better. But Star Trek 2009 got a lot of shit for overusing lens flair, which I did not agree with. Might have missed the point of Star Trek, but the visuals were great.

@gifford38: In fairness Resident Evil 4 Remake does offer a lot of optional filters so if someone wanted it to be more vibrant and colorful they can. It's not creators intent, but they can.

Yes, but they are more expensive.

Yeah did some perusing earlier after posting. Looks like they exist, but they're very pricy. Like..."why bother" expensive.

The good news is it looks like they will become more commonplace in a year or two, seems like there are more options coming.

I wonder if the factory lines were just set up for TV's mostly and anything monitor-sized was like a special thing and they charged more.

Definitely something I'm going to look forward to in the future though.