Why do games feel so soulless compared to the 90s? Where did things go wrong?
You can't say its pure nostalgia. Take this art and compare it to SC2 for example. SC2's art is all shiny and colourful like WOW which doesn't really give you the same feel that SC was supposed to give.
Because cartoony warcraft style graphics is shit and every mission shouldn't have some sort of gimmick. Give me old fashioned DESTROY ALL ENEMIES mission
Bump
Not only the art but the sound direction in general. SC1 is quite memorable in that department
games made in 90s were made by nerds who loved vidya
Games made after PS2 generation are made as a product to sell for profit
Older games were made by smaller teams. It's rare for a game made by a hundred or a thousand people to have soul because everyone's individual contributions are small. And there's a lot of "design by committee" type decisions.
This. Also the industry wasn't as homogenous and connected as it is today. So two dev houses from two different nearby towns were making completely different games. Today everyone is developing games from the conditions set by the industry leading games (Fortnite, GTA, CoD) to make sure the product is as viable for mass market as possible.
Of course there is also more pressure from suits that devs conform to industry standards because anything else is a risk.
It's not just pressure from suits, there are lots of devs that want to make mass market games that people will play, and there are lots of devs that just want to make whatever game idea they have and are willing to take the chance it gets tossed into the indie trash pile.
100% this. Came into this thread to say exactly this.
Both are good