You probably know Troy Baker. You’ve almost certainly heard his voice. He is absolutely prolific in the video game voice acting industry, having lent his voice to games as wide ranged and varied as Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham Origins, Persona 4, and the upcoming Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. With someone who is as involved with the games making process as he is, he was asked about his thoughts on the shifts that gaming is experiencing thanks to the new consoles and the advances in PC game technology.
Baker believes that more power under the hood absolutely helps- he points out that the added power can be used not just to showcase prettier graphics, but that it can also be used to render more enemies on screen, better behavior for everything in the game, creating more believable and immersive worlds, and more. He thinks that gamers can tell the good from the bad now, and that they want good games- and these consoles are capable of giving them that.
Personally, I agree with him, in theory. The issue, of course, being, that so far, the ‘powerful’ console have given me games like Killzone Shadow Fall, Ryse, Watch Dogs, Destiny, and Assassin’s Creed Unity, while the ‘less powerful’ machines have given me amazing experiences such as Persona 4 Golden, The Legend of Zelda: A Lin Between Worlds, Mario Kart 8, Bayonetta 2, and Super Smash Bros.
I think it is also on the developers, then, to actually use all that hardware to their advantage.
