What 10 Great Video Games Look Like Without Visual Effects

Epic boss fights are less cool when you know the monster is a duvet.

Monster Hunter World
Capcom

Even more so than film, the world of video game visual effects has evolved massively over the past couple of decades.

As 3D graphics capabilities expanded and the fidelity of what developers could capture in-camera reached further than ever before, actors in particular benefitted from the newfound freedom. Now, a video game motion-capture session is virtually indistinguishable from a film set.

Of course, gaming worlds are more often than not made up of fantastical creatures as much as they are with humans, and that means directors need to get inventive when it comes to transforming mo-cap takes into finished scenes. And whether they were working out of a cupboard or the latest state-of-the-art studio, it's always fascinating to see how much effort goes into creating immersive gaming experiences.

On top of that, it's just fun to see how rudimentary a lot of these pre-vis scenes are.

Who'd have thought the way to bring a dragon to life in a game was to just film a bit of wood with a carpet wrapped around it?

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