How were old games seemingly so effortlessly soulful?

I can't find any new games that have this level of care, creativity, and consideration, not AAA nor indie or AA

Realism is the death of creativity.

>>714131293 (OP)
>How were old games seemingly so effortlessly soulful?
you grew up with them

>take pokemon game
>remove all the exploration, wild pokemon and side features
>reuse n64 assets
>slap them on gamecube for full price
>"LE CARE AND CREATIVITY!!!"
case in point

People actually wanted to make games for fun and not for shareholders.

>>714131293 (OP)
>effortless
Game publishers were allowed to force their workers doing 80 hour weeks for a 2 year crunch cycle, that's how it was "effortless"

>>714131371
This. Consider the game in your pic OP.
if it were made today the areas would have to be conjoined by a seamless open world for "realism"
The scope would necessitate stretching the same few assets over the whole world, for budget reasons
And then the areas would have to blend into one another, "for realism"
Which leads to a grey empty blob of a world with a few interesting points marked on your map. Instead of just the interesting points.

>>714131485
>you grew up with them
I didn't, I'm playing Colosseum for the first time right now, I never had a Nintendo console or handheld growing up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re7vi6eo-Qk

>>714131371
Part of the reason old games were so soulful though was because they were sincere enough to not feel any shame in combining cute/cartoony characters with gritty and realistic environments. The 3D GameCube Pokémon games wouldn't be as fondly remembered if it weren't for this.

>>714131293 (OP)
modern games go for minimalistic menus because theyre too lazy to understand good UX

>>714131293 (OP)
>How were old games seemingly so effortlessly soulful?
Dev teams were like 12 dudes working in one office instead of 12,000 dudes across 12 different companies.
Also hardware limitations inspired creative solutions to get the most out of what they had, while having basically no restrictions has just resulted in games being poorly optimized because they can get away with it.

>>714131526
Seemingly effortless is a compliment, it means soulfulness was so commonplace it felt like it was the default, that just making a game meant that soul would somehow emerge on its own

Today we know that is not the case, and that not only they worked themselves to the bone, they also had some spark of passion and creativity devs these days lack en masse, despite some of them also working themselves to the bone, just making a game is not enough, just working 80 hour weeks is not enough, just having a budget of millions is not enough, devs used to have enthusiasm and a trailblazer attitude that imbued their games with evident magic, charm, and curiosity