Something has been bothering me about the look of a lot of recent games.

For the past few years I've noticed that a lot of games have just seemed...off to me. I always knew it was something about the way they looked, but I could never quite put my finger on it. I think it has something to do with everything having physics and everything being it's own object instead of just a texture causing all the objects and characters populating the world to seem more separate and less cohesive then they used to. It gives me the impression of a sandbox everything was dropped into rather than that of a believable real place. The first time I remember noticing it was Witcher 3, but now it's pretty much every open world game and quite a lot of ones that aren't open world as well. Has anyone else been noticing this? Or am I just seeing things?

I would think it would be the opposite? Real places are cluttered and a mess like that. Everything placed just so or painted in place permanently should be the thing that seems off.

It sounds like you're describing some form of ambient occlusion. When implemented poorly, it can result in excessively heavy shadowing around objects which may be the incoherence you're referring to. It usually shouldn't make games look less realistic, though.

Witcher 2 did have that intensely bad SSAO sometimes where everyone just had an aura around them during certain scenes.

@conmulligan: I don't think that's it. In this video I get the feeling more from the left side with it off than the right side with it on. But it did give me another idea of what could be causing it. In the video some of the things that gave me the feeling the most were the unnatural way the people moved and how the grass and trees are constantly blowing even though everything else that the wind should move is completely static. Maybe it's just that since games look so good now, anything that breaks the illusion stands out so much more to me. It reminds me of the uncanny valley.

I've noticed this or something with The Witcher 3 specifically (maybe this is what you mean). All the movement in the trees and bushes/grass has no randomness to it. It's like the wind is affecting everything in this super fake synchronized type of way which when I went back to The Witcher was pretty jarring to me. It's almost as if everything is underwater being affected in the same way by the same current with no variance to it.
That what you mean? Maybe? : )

I have this or something similar. Every once in a while, especially driving cars in games, I suddenly see behind the curtain and realize my character is animating in place while the environment is scrolling below it. I rarely get that feeling on foot, though I will say I felt it fairly regularly in The Witcher 3. But it happens to me all the time behind the wheel of a car from a third person perspective, and while it doesn’t exactly pull me out of the immersion of the experience, it is a weird feeling and something I’ve often thought about formulating as a question for either of the GB podcasts to weigh in with their own weird, “I see this game differently now, moments.

Hmm, I've felt that the most in Skyrim and other Bethesda open-world games. Similar to that old Hanna-Barbera thing where you could tell what wasn't in the background, except instead of just being a differently coloured rock for example, here it's like they're ever so slightly floating in the game world or something.

Sometimes I notice it, sure, but can't say I've noticed it a lot in recent games.

@theht:

Whoa, this "Bethesda RPG" vs. "Hanna Barbera" comparison is perfect. I shall steal it and use it at some point as mine, thank you very much.

BTW, this effect can be entirely expected in procedurally generated games, but I felt it in all but one vaults in Fallout 4.