It's actually really interesting to look at this old thread, opened about one year into this current console generation, and to look at how fighting games have graphically developed since then.
First of all, graphically no one really talks about Killer Instinct anymore. It never really was a stylistically or technically good looking game. Back then it was the first current gen fighter though.
As I back then predicted, Tekken 7 didn't get a real graphical overhaul. The supposed graphical update from Tekken 7 Arcade to Tekken 7 Fated Retribution was nothing more than the addition of some post processing effects like film grain, color filters and chromatic aberration, which all make the game look worse imo. PC players are mostly disabling these image quality killing effects, while console players have to unfortunately live with them. The game just doesn't look good on PS4 and even worse on Xbox One due to even lower resolution.
Let's hope upcoming 3D fighters don't rely on Unreal Engine 4 too much, which scales down poorly from PC to the less powerful consoles, especially with fighting games that have to run in 60fps.
Street Fighter V (hate or love its art direction) looked a lot better on the images, that I posted in the opening post, than it looked at release of the game.
The lighting changed, it's much flatter lit now and the very detailed cloth and skin textures on characters are gone too. SFV's characters look much more like clay characters now.
SFV was optimized for powerful PCs to run it, even though it was marketed as this big Sony console exclusive. On PS4 the game ended up looking pretty disappointing. Poor image quality, terrible shadow dithering and low detail backgrounds with washed out, blurry textures.
Interesting to note: This game also uses Unreal Engine 4. See a pattern?
Injustice 2 came along just a couple of months ago and proved that optimization for consoles first can actually lead to impressive visual results:
(Yes, there are also brighter and more colorful stages, but I preferred to showcase these for now.
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Injustice 2 is easily the best looking fighter of this generation and that on just the consoles and using the old (but highly optimized) Unreal Engine 3. Highly detailed character models, beautifully lit, nearly photo realistic backgrounds, breathtaking stage transitions and character super moves and last but not least some of the best facial animations that we have seen in any video game yet.
NeatherRealm really stepped up the graphics game and I hope future fighters like DOA6 or Soul Calibur 6 (which I still hope will come eventually) will go even further. These two series were after all always known for their visual accomplishments.
But, damn, would I have been disappointed if I knew back then, when I opened this thread, that three years after that there is still none of those two fighters in sight.
Other notable fighting games that we know are upcoming and that are looking not bad at all so far are:
- Dissidia, which impresses with six detailed character models on screen at once, huge stages and an insane firework of effects that completely fills the screen.
- Dragon Ball Fighters Z, which uses Arc System's amazing anime stylized engine to bring DBZ from 2D into 3D and you can hardly even tell that it isn't a 2D anime.