Asmongold TV - Pre Rendered Graphics Were PEAK | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Pre Rendered Graphics Were PEAKAsmongold podcast for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ----------------- ------------- Keywords: gaming news, streamer content, gaming takes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The timeless beauty of pre-rendered graphics. When I look back at the PC games of the late 90s and early 2000s, there's a distinct visual style that I believe truly stands the test of time. Sure. It's when the game employs pre-rendered graphics paired with an isometric perspective. Curious about what that looks like? Here, let me show you. King's Quest.

Yeah. Yep, and you walk around on it. Yep. These are the old days. Real old. Long time ago. Oh. Oh, Sim City.

Wow. Damn. Damn. Commandos. Look this. Wow. Halls of Torment? Yeah, Halls of Torment was like this. You're right.

The Settlers. Oh, I think I had this one. Yeah, I think I did. Diablo 2 had this? Damn, I didn't even know that. Wow. Robin Hood. So this is up until like the early 2000s.

Is it just me? Or do these games look just? as beautiful as they did over 20 years ago. Well, yeah, they do are great. The handcrafted feel and level of cohesion all culminate into one of my favorite aesthetics of that era. I think that the big problem is the lack, like optimization and like game optimization used to be a skill inside of itself, but now it's not. It's not really a skill anymore, and it's just kind of, you know, oh, we'll just buy the new graphics card and it'll be okay.

But back then, it was much more of a focus. Where did this style come from, you might ask. Look at this. Well, allow me to explain. Back in the late 90s, real-time 3-D graphics were still in its infancy. Yeah, look at this. These early games were usually pixelated, lacked details, and suffered low frame rates. My personal opinion is that the very early 3D games, like that Tomb Raider game,

are the games that have aged the worst. Like, I can go back and play Super Mario, and it's great. I can go back and play GameCube, and it's great. But, like, those early 3D graphics games, are so terrible. During complex scenes in real time requires a lot of processing power and memory, which many computers at a time simply didn't have. To achieve a higher level of fidelity, developers started...

Like, do you all remember, like, back in the day, how hard it was to run Half-Life 2? Like, I remember, like, having, being able to run Half-Life 2 was, like, that was the, at the time, like, the, you know, can your game run, you know, like extra Y game at like the highest graphics like that was the benchmark was half-life two solution they'd create highly detailed environments characters and objects then render them on powerful PCs as static images or sequences of images all assets were created with a fixed isometric

perspective this means they are viewed diagonally from above despite their static nature isometric pre-rendered graphics can create the illusion of depth and three-dimensionality through clever use of shading lighting and perspective techniques I mean that's like art one These games didn't require rendering most or any of their assets in real time, developers could pack them with far more detail than the true 3D counterparts. This particular art style was most prominently seen in role-playing, strategy, and management games. Yeah, I mean, this looks really, really good. I'd say the Golden Age started with the first Diabro in 1997 and ended around the start of 2003 with SimCity 4.

It was a long time ago. Occasionally, you'd still stumble upon a game using this art style. By the end of 2004, it had largely... Beyond divinity. What's this? me to the question why was this technique mostly abandoned by the mid 2000s I don't know the whole reason this technique was used in the first place was due to hardware limitations however as we entered the mid 2000s rapid advancements and new graphics

hardware I think I had this one maybe I didn't but I had one it looked just like this just like this and rendering techniques emerged these advancements made it possible to run 3D graphics in real time that didn't look like a slideshow. I'm telling you. It's pretty clean, smooth looking animation, considering I mean compared to the Doom type stuff. Oh, how the times have changed. Yeah. Another reason for the switch to 3D is the limitation of pre-rendered graphics in terms of interactivity and adaptability. As games evolved to become more complex, the use of pre-rendered

graphics became increasingly impractical. The same applied to the development of pre-rendered graphics. If you wanted to change an asset, you couldn't simply tweak it, you had to fully re-render it. Being able to tweak a model within a couple of clicks meant developers could work a lot faster. So it was done the same time? I'm actually surprised. Well, I'm happy to report it's made a bit of a comeback, especially in the indie scene. I think that's really what happens is that a lot of games are probably using this now again. So you have games that really go for a retro aesthetic.

And I think that the Super Nintendo aesthetic is kind of like it's very overused at this point. So you're probably not seeing as many people using it now. Because every single Metroidvania game used it. And there's like a handful of other ones that use it too. But like now you're starting to see games that use the style of like a 1998 PC game or a PlayStation 1 game or something like that instead. Not the only one. SMEs is peak.

Yeah, I know it's peak. That's the reason why it's overused. Who still adores that pre-randed look. Obsidian Entertainment released a game called Pillars of Eternity in 2015. Developed by CRPG. Is it that in the Avowed universe? Tim Cain and Chris Avalo. Tim Kane.

That's the guy that makes videos. Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity Deadfire. Another relatively recent game with an amazing pre-rended art style is Disco I was gonna play this. In this game, they went for a more painting-like aesthetic. Yeah. Next up are the Brotherhoods games. What's this? What's this?

... studio that made four adventure games in this style called Kane, Stasis, beautiful desolation, and Stasis bone totem. Then there are also games that keep the isometric perspective but don't use pre-rended graphics and go for hand-drawn sprites instead. like all of Super Giants as games. Alongside all of these new releases, a lot of classic games Ancient empires. Oh my God. This is the games I played as a kid.

This is my main game. This allows people to enjoy these timeless games on modern machines. And man, do they look beautiful on there. It's a testament of why hardware and budget limitations can produce some incredible art. In a world where AAA studios

relentlessly pursue photorealism, nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. I'm happy to see the preservation of these older games and the passing of the torch to create new ones. Yeah, I think so. I've compiled a list of my favorite games in this style that I think deserve your attention. Feel free to pause the video if you need to. Man Conquer Generals. Did they have that? I don't know if they did or not.

Of course, there are plenty more games. Stronghold, though I never played this one. This is a nice place to start. I want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to me ramble on about video about video. If you want to see more retrospective content like this, I'd really appreciate it if you like the video, leave a comment and subscribe to the channel. Now, if you'll excuse me... This is a really good video.

Peace. Hey, who are you? Damn. He just popped them off. Okay. Yeah, all right. Yeah, I didn't even know about this. I'll link you guys the video.

I didn't even know about this at all. And so, yeah. And is an RPG veteran? You'd love Baldersgate 1 and 2? Maybe. I never really went and played any of those games. Like, for whatever reason, I just never got into it.

And so we'll see what happens, right? But maybe one day I will. Stronghold is great animations on resource farming. Are you done with where wins me? No, I'm not, bro. Like, I've been playing the fuck out of it. But anyway, yeah, this looks amazing. And I think the style of these old games,

like I think Final Fantasy 7 is another one of the games that had that. Like, isn't the overworld like that where you would walk around? And I think that there's a style to that people really like a lot because it feels like it has a nostalgic vibe to it. But it also makes sense inside of the world, right? Some of it was. That's what I thought. I never played it myself.

I've just seen images. You gotta get more serious with gaming recently. And wish you dedicated Bukar or stream to just gaming. Well, that's never going to happen. So I wouldn't really get, I wouldn't really get excited for that. Maybe one day in the future, I'll probably play more games. But right now, like, I generally, this is just the way that my brain works. I like playing video games more off stream nine times out of 10 because I don't have distractions.

like I can actually focus on the game and just enjoy the game. Now, it doesn't mean I don't play games on stream. Sometimes I do. But, you know, like, basically, this is going to sound like even weirder, right? Maybe I don't like playing video games with a camera on me. I feel like at that point, like, I'm kind of like I'm splitting my focus. Because, you know, whenever I have a camera on me, my brain is like thinking about like, okay, I'm on camera. I'm on camera.

But because like usually this is the way I play video games without camera. Like this, bro. I, I'm like, zombified out. I am totally out of it. So yeah, it's just not really for me. It turned off chat? No, I just, I just don't like doing it. Like, I mean, at a certain point, like, it's just something I don't really like doing.

I mean, I'm not going to try to contort myself into 50 different, like, weird permutations in order to do something I don't even really like in the first place. Why the fuck would I do that? It doesn't make any sense. So yeah, fuck no. And Farron, no big a... Yeah, exactly. And you played...

There's pressure to be entertaining. Yeah, I just... I get put under pressure really easily, right? Like, it's a weakness for me. And so that's really the reason why I don't do it a whole lot. Tri-stream a while ago is we were without face cam. It's a different mindset, hard to explain. Yeah, I mean, and I kind of like the way it was without the face cam,

because, like, it offers a different dynamic. But, yeah, either way, let me go back. I'll talk about this again. is that, but yeah, anybody wants me to go and, like, play these, like, super long RPGs on stream. Like, that's just not, that's just not never going to happen, right? I'm just being honest, right? It's never going to happen. So, like, I like playing maybe short games and simple games on stream.

I don't like playing complex games on stream because it's like my brain power is going too much into streaming, and I can't focus on the game and be able to play it in a way that's fulfilling. So, yeah, that's just the way I am. And did you ever play the grandpa, DLC? No, I never did. I beat the game, but I never went back and played it again. And so, yeah, it's that simple. Play disco Elysium, please, maybe.

But either way, yeah, I feel like having styles like this and having games like this does look a lot better because it just, it looks really nice. And I think also it's easier for a game to run. And that's the big problem that I think a lot of video games have now is that they just don't run very well. And what's crazy is that this is something that a lot of people don't really talk about,

but there is one game that did it so well, which is Kingdom Come Deliverance. Kingdom Come Deliverance, and also more recently where Winsmeat, both of these video games are incredibly detailed in terms of like the scope and the size of what they're showing, but at the same time, they're able to effectively just be very, very well-running games. And you compare that to the monstrosity

that is Monster Hunter Wilds. And this game, oh my fucking God, like this game doesn't run for shit. shit. And so anyway, you've got big, big problems with this. Let's see. I think Ninja Guideon 2 was the same thing as well. Like, that game could not run at all. Is it too late to start playing where wins me? Yeah, unless you start playing on the first day, you probably should just quit. Honestly, I mean, if you, unless you start playing a live service game on the first day, you should quit the game. And if you're not playing it every single day constantly, you also

should quit the game. That's just the way it is. Everybody knows this about live service games. devs are failing customers by not producing games that run. Yeah, Borderlands 4. Yeah, I've got a, I think my cousin plays that, but that's about it. And people used to add fog to not render to the background unless one's close to it. Nowadays, they want to render the entire world. Well, if you knew, like, there are engines that are dynamic rendering. They do dynamic rendering, like Unreal does dynamic rendering.

And like asset and resource culling, right, in real time. But things like Lost Arc, yeah, that's a good example, right? Definitely. Oh, let me link you guys to video, too. This game, apparently this came out two years or a year ago, right? But I'll link it to you guys. Make sure to give the guy a sub, right? Game Tales HQ.

Is he still making videos nowadays? Oh, wow, he is. Well, good for him. Yeah, I'll have to watch some of these. These are really good. And, yeah, I'll link you guys to video. What a good guy.