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This is the most soulless things I've seen DLSS 5 do yet
videogames | by /u/SEVENS_HEAVEN_7 | 113 comments | 2026-09-02T15:35:20+00:00 Central
Comments
| /u/PaleFondant2488 The one great thing about DLSS 5 is it's going to help people realize art direction is what mattered more this entire time. Not resolution and ultra-realism. |
| /u/MelonJelly To add to this, stylized art with good direction is timeless, doesn't require cutting edge tech, and is a lot more memorable than realistic art with mediocre direction. |
| /u/Gizogin Return of the Obra Dinn is a great example. That game is entirely monochrome (not grayscale; literally only "on" or "off") and looks amazing because of the care put in to make that style work. |
| /u/Jeoshua They literally developed new rendering techniques to get the dithering to look just so. It's a poster child of how you don't need crazy poly counts or hyper-realism to make something look amazing. |
| /u/Demara_Awol It helps that Lucas Pope is cracked out of his fucking mind. For how tiny his games are he's one of the most gifted developers of our time. Him and Mike Klubnika do wild things with very 'rudimentary' games. |
| /u/CarfDarko Love his work, and I hope to see many more in the future. Dude feels like the U.M.A.M.I of gaming, doing his own thing, but with the heart at the right place and if you like the ride, you are up for a good time! A handful of free and short experiences by Mike which will hopefully finds a way to new players to enjoy! |
| /u/Freya0232 i'll check the actual gameplay later, but i am digging a LOT the late 1990's visuals |
| /u/TheReaperAbides Even the largest AAA devs are perfectly capable of doing this. Wind Waker looks great to this day. |
| /u/funkyyyyyyyyyyyyy oh woah that is super sick, def gonna check that out |
| /u/AngryAriados Please do not spoil anything about this, grab pen an paper, and enjoy one of the best games out there Lucas Pope is a genius |
| /u/WEVP-TV EXTREMELY fun game. If you like pretending you're a detective, it's an absolute blast. I recommend buying a small notebook because you'll want to take notes while playing, and physically writing it down - while eliminating the need to alt+tab out of the game - also just feels appropriate. |
| /u/funkyyyyyyyyyyyyy thanks for the tip :) |
| /u/dead_fritz Obra Dinn is a game I use to quickly explain to people what actually makes a game great. Everything about it is done exceptionally well even though it's a fairly straightforward game in monochrome from one guy. But you can tell that time and care went into every aspect. |
| /u/Darkside0719 That game is one of my all time favorites. I wish there was more |
| /u/Asenath_Darque I wish I could forget everything I know about it so I could play it for the first time again. |
| /u/GalFisk And Beyond Good and Evil. |
| /u/funkyyyyyyyyyyyyy elite ball knowledge. they stayed true with the direction in the second installment as well. One of my fav series |
| /u/Own_Flounder404 Such an absolutely timeless art style. Looks just as good today as it did the day it came out! |
| /u/I_divided_by_0- Are you the milk man? |
| /u/Alert_Coyote_8546 This is what kept me hooked on WoW for years, it had this consistent charm to it's art style that aged very well even as the blocky graphics were totally outpaced by other games coming out. |
| /u/Bitter-Marsupial It's why "artistic choice" is paramount for longevity rather that straight fidelity Look at people praise disco Elysium or Okami |
| /u/afterparty05 Don't leave out ICO in that list <3 |
| /u/Saiphel God I LOVE how ICO and SotC look. The blurr-ish effect makes it feel dreamlike. |
| /u/Eg_3600 Wind Waker is an art style that has aged so well. I hated it when I was in grade school when it was first announced bc I wanted "gritty realism," but now older I appreciate its beauty |
| /u/Szwejkowski Team Fortress 2 - still absolutely great to play. The silhouettes alone are a masterclass. |
| /u/MelonJelly I read an article about how Valve payed special attention to the silhouettes, as that was one of the main ways players would identify opponents in a chaotic environment. Making them clear and identifiable is pretty much the opposite of camo, but makes for better gameplay. |
| /u/Tyrannosaurus-Shirt Silhouette design has long been a fundamental thing in character design in animation and even comic art. Think of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck or Asterix and Obelix and many others.. iconic shapes. |
| /u/GrandCTM25 Valve honestly does such a good job on making it so you can identify characters easily. The special infected in L4D are another shining example. Even in the middle of a hoard you can identify the special infected by sound and silhouette |
| /u/84theone You can do that with realistic graphics as well, look at Battlefield 1, where each class is immediately identifiable regardless of faction (scouts have a cape or flowing coat, medics have the crutches, support has a large backpack, and assault is just a normal looking soldier) |
| /u/ccoastal01 Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 hold up great too. I think in part because they went for a slightly stylized aesthetic rather than photorealism. |
| /u/Punchasheep Man imagine if they tried to realism Dishonored. That would be a tragedy! |
| /u/PancakeMixEnema You can also do this with realism. If the art direction is on point. Battlefield 3 is a PS3 game with low quality assets that theoretically should look like shit but it has impeccable design and carefully chosen lighting that wipes the floor with most Battlefields besides BF1 |
| /u/SinofThrash Call me old, but graphics never mattered in gaming to me. Games should be fun. Not hyperrealistic scenarios of real life. |
| /u/Eecka Good graphics isn't the same as hyperrealistic. You can have good graphics with all sorts of creative design. Games should be fun, but they're also a visual medium, and as such they should also leverage the visual possibilities. Hyperrealism however is one of the most boring ways to do it. |
| /u/slyleo5388 Exactly..Borderlands and Super Mario rpg come to mind. |
| /u/Short-Shopping3197 I replayed that the other day on Switch, still looks amazing. |
| /u/bennyfuckingprofane Super Mario RPG mentioned, I upvote. |
| /u/pchlster XIII in its original version still holds up today. |
| /u/ohz0pants I still think that the Wind Waker is the nicest looking Zelda game of all time. The cel shading look is sick as fuck and that game looks exactly like the artists behind it intended. None of it looks realistic, but it looks great and cohesive nonetheless. |
| /u/ratbear I agree. My dream aesthetic ever since I started playing games in the late 80s was "playable Saturday morning cartoon". Wind Waker was the first game that truly nailed what I had imagined was eventually possible. |
| /u/ohz0pants Yes!! GameCube actually had a few like this. Viewtiful Joe also had an amazing cartoony art style that was unique and really appealing. |
| /u/Cobalt1027 There's a reason that after Van Gogh mastered hyperealism, he ventured into abstract art. Realism is a valid art direction, but it's not the end-all be-all of art. Some - arguably most - games would not benefit, and would be actively hindered, by realism. |
| /u/waffle_iron_maiden If you look at Mc Escher's paintings you can tell he also had mastered realism before going on to make pieces in his signature style. Granted a lot of his mind bending art still uses aspects of realism with the shading especially |
| /u/Spare-Bodybuilder-68 With Escher I think that the realistic minutiae serve to make the mind-bending geometry stand out even more. Like it's uncanny to have beautiful, realistic shading coming from multiple directions and landing on differently impossibly oriented surfaces. It would be disorienting if it weren't so well executed. |
| /u/paper_liger I get your point, but Van Gogh never painted in a 'hyper realistic' style. He was always to a degree impressionistic, later moving on to post impressionism. A better example of someone more grounded in classical realism who evolved pretty far afield from that is Dali or Picasso maybe. |
| /u/Cobalt1027 Fair! I'm not gonna pretend to be an art expert or anything, he was just the first person I thought of. From a casual admirer, I find that in a lot of Van Gogh's early works his landscapes look like landscapes, his animals like animals, and his people like people, whereas his later works get pretty crazy. |
| /u/honeywhereismypenis And games that go for hyper-realism are the ones that don't graphically age well. The original Luigi's Mansion still holds up 25 years later but there are games 15 years younger that were impressive for the time but are hard to play now because they look dated |
| /u/HumDeeDiddle Feels like gamers have been beating the "realism is overrated" drum since the gamecube era and yet companies still push for more "realistic" graphics every year. Guess its easier to show stockholders that your products have more polygons than it is to show that your game is more fun to play. |
| /u/Dull-Culture-1523 I mean gamers also beat the "holy shit this looks so realistic" drum all the time. For a more modern example just look at anything GTA VI. |
| /u/SuddenBasil7039 Yeah, the average gamer does care about graphics, 90% of the hype for GTA is "map so big, so many polygons" |
| /u/EitherSpite4545 The issue isn't more polygons for shareholders. It's the increasing mainstream acceptance by lowest common denominator normal people. These aren't the people having discussions on reddit about video games, these are the people that play 20 minutes of Madden 2-3 nights a week and never touch anything else, but they are first in line for a ps6 and the newest version of Madden. They vastly spend more than me and you (in their combined numbers) with needing a fraction of the work to entertain, and their only concern they care for is hyper realism because they don't understand and engage with the medium beyond the barest surface level. |
| /u/_Old_Goat_ Oh my God, I think you hit the nail on the head with that. Yet another reason for me to hate capitalism. |
| /u/titoalmighty Ive got a good story about capitalism making games worse. I worked for blizzard from 2007 to 2010 as a GM then as an account administrator. pre-activision, we were absolutely ruthless protectors of the community. I personally banned hundreds if not thousands of power levelers. You got 1 warning then a permanent ban. There were a hundred GMs actioning chat and in general keeping the community clean. This is when i learned that successful MMOs depend on the economy and the community and you absolutely need to baby both, and doing so got the game to 11 million concurrent players. Then activision took over and you cannot draw a direct line between community policing and profit. There is no straight line, its a lot of indirect things that make people want to be a part of the community and banning cheaters was definitely one of them. However you can draw a direct line between banning powerlevelers and the loss of 15 dollars a month. So when all you look at are graphs, all you see is policing the community is losing us all these monthly subscribers, lightening up on the rules should increase our player count even more! Then I witnessed a race to the bottom as every support manager fought to see who could sell out their previous ideals the fastest to make a name for themselves and the sub count dropped and never recovered. I distinctly remember the meeting where they pulled my team in and told us to stop closing power leveler accounts and left shortly after. |
| /u/LouisWillis98 The majority of the games I enjoy are not ultra realistic. They just have a good art style. Art style over realism any day |
| /u/BloodSugar666 Aesthetics>Graphics. That's how Nintendo gets away with it. |
| /u/Iggy_Snows You say this as if 90% of gamers really dont give a shit and just want their games to look as "good" as possible, or wanting to use the latest and greatest tech. They'll turn on dlss 5 because 5 is bigger than 4. DLSS5 is going to come out and be used by millions of people for 5 years and then the internet will be flooded with "every game looks the same" posts by people who genuinely dont see how dlss5 ruins art direction. |
| /u/you-are-not-yourself 90% of gamers probably won't have access to DLSS5-capable tech for a long time In a dystopian future where games are only playable via remote streaming, it's possible that you could pay for more powerful servers, but I hope that doesn't come to pass |
| /u/pacgaming I saw someone use it on god of war. Because the ai filter is focusing on realism, it assumes kratos's white skin is because of poor lighting. So it corrects him and makes kratos have darker browner skin. I can't tell you how much of a spit in the face to art that is. |
| /u/Nottodayreddit1949 Well duh. We are throwing DLSS5 into games that weren't designed to have it. That compared to a game where the artists from the start work together to produce something greater than either would do alone. If you design your product to use the product properly, your results will be better than throwing it into old games and expecting perfect reproduction. That's just silly, so silly it borders on absurd. |
| /u/generic_canadian_dad That's what I've been thinking. Am I crazy to just want developers and artists to do their thing and not have ai modifying it? It seems completely ridiculous. |
| /u/Fogtwin This is why people love GTA and don't even know it. It's not a hyper photorealistic game but it nails certain aspects of life realistically. For me it's the art direction in GTA that makes it so great. Other games can have photo realism and never be nearly as good. |
| /u/RPTGB Speaking as someone who has worked professionally in "the biz" as a character artist for thirty years, I can't upvote this enough. Well said pal, well said. |
| /u/Impossible_Ease_1460 Id like to think that, but I honestly believe the more general audience who doesnt know much about anything is gonna be eating from the trough all the same |
| /u/IMRuuhtra The colors and vibe issue are not related to DLSS5. The video's author is probably using reshade and/or mods to change the game's aesthetic. |
| /u/Whoopwhoopdoopdoop That was my thought too, it looks like those eternally overcast reshade mods |
| /u/magicchefdmb Exactly. I've been seeing the "realistic" overcast mod for awhile. Overcast DOES allow for an easier time making things look real, but it doesn't always work and this that we're seeing is an amalgamation of different mods, and not just DLSS 5 |
| /u/Selix317 Yea. I don't really have an issue with the realism part but the overcast or whatever it is just makes it look like junk. |
| /u/PM_Me_Good_LitRPG I've recently come to think that I do have a problem with the realism part as well. Videogame graphics / sound isn't as "noisy" as "real-life experience", which can make doing something inside a VG be more comfortable than doing a similar activity IRL. On the other hand, the epidemic of shitty writing and shitty VG AI (NPCs, cars, enemies) is a dealbreaker. |
| /u/Whoopwhoopdoopdoop I think I know exactly what you mean. Dishonored 2 was harder for me to get into than Dishonored one, as well as Deus Ex, DE: Human revolution compared to Mankind Divided. In both the sequels the scenes were hard to instantly read, and interactables were lost in all the noise |
| /u/Devatator_ Yeah I've seen quite a few screenshots and videos and none of them even look remotely like this. It legit looks like an amateur attempt at gaussian splatting (so the shit I got from my shitty phone camera and 3050 on PostShot before it went subscription based) |
| /u/elcocopelao It actually looks more like they're doing multiple passes of DLSS5. I tried it yesterday in several games doing 3 passes and it makes everything look like this. |
| /u/elcocopelao For those who don't know, this is what going from off to 3 passes looks like in Gallipoli. Sorry it's not a screenshot, these were quick photos from my phone. This is why OPs video looks weird, and those images circulating of the anime game that make the whole thing look like a freak show. If you use the tech as intended and adjust the settings accordingly, then you can make the game look great. Unfortunately those who hate blindly will use the worst images possible to do what they always do. https://preview.redd.it/mezckbhxw4nh1.jpeg?width=2880&f ormat=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f932d3794d54ccc6ae82d0b27cc75555d eb188d0 |
| /u/Green_Insect_6455 What the fuck are we doing anymore |
| /u/Shoddy_Meaning_7654 Reddit engagement bait because DLSS 5.0 bad look at how bad it is when we run it at max doing 4 passes, gets a bunch of upvotes |
| /u/Green_Insect_6455 Im like. So weirded out by everything going on here. Its not just grandmas, its EVERYONE. People just read a headline and look at a picture and instantly believe it, and start responding why its bad that this thing that isnt happening is happening. Gunga. We need to go back to cave time. |
| /u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102 Things go viral first on twitter because twitter pays out real money for posts that get big views, which incentivises people to try and make viral content usually by exaggerating and jumping on divisive trends. Then the karma farmers on reddit take the viral posts from twitter and post them on reddit, so they can build karma on accounts in order to sell them (accounts with high enough post karma can be sold for over $3000 as many of the biggest subreddits have karma limits on new posts, and advertisers want accounts that can make posts). Then hundreds of thousands of bots across reddit upvote and comment on the posts, which gives both human users and reddit's investors the impression that the site is constantly full of activity. That's the viral economy in a nutshell. |
| /u/ZeroAmusement Kneejerk 'AI slop' reaction. I mean, there's quite a few examples where people have been like, 'hey you like my ai art?' and everyone is like "LOOKS LIKE AI SLOP!!!" and then they reveal it's actually by a famous artist. |
| /u/elcocopelao Anything over the first pass looks deep fried and it's unplayable. It also starts guessing the motion vectors so it looks like a jumbled mess. |
| /u/Mothanius That explains the terrible "blur" every time they move. It's not even motion blur, it's just a mush of rendering trying to figure out what color the pixel is. |
| /u/elcocopelao Yup! This isn't the case on the first pass, which to me looks great if adjusted correctly. Obviously it's up to personal preference, but here's some footage I got in Gallipoli with one pass. https://reddit.com/link/p7fa9x2/video/qpi8o8s4f5nh1/pla yer |
| /u/Ekktz Running 3 passes for a tool that's applied once normally? Idk sounds like engagement baiting |
| /u/elcocopelao Brother I'm trying to show that OPs video was deep fried by multiple passes. Nobody should be playing above the first pass, it starts messing as it's no longer getting direct data from the motion vectors. |
| /u/Haunebu52 Yep, there are several LUT mods for Cyberpunk and this video is using one of them. DLSS 5 isn't responsible for the washed out look in this case. |
| /u/homer_3 Hey, we're trying to witch hunt over here! |
| /u/NombieTeeth8 It's a mod reshade popular ones are lut and dreampunk. And from what I know dreampunk tends to make the sky overly bright like that. |
| /u/splepage This looks like DLSS5 with all the sliders maxed. |
| /u/Arbejdstilsynet Don't say that, this sub and r/gaming is in a frenzy already |
| /u/Full-Site1398 Either nobody played this game or everyone here has the memory of a gold fish. Not every area was thick neon city. this is the same area |
| /u/phxtravis Isn't that location in CP2077 rather "bland" also? It's outside the city, but not quite in the desert. |
| /u/The-F4LL3N Using visualization mods and throwing dlss 5 on top of it to get people complaining about dlss 5 is disingenuous as fuck. |
| /u/Distinct-Tie-3285 yeah i was about to point out my dlss does not look like that lmao https://preview.redd.it/je8nau0vj5nh1.jpeg?width=1920&f ormat=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a86971d936d11b1a51df2ca258c229bc2 4c8d3b5 |
| /u/mr-english That's because the graphics look real but the animations definitely don't. Everyone is "running" like an old person with haemorrhoids... maybe that was the "artist's intention"? |
| /u/Immediate-Ad-8047 Why the heck does it look so off and realistic at the same time. But not realistic in a good way Edit: Wow the engagement on this post is insane, I wasn't expecting this, well done people! |
| /u/HumbleBaker12 To me the movement and actions of the NPCs are extremely offputting when they look like actual people. |
| /u/BeardiusMaximus7 Yeah, graphics can update as much as you want but if the animations aren't lifelike it doesn't mean anything. |
| /u/Delboyyyyy Makes you feel like you're walking through some alien theme park full of human animatronics lol |
| /u/Otiosei That just describes all AI generated movies and games. |
| /u/Delboyyyyy Yeah pretty much but this is particularly tragic because it's basically overwriting a pre-existing piece of art to do it |
| /u/Altruistic-Earth-666 this described it so well, its actually perfect for the impression I had that I couldnt put into words. |
| /u/Big-Resort-4930 It's like playing a 30 yr old game with 8k texture mods but all the same low poly models. |
| /u/damoek Like that one time I installed all the awesome textures and mods on Morrowind but the NPC's still walk around with no knee or elbow joints. |
| /u/Natemcb Based on the last keynote they did for DLSS 5, looks like they want to try eventually try and tackle animations as well |
| /u/Aethanix https://giphy.com/gifs/QE8hREXIgRXeo |
| /u/MVRKHNTR So what, we'll eventually get to a point where the player never actually sees the game and just some video a piece of software spat out imagining what the game would be if it was something else? |
| /u/Icy-Guarantee6994 With the prices of new hardware, we'll reach a point when we'll imagine we are playing the games, instead. Maximum immersion, we got back to books, lol. |
| /u/luriso "meet my pet rock, his name's Andy" |
| /u/Icy-Guarantee6994 Dude comes with a shinier pet rock. "Mine has RTX on". |
| /u/MalcolmLinair Worse, it plunges you straight into the Uncanny Valley. Every instinct we have is suddenly screaming at us that this this isn't human, and is probably dangerous. |
| /u/Csicser Also, if I wanted to see dilapidated scenery and homeless encampments with drug addicts, I'd just go outside... Not everything needs to be hyper realistic, this just looks like that shitty depressing part of town you normally try to avoid |
| /u/PunkPirate56364 The uncanny valley is a psychological reaction where things that look almost human-but not quite right-make people feel unsettled, creeped out, or scared. DLSS5 gives characters photorealistic faces... but these characters are not fully realistic due to movement and other things. They are almost like actual humans, and that feels offputing. |
| /u/Forb1ddenKnowledge From what I read you get a 50 percent loss in GPU speed when you use dlss5. From were I am sitting it's not worth it especially if a game allows for high resolution textures.. |
| /u/bigpunk157 You really do not need the 8k feet textures in any of these games. |
| /u/ittleoff Isn't this really targeted for 60xx series? Like 20xx introduced raytracing but wasn't worth it, and dlss 5 is introduced in 50xx series but isn't worth it. Not something I'm going to pay 5k for however, but not sure anything Nvidia gaming feature is worth 5k. |