So, I think it must be noted that the ongoing complications brought on by COVID are likely why today's Xbox Series X reveal was a bit underwhelming. AC: Valhalla promised gameplay, and what we got were snippets of in-engine animations without any actual gameplay footage.
That said, the graphics we saw were really not of the generational leap expected of a next-gen montage. I remember the Killzone: Shadow Fall and Ryse: Son of Rome trailers at E3 the year the PS4 and Xbox One released, and while both were decidedly mediocre "ooo, look at my pretty new console" games, the leap in graphical fidelity compared to the best of PS3 and Xbox 360 was unmistakable.
I'm wondering if the mid-generation releases of the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X are partly to blame for this showing being somewhat underwhelming from a graphical standpoint. Sure, there was some ray-tracing and screens cluttered with as many game objects as humanly possible, but looking at the actual textures and animations (lip-syncing, character movement, the spraying of dirt, etc) are not anything close to the kind of advancement people typically expect from a next-gen console.
The PS3 and Xbox 360 era was by far the longest console generation the game industry has had, and by the end of 2013, developers had long since maxed out every bit of graphical power those consoles could pump out. While I don't think anybody could reasonably complain about companies offering upgraded versions of their system, so game developers could continue to push the limits of what they could accomplish with modern hardware, I do wonder if the allure of next-gen consoles has suffered because of it. Where the PS4/Xbox One were shown off in comparison to hardware that released in 2005 and 2006, the Xbox Series X and PS5 are only upgrades from hardware that released within the last few years.
Side note: some of the ray-tracing and added particle effects in those trailers make some of those games look completely unplayable. The aggressive lighting and overuse of moving game objects in Bright Memory looks more frustrating than functional.
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