I don't know how to specifically describe this aesthetic but i want someone to make a game where the gameplay looks like how FMVs looked on the ps1

Bushido Blade 2 - Intro

like this shit

realtime tech evolved in different directions

there's a weird smoothness to this look

we put our EXP into textures instead of polygon counts

I almost want to call it low-poly, but no, that's not right either because when people say low-poly they mean like PS1 gameplay

low-poly but somehow soft

i immediately knew exactly the aesthetic you were talking about and honestly yeah

i think the hardware limitations probably are part of the reason why the tech evolved in the direction it did. they had to focus on making things look good with textures because they didn't have the processing power to make it look good with more polygons

but i think another reason is probably because like...this particular aesthetic also evokes the low quality CGI of 3d animated cartoons at the time

you know how there was this whole era of "we're going to 3D animate this because it's cheaper than 2D animation" but also the tech wasn't quite at the level where it actually looked decent yet

it's certainly less beautiful

but I choose to love it regardless

oh yeah it's big nostalgia tbh

but i'm just theorizing that the resemblance is part of the reason why nobody decided to try to capture a similar aesthetic with gameplay graphics