what many anons mean when they use this term, is that the developers made the absolute best product out of the limited technology they had. pic related: its a genius move to use prerendered sprites to simulate some depth for the graphics. it was revolutionary for its time. the artdirection plays a huge role in this.
comparing it to newer games isn't really fair,since new games are barely able to even have soul, since we're to technologically advanced now, that there barely are any limits that make the games appear breathtaking. Also, zoomers, aren't able to relate either, since they never experienced the huge impact such games had back then, when they are used to modern technology.
its realy all about the colors. dramatic lights and shades seem to be really soulful. I notice older games tended to use deeper purples and stuff and different sky colors. Modern games tend to have a very homogenized color scheme, washed out
Sebastian Peterson
Soul is a moralizer's catch-all for "thing I can relate to." A thing with soul is a thing I can relate to, and which I feel is superior to other things as a result of that.
Jaxson Cruz
>Soul Game I like >Soulless Game I don't like
Jordan Gutierrez
Is Hollow Knight the most soulful videogame to ever exist?
Jordan Rivera
It's a buzzword for liking something.
Connor Hughes
Soul is nostalgia
Easton King
Clean graphics=Soulless The game needs to have some level of blurriness to have soul
Brayden Johnson
Soul is lasting impact. Could be due to a unique art style, poor voice acting, out-of-the-ordinary game design etc. Creativity and unique experiences.
Xavier Gutierrez
We get used to messy and unclean works That and surreal graphics nowdays a charm that got lost in time
Here is my view of the objective terminology of soul. It needs to fit these criteria:
It garners age and loses durability over time- There is a term for this aesthetic called wabi-sabi. In Japanese, wabi-sabi means that a piece of art has aged and shown wear and tear, but that's what brings out the beauty of it. You are able to look back on the product and appreciate it for its roughness, simplicity, authenticity, and overall imperfect charm, which stems from the limited technological tools that were available to make it at the time. It quite literally defines this aesthetic as "soulful". Read more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
Graphical/technological limitations- Similarly to how Wabi-sabi is attained, ambition and creativity to the past was typically born from technological limitations that challenged developers to think more creatively in how they portray their worlds in order to make them more believable; furthermore, it encouraged them to actually make the gameplay fun because selling purely on the graphics was pretty much impossible.
Ambition and creativity- Early game development did not have the restrictions of the many political outlets trying to censor games or mold agendas, furthermore people were much less butthurt and offended by say, some character's color skin (like Jynx). Additionally, the middle man is included in everything now and marketing has taken a much larger priority than the actual game.
Cooper Gonzalez
This. I love lowres games because of this. Pixelated 3D is full of soul
Isaiah Brooks
i agree. this is probably why i find the PS2 GTAs so soulful, they have a lot of bluriness and haziness that gives the games a really rich look
Caleb Jackson
tl:dr >old games are shit and have limitations >this is charming >soul
>modern games pretend to have limitations >this shows the laziness of the developers >soulless
Jackson Turner
the simplicity of graphics in older games just leaves more to the imagination, which is conducive to creating more immersive atmospheres. as soon as you go realistic/high detail, every detail has to be perfect or it takes you out of it immediately
Mason James
Yes pretty much
Sebastian Kelly
>Eva N64 That's not soul user, that's just trash. Stop wasting such a good PVM and put Iron Maiden on that thing.
I kinda feel OP’s image isn’t fair. It’s clear you cherry picked the perfect picture for DKC1 but just a random image for DKCR there are many times DKCR was artistic in its visual and level design.
Nathan Gonzalez
I'm all for video games being taken more seriously as an art from and discussing what makes a game feel inspired.
These "SOUL" conversations are always fucking vomit-inducing on Yea Forums, however, because it UNIRONICALLY has people going OLD = SOUL NEW = SOULLESS, OLD GOOD NEW BAD like this is the deepest most insightful shit ever.
It's so obvious "SOUL" is just nostalgia people have for game they enjoyed as a kid that turned out to be legitimately good and hold up even when you play the game as an adult.
I challenge anyone ITT to give me some modern games (7th generation onward) that have SOUL, instead of just spewing this pseudo-intellectual horseshit.
Carson Harris
They won’t because they can’t give a consistent and logical definition.
Evan Brown
If you have a soul you intrinsically recognize SOUL when you come into contact with it In the turn of the millennia however, they finally ran out of new souls, so anyone born after December 31st 1999 is soulless and cannot recognize SOUL or create soulful works
Brody Bailey
Portal 2
Gavin Gonzalez
Both Eva 64 and Iron Maiden are the best Eva games. Eva 64 is the most impressive Eva game visual-wise. Even if graphics got better with newer systems, Eva 64's art direction, atmosphere and the way it captures the series but "in video game form" is still unmatched.
I unironically think graphical fidelity is nothing but a detriment to video games
Grayson Russell
You are the dumbest motherfucker alive
>composed like a painting (the LOD helps the effect) >the distant gondola station is highlighted against the pastel skybox and the deep blue mountain >the ice is clear and reflective and painted with the color of the sky >the explosion looks like a magical spell >the sky creates the feeling of being safe on a fantasy mountaintop during twilight
>no composition at all (and looks busy since everything has the same amount of detail regardless of distance) >the gondola station is indiscernible against the sky, the distant mountains, the nearby mountain, and the ice, all of which are the same color >the ice is rough and cracked and not reflective, looks like rock >the explosion is realistic and dangerous looking, clashes with the aesthetic >the sky creates the feeling of scaling a bleak rocky mountain during gloomy overcast weather
You are right here. The right one does look far better and more playable.
Isaac Jones
>what many anons mean when they use this term, is that the developers made the absolute best product out of the limited technology they had No, it meant they ahd their sould in it when making it - That they were actively involved in a shared project, not just codemonkeys and asset indians making shit froma checklist for Full Sail students who are ordered around by business suits. Only through passion and involvement can a real love project thrive and become a soulful game. All AAA games these days are the diamtrically opposite of that, and it really shows. Everything looks pretty and realistic, but it's all just produced by checklist orders. Nothing matters and the devs don't care about their product, because it's just a job and doesn't have anything to do with their own personal dreams or ambitions.
>pic related: its a genius move to use prerendered sprites to simulate some depth for the graphics Holy shit, you're a mongoloid. This isn't genius or innovative in any way and also, DKC looks like fucking garbage.
In other words, photo realistic AAA games have soul because they're pushing for more graphics.
Bentley Anderson
It's entirely aesthetic and most of these comparisons go >image with saturated colors >soul >image with washed out colors >soulless
Occasionally some other distinct visual differences is showcased instead, but the soul/soulless meme basically just boils down to older art direction being better than modern art direction
The definition was always clear. A game with soul is a game that evokes the feeling that it was NOT made for money, but simply out of sheer love of games. A game with soul feels like the creators were pouring their hearts into their work, and not just collecting a paycheck. That's it.
Wouldn't say so. I missed a lot of early gaming since I only seemed to get my hands on weird shitty licensed games that no one remembers at the time. Been going through a lot of old games with an emulator and most of them have an actual sense of passion behind them. I think SOUL is a bit of a stupid term to use, although that's nothing new for Yea Forums, but there is something about these games that people will keep looking back on with fondness while newer ones, specially remakes or sequels, will come and go.
Jackson Lopez
Will I get caught if I try and murder the guy who made my mom become depressed?
Logan Reyes
>Worlds >Jamestown >Hydorah >Spelunky >Arcane Dimensions Plenty of indie games have soul
Ian Diaz
Soul is being young and thinking things are new, because they're new to you. Nostalgia for a time not when games were better, but when your outlook on life and perception of the world were more naive and optimistic.
Soulless is being older and having experienced every trope; nothing is new to you anymore and everything feels tired and tainted by your cynical adult worldview. You derive no more enjoyment from things you used to love, so you shitpost about "soul" on the internet instead.
Owen Foster
Did dark souls remastered have less soul than the original version?
William Gonzalez
there is an element of passion in older games you dont get these days just because of how big an industry it is now, but how does that shine through in the games specifically?
Jordan Johnson
this is too fucking real, being an adult sucks shit
Joshua Sullivan
OLD THING GOOD NEW THING BAD
Alexander Reyes
Will we get out in time?
Easton Carter
Red Dead Redemption 2 Breath of the Wild Cuphead Nier Automata Dragon Ball FighterZ Guilty Gear Xrd Asura's Wrath Lolipop chainsaw Travis Strikes back Persona 5 Rayman Legends Dark Souls Splatoon Kingdom Come
Anyone who thinks Soul = Nostalgia is a cynical brainlet unable to enjoy modern things. RDR2 might debatable but I cant help but appreciate all the finer details that made RDR2 enjoyable.
Julian Sanders
Do you realize how big and corporate something like Rare was when DKC (the "soul" example in the OP) was made? They were already one of the largest developers in the UK, and were given an UNLIMITED budget by Nintendo to develop whatever the fuck games they wanted all because their team of code monkeys reverse-engineered the Famicom's programming when the Japs thought it couldn't be done. They were always the face of corporate gaming.
Charles Long
Overall, you get a sense that the team, all 5 people or something, were aware of the limitations and worked together to go beyond them. Nowadays since everything is much more industrialized, the average animator for example won't even see any level design until the game is released, so it's likely they won't be able to incorporate something if they're not told in advance. As it's been said in the thread, the art direction in older games was also better because they knew their limitations. All the established rules we have nowadays for game design came from these old limitations. The only recent "established rule" is that everything is so photorealistic that modern games just paint edges white because it's the only way they've come up to show which ledges are climbable and which aren't. In these realistic worlds, there's the same ledge climbing goblin jumping around and painting every edge.
Nicholas Diaz
It looks like water
Joshua Hill
So why does this board keep sperging and getting angry about Undertale?
Easton Long
"soul"fags will vehemently deny anything on your list is currently soulful, until 2030 when they're considered retro and full of "soul"
Oliver Stewart
My definition of soul is something that was designed because they wanted to entertain people, not for dollar signs. Pic related, top is soul, bottom is soulless.
i dont know numbers, but i doubt they were anywhere near modern studios even if they were big and corporate for the time. the fact that they did that famicom shit shows that they were passionate to begin with, doubt they were doing that with like, chinese slave labour
Joshua Cook
>A game with soul feels like the creators were pouring their hearts into their work, and not just collecting a paycheck. So the only game with any soul is Pong.
Nolan Williams
>talentless furry crowdfunds homestuck ripoff concept then contracts out every aspect of his mediocre game and lucksacks his way into meme fandom success with the lazily cobbled result
they're also probably jealous that toby had the discipline to actually finish a product, whereas 99.99% of people are shitters, chronically starting and abandoning little projects of their own and never seeing anything through to completion.
Isaiah Wood
Reroll
Josiah Rogers
Nah, Travis Strikes Back is pretty fucking soulful largely in part because of the VN parody sections
Ayden Bailey
Tropical Freeze is very impersonal. Level design-wise its easy, but frustrating. Everything is poorly telegraphed and there's so much cinematic shit going on its hard to go fast and discern one thing from another so they pad the level out with shittons of lives. In Rare's DKC, it is hard, but fair. Everything is clearly presented, and there are very distinct contrasts in the artwork that cleanly portray what is happening. I guess you could say TF was designed to have wacky looking moments to use as clips in a commercial or review, whereas DKC was designed to be an actual fucking video game.
The colors in modern games is abhorrent, it's usually art direction, they go for the blandest most sterile lifeless look. Just compare FFVII with its remake the immediately noticeable thing is that FFVII is that an average screen is full of purple and blue and yellow and reds and the remake is dark edgy where everything is black and silver with slight hints of color here or there.
Sega, in particular, put a big focus on bright colorful eye catching aesthetics for their games and arcade cabinets. Saturn is pretty notable in its era for how beautifully it rendered colors, even if it had some deficiencies in other areas.
John Edwards
Will I ever be able to fix most, if not all, the problems in my life?
Lucas Gonzalez
i was trying to figure out why i wasnt enjoying it much. id heard it was really good and i loved the original DKC
Christopher Sanders
>the fact that they did that famicom shit shows that they were passionate to begin with no it doesn't. it shows that they had the largest and most well-funded army of code monkeys working on the project, which is literally how they accomplished it in the first place. and all of that is beside the point. everything they ever made that's considered "soul" today was after they got their blank check from nintendo.
soul is quality (relative to the era) + time, which are, not coincidentally, the two main ingredients of nostalgia.
Jeremiah Taylor
i agree that soul is mostly nostalgia, but i dont see how you equate a blank check to current corporate systems. its the opposite - they had free reign to do whatever they wanted without having to conform to budgets or cut corners. how do you not get something great out of that if you have anyone good working for you?
Jason Ramirez
Soul: evoking an emotional connection i.e. nostalgia Soulless: refined to the point of garishness
Austin Harris
I really hate OP's shitty example because Tropical Freeze is goddamn amazing and filled with soul
Oliver Parker
>Tropical Freeze is very impersonal. Level design-wise its easy, but frustrating. Everything is poorly telegraphed >Rare's DKC, it is hard, but fair. Everything is clearly presented
Ok, I disagree with this, the camera and screen size let you see further ahead in DKCR than in the original DKC.
Matthew Long
OP's post is misleading, Tropical Freeze does have SOUL
Benjamin Reed
That statement only applies to Returns
Tropical Freeze has a ton of visual cues that it's entirely your fault for fucking up
Luis Thompson
>id heard it was really good Yeah, it was designed and marketed so you would hear that. It's a shame, too. Playing through it with Cranky can be be fun as fuck, but everything is so washed out and lacking in concision its really hard to have fun with it.
Jaxon Mitchell
RDR2 had a development budget of what, $100 million? And it came out 15 years after the previous Red Dead entry. That doesn't seem like budget constraints or corner cutting. It's basically the same situation Rare had in their golden age. Unlimited time and money to make what they want to make.
Mason Ramirez
>the camera and screen size Bro, we are operating on completely different planes of existence. Play like 1000 more video games and come back.
Jace Harris
and everyone says its amazing? whats your point
Zachary Lopez
Just look at your own pic op, the left side doesn't look like anything else, it's an aesthetic unique to its own game, utilizing a number of techniques (prerendering, palette choices, etc.) to achieve its own feeling, the right side looks like any generic cutesy overly clean 3D side scroller that could double as a mobile game. It looks almost like a side scrolling version of Civ VI.
Parker Kelly
Will I get laid tonight?
Hunter Barnes
They both look like they have soul. Soul is simply knowing that occam's razor is the best way to do art. Modern games with too much clutter and "extra colorful/glowing bits" on everything ruin the feel and make things feel even more gamey than the fact you're already playing a game.
Matthew Flores
Soul: Old games with bad visuals when seen today
Soulless: Remakes or sequels that have significantly improved visuals by today's standards
Samuel Perez
Your missing his point
New DKC has a bigger screen for you to actually see where the bullshit in coming from
Aiden Rogers
>Fags who suck at TF and Returns and blame the game are posting again
>Especially TF who has much clearer visual cues after complaints in Returns
>Tropical Freeze has a ton of visual cues that it's entirely your fault for fucking up It does not. Banana trails are completely inconsistent and stuff rarely really stands out from the background. You think it is fine because you are shit at vidya and probably play at granny speed.
Jack Adams
Honestly, the only problems I had with the level design in Returns was the vertically oriented volcano level, and the fucking rocket auto-scrollers
Henry Rodriguez
TF is made for children. No one is bad at.
Jason Allen
You are basically spot on OP. Not sure what I can even add here other then consoles back then at times brought out the best in certain developers where as today its much harder for developers since graphics technology has become so advanced to the point where the potential for games to have lots of little fuck ups in the details is far too great now. Practically no game today can avoid this because the effort on the part of developers would have to be far greater today then back then in order to get things right. So these developers almost always just phone it in and don't put out the very best possible work they could for a game.
You contrast this with a game like the original Doom and how it was made by for the most part guys that loved games or were at least super passionate about creating games. Having that same passion isn't easy when you have hundreds of developers working on a game while Doom had a handful at most that worked on the entirety of the game.
Carter Russell
Starcraft/Starcraft 2 is the perfect example of soul/soulless. If you disagree you are gay.
Brody Cox
Are you gonna answer to my question with a "yes"?
David Gonzalez
>Your missing his point No I'm not, you are missing my point. If Rare DKC can present more information more clearly on a smaller screen with less time to react, then we have a big problem.
Jordan Brooks
I agree, but in reverse.
Carson Perry
Both Starcrafts are soulless.
Aiden Butler
I always had a different definition of soul, quite different from the rest of Yea Forums even. Essentially, it involves how the game showcases itself, what it chooses as the most important factor when it comes to a video game. For example, games that rely on titties and cinematics and storytelling, or games that market themselves with billions of dollars of advertising money and CGI voice actors and special effects, I consider them soulless. For example, and with no disrespect to the fans of each, I would consider Donkey Kong TF to be soulless, I'd consider Splatoon to be soulless, I'd consider Xenoblade to be soulless. This isn't exclusive to Nintendo of course. Uncharted fits the definition, Halo fits the definition, and of course popular games like Call of Duty fit it to the letter.
Why would I say this? There's nothing horribly wrong with these games, is there? They're not broken beyond playability, right? It comes down to how they portray themselves, the priorities they choose when they sell themselves on the market, and to an extent the fandoms also show this mindset. Some focus on the sexy waifus, others focus on shilling the high definition graphics. Others still flaunt sales and metacritic scores. Some try pushing the story as this amazing breakthrough in cinema.
They're all missing one crucial element though: GAMEPLAY. For the gameplay to shine through, it must not be allowed any distractions on the side.
Xavier Hughes
Everything but the moon and the town looks like garbage yo
John Gutierrez
Soul? It has timeless artstyle. It just looks good as like it was came out yesterday, and even on par with current games.
Soul vs. Soulless is quite simple. In fact it may even sound retarded to the uninitiated. "sol", the sun, is in fact, the human soul. I will not explain this, but this is so. Games with lighting and color palettes that replicate the quality of sunlight and gold (alchemcially, the Sun is associated with gold) are usually described as "soulful" and this is not an accident. In OP's example, the DKC screenshot shows a very naturalistic sunset, while the DKCR screenshot has flat, un- "realistic" (or rather un-naturalistic) lighting. One of the qualities of Sunlight is that it is "blinding to look at", so "soulful" games might have "hard lighting" or even simply a "rough aesthetic" ... to use OP's example again, DKC is more jagged and pixelated than it's newer counterpart. It is "harder to look at" just like Sunlight is difficult to look at. Many games are made without "sol" these days, and this is because, alchemically, the developers are not emulating nature, and the sun; they do not have the sun in themselves, and do not revere the sun as our ancestors did. One cannot gain "soul" simply by emulating the artstyles and design choices of the past, but it is a start, and the path is not hopeless. The "soul" is something that can be built in those that do not "have it".
Cameron Ramirez
Knights of Honour is great until you get into the shitfest combat
James Rodriguez
>here's so much cinematic shit going on its hard to go fast and discern one thing from another so they pad the level out with shittons of lives This, playing Tropical Freeze I frequently got impatient and wound up killing myself. My experience with Freeze was basically committing suicide over and over out of boredom. The way everything is laid out you need to either have foreknowledge of the level or latent prescient abilities to move any faster than a snail's pace. Everything feels built around the play speed of an 8 year old, because as soon as you try to pull one over on the game it fucks you.
Want to get on this platform a little faster than normal? Nope, we have an enemy on it that paths right onto the edge to block your way unless you keep the pace we want, fuck you! Want to clear this platforming section fast? Nope, there's a weird jump with no bananas to indicate it and you have to land in a barrel that blends right into our fancy background, fuck you!
Henry Gonzalez
oh shit
Ryan Perry
Soul is roaming the streets at 4:00 in the morning and finding your best friend is making out with a transsexual at the all-night dinner in Cleveland in 1986
Alexander Wilson
My point is that it's the literal definition of a corporate blockbuster video game, and "soul" has nothing to do with the game being modern or old or the developers being passionate or anything but nostalgia.
will i finally get the cute monster husband i want so badly
Landon Hill
THAT'S NOT WHAT I FUCKING WANTED SONIC TOTEM
Owen Ward
>Soul People working on the game actually wanted to make a game they themselves would like and gave it their all. A passion project. >Soulless Too many people working on the project don't actually really give a shit about the game at all.
Most modern games have huge teams working on them, with music, art, programming, etc. being usually outsourced. Older games often had small closely-knit development teams, that's why older games tend to have more soul.
Juan Ramirez
bad graphic soul good graphic soulless
Josiah Smith
Soul is the process of going through extreme lengths to satisfy a level of art direction normies cannot properly appreciate.
Owen Russell
brainlet zoomers. sc/bw had such a great art direction
Josiah Taylor
developers putting blood sweat and tears into a game, being creative with technology limitations
Lucas Richardson
Soul can be definied in lighting touches old artists used to put into their game through special effects and good texture work.
Soulless can be definied by a total lack effort whether in the models, the lighting, the textures, or even in the code(bugs etc).
Pewdiepie is actually more chill than you would think.
Connor Thompson
imagine being this deplorable a zoomer
James Price
>judging a character based off some thumbnails you saw on youtube boy I'm sure you've got a lot of friends
Nathaniel Hernandez
For the sake of god will you give me a chance with this new one?
Brandon Adams
Fuck you once again
Brayden Taylor
>watching and defending a retard on youtube jesus
Nathaniel Butler
Not so sure about the OP image, but I think we can all agree that this is what "soulless" looks like in its purest form. youtu.be/JLH8tldTO6A
Ayden Wright
Soul is whatever I like. Soulless is whatever I don't like >I pretend not to like western games, so jap games have soul other do not >I pretend not to like new games, so old game have soul and new do not It's a meme used by zoomers in an attempt to belong, most of them think Halo 3 is old
Since it's got a weaker OST, weaker overall design, and inferior attention to detail when it comes to certain things. Demons Souls is soul whereas Dark Souls 3 is less soul. Bordering on soulless but not quite.
if you werent underage, you'd know how much of a faggot he was/is. He can be edgy or whatever nowadays, but he will always remain an obnoxious faggot.
Benjamin Moore
You posted a bit too soon
Zachary Richardson
NINTENDO
Asher Sanchez
Now THIS. This is Soul vs Soulless. Also as some other user said, clean, safe, light colors (as to not offend anybody and to try make the game more universally liked for as many age groups as possible) and art style is the difference between Soul and Soulless.
