I think it all boils down to how companies weren't afraid to invest in game devs experimenting with weird and fresh ideas back then as it might as well become the next big thing. You don't see much experimentation nowadays because game production costs skyrocketed so any risky investments could translate into massive losses for these companies.
You are correct, there was such a high level of creativity during the 6th gen and even into the early 7th gen, it was that Goldilocks sweet spot between the technology being advanced enough that for the first games actually started to look realistic, but not so advanced that budgets skyrocketed.
That killed a lot of creativity or made it harder for developers to be able to focus on everything as opposed to specific things, I'll give you one example, The Order 1886, I know I'm pretty much the only one that likes that game but you have to admit as far as art design and graphic design goes it's incredibly creative, it seems very much "in the spirit" of 6th gen and early 7th gen games when it comes to that to me, back when games really wanted to transport you to wild, far out worlds ala Oddworld, Bioshock, stuff like that.
But the trouble is in order to get the look the developers wanted, they had to focus more on that than on the basic gameplay, it probably just wasn't feasible to put enough manpower into both things, but if somehow we could have gotten The Order 1886 with deeper gameplay I'm sure it would have been a bigger hit.
These days though we get a lot of games with very generic kind of art styles, think Call of Duty's "military" or "sci fi" looks, stuff that plays it very safe both to save manpower and to simply take less risks and focus more on what sells.
There's also the opposite approach in the indie scene where it's all about the gameplay with basic, sometimes even crude graphics, I just miss when we could have our cake and eat it too more frequently, where you could have both cutting edge graphics and fantastic game design, which hasn't gone extinct or anything, but seems a lot rarer than it used to be.
I honestly think as time goes on the video games of the 6th gen are going to go down in history like the classic rock of the 1960s and 1970s or the "New Hollywood" era of the 1970s for movies, as an obvious creative peak for a medium that people are going to obsess over for decades to come.
This, I believe, is reflected in how back then you had smaller teams (like Team Silent) with more freedom brainstorming unique concepts to put into the final product as opposed to the huge teams we have working on games now with corporate breathing down their necks canning anything that doesn't maximize profit. I don't mean to sound like a doomer or a "old good new bad" spouting fag, but you gotta admit the horror game scene in the PS1/PS2 era was far more interesting than the stale one we have these days.
Horror games are in the best place it's been since the PS2 days though, RE2 Remake was great and I'm really looking forward to RE8.
Stale was what it was in the late 2000s and early 2010s, things may not be as good as they used to be but it's better than it was back then, so that's something to be happy about at least.
You seem keen on that era's horror games so I thought I'd ask since I didn't see it brought up yet: Have you played Kuon? If you did what did you think of it? Also, and these are modern horror titles, what are your thoughts on Visage and At Dead Of Night?
Sadly Kuon passed me by and actual copes are now absurdly expensive, retailing for almost a thousand dollars, I really wish I had played it sooner before the price shot up like that, it's really too bad as I would love to play it, what I would give to be able to time travel back to my old Electronics Boutique and buy multiple copies of any game that sells for that kind of money today lol.
But I've been looking into ways to play PS2 games like that and ones that were never released in the US at all like Siren 2 and Michigan though, something other than emulation which is tragically pretty shitty when it comes to the PS2.
I'm not familiar with Visage and At Dead Of Night I'm afraid.
I will defend the FF combat to the death, especially as they refined it in 3. It really rewards getting over your fear of the ghosts, keeping your nerves steady when they attack, then following up and actually advancing on them while you combo. Getting a full-double-charged combo attack against a strong ghost like a rope maiden is one of the most satisfying things in gaming.
I suspect that one reason that survival horror games were relatively more popular back then was how the limitations of the technology could play into the experience in a way that wouldn't work now. The horrors weren't limited to blocky things that were hard to take seriously like they were in the PS1 days, but there was still a graininess to the image and draw distances could be obscured with fog/dark mist in a way that enhances the experience. I think it's harder to make a ghost or something similar scary when the model is seen clearly.
FF really was a brilliant series which leaves me just scratching my head as to why it wasn't a bigger seller, especially as I said J horror was popular in the states at the time.
But that also must have meant it wasn't a big seller in Japan either (although obviously a little better that the states) which also doesn't make sense.
I don't get it man.
On a side note, you know what I always thought would make for a cool spinoff? A Fatal Frame set in the west, as much as I love the Japanese themes a game where someone has the Camera Obscura and is exploring an old haunted English manor or New England mansion would be amazing.
Shooters became more popular, Silent Hill was never a runaway sales success the same way RE was, and alot of them were pretty bad or disappointing like Silent Hill 4. Also doesn't help that morons started thinking tank controls are bad. Hopefully Project Mara is good since it seems to be taking Silent Hill 4s premise but executing it differently, which would be great of done right.
I think Silent Hill was never as big a seller as RE for the simple reason it was a hell of a lot more intense, RE's B movie stylings was a little more mainstream than Silent Hill's psychological horror that genuinely gets under your skin.
Especially in the case of 2, last time I played it I couldn't believe how creeped out the game made still made me feel even as an adult, when I'd shut it off for the night, that moment of sitting in the dark, I could feel an actual lingering fear I almost never feel as an adult.
Because 2's themes are incredibly deep and genuinely mature in a way that's not "blood and guts" mature, but actually mature.
Just in general the game's atmosphere is so intense, especially since that was the last time I played it was the first time I played it with headphones, at times I swore I could feel the misty fog on my skin.
Silent Hill 4 meanwhile was such a disappointment,, it obviously needed another year of development and had no business coming out only a year after 3, I see no reason at all why it couldn't have come out in 2005 and I can only blame Konami for this decision.
Konami I think was always a company run by assholes that just so happened to have hired incredibly talented people, but eventually the assholes ran the talent off.
rented Silent Hill: Homecoming and I was okay with that.
