10 Times Video Game Realism Went Too Far
8. Lifelike Eyes (The Last Of Us Part II)
From the gunplay and climbing in Uncharted to the stealth and crafting in The Last Of Us, Naughty Dog games certainly feel good to play.
But generally speaking, gameplay takes a backseat when it comes to the discourse surrounding the studio's work (primarily with its recent PS4 titles), which is almost entirely dominated by two things: storytelling and graphics.
And to give Naughty Dog a lot of credit, their devotion to creating realistic character models and movie-quality stories is admirable. But when you look at how far they're pushing visual fidelity in particular, you can't help but wonder if that effort would be better spent on making gameplay that's as lauded as the graphics, rather than focusing on things that people don't notice, and have no real impact on the game.
For example, look at the insane amount of work that went into making The Last Of Us Part II's eyes look as realistic as possible. These eyes respond to light sources accurately, they have screen-space shadows for eyelashes and eyelids, and hell, Naughty Dog even beefed up their eyes just to make nocturnal animals look scarier.
It's impressive stuff, but does the average gamer care? No. Would it affect the overall quality of the game if the eyes were a tad less detailed? No. These things look mind-blowing in still images, no doubt, but when you're grappling a mushroom zombie and stabbing it in the head with a shiv, nobody is going to be worried if Ellie's eyes aren't accurately reflecting a nearby lamp.