‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

I'm not a gamer but I randomly stumbled across someone playing this on twitch couple days ago, gotta say my mind was pretty blown at how far video game graphics have come (granted the last thing I played was Quake/UT/HL back in the day). Some of the cut scenes are basically just amazing movies, but even the in game graphics are fantastic. Does anyone happen to know what game is considered the gold standard for gfx in vidya games is these days?

It's a subjective question. Three that struck me recently were

- Cyberpunk 2077 with its new path traced lighting option

- Plague Tale Requiem (in general)

- The high action sequences and cut-scenes of FFXVI

These games have their flaws in terms of graphics, but they were very striking to me. Note, this is speaking purely graphics, there's more to be said regarding art design as enabled by graphics tech.

It depends a bit on what you're into. For a decent sample, have a look at Cyberpunk 2077 (especially with the RT Overdrive update on the PC), Horizon Forbidden West, and Forza Horizon 5.

I want to say Crysis

For me, having not really played many video games between ~2008 and 2020, Red Dead Redemption 2 has continued to really wow me.

It's is particularly impressive in both its breadth and depth: not only does it have huge beautiful landscapes in deserts, plains, mountains, forests, swamps, beaches, snow & rain, but also includes tiny details like being able to shoot out individual spokes of a wagon wheel, and the way the sun glows through the cartilage of characters ears.

Cyberpunk 2077 with their new path tracing probably beats everything.

Also their facial animation and dialogue direction is far ahead of any other game I've seen - those conversations feel much more visceral than anything.

Take a look at Ghost of Tsushima (PlayStation only sadly) - especially the fields of grass, absolutely breathtaking.

Also Unreal Engine 5 is to me at the leading edge of graphics engines right now: https://youtu.be/-lkEOEEKYD0