RIP Afterworld

Even the first statement is not necessarily true. Remember Candy Box, for example. Or even Crossy Road or Flappy bird. They were by no means graphical highlights, but they went viral due to great gameplay.

I still think EU is visually appealing (albeit this effect was far greater directly after the switch than it is nowadays), but whenever I log in now, everything has a very sterile feeling to me. Some of the landscapes and cities are beautiful, but they truly look as if they were built yesterday. According to the "storyline", Calypso is still under constant siege, but the cities show no visual sign of any of it. There's no bullet-holes, no craters, no rubble, no remains of great battles once fought. I played LOTRO again for a bit, and as the story progresses, cities and villages will come under attack, or burnt to the ground. They do not suddenly simply show u as they did before, but remain aflame, or in rubble.

The fauna also could use some love. I recently did some argos close to the outpost near Twins, and I swear some of the plants look exactly like they did pre-CE2.

There's no consistency between the graphics, and even less so between the storyline and the graphics.

I agree with your statement that exciting gameplay or a compelling storyline could make you ignore that, but EU doesn't exactly offer either of those. It's all repetitive. "UH OES, <insert city here> is under attack by <insert mob here>. Go shoot stuff!". Rinse, wash, repeat.

I still hope Cyrene might break the chain, but strongly get the feeling that MA will forever be the bottleneck, both in implementation speed, as well as in obstruction of creative processes. Let alone the fact their own subsidiary is still running a competitor to their own customers.

 

Was the Bethesda comment for me? I don't think I referred to them anywhere?