(Image courtesy of Nvidia. “DLSS 5 will use AI-powered rendering to change the graphics of games in real time.”)
Jesse Nguyen
Connector Editor
Video games, much like other media forms, have consistently improved as time passes and new breakthroughs occur. Games are increasingly released with more talented voice actors, more complex stories, and more sophisticated gameplay. An aspect of videos games that have grown rapidly is graphics. Graphics not only defines how a game looks but can also give a game a unique identity. A recent breakthrough in graphical technology is DLSS 5 released by NVIDA, a technology that utilizesgenerative AI to change a games visual fidelity (how closely something mimics the physics and appearance of a real-world subject).
A video demo posted on YouTube showcasing DLSS 5 posted on Mar. 16, 2026, utilized a handful of triple AAA titles like “Resident Evil Requiem,” “Starfield” and more to showcase the technology. All the games shown in this video already have realistic art styles, with nothing bordering close to the likes of “Mario” or other highly stylized games.
An article published by Henry Lin on NVIDA’s website describes how this technology works, saying “DLSS 5 takes a game’s color and motion vectors for each frame as input, and uses an AI model to infuse the scene with photoreal lighting and materials that are anchored to source 3D content and consistent from frame to frame. DLSS 5 runs in real time at up to 4K resolution for smooth, interactive gameplay.”
DLSS 5 is not entirely random in how it works, with Lin saying, “artists can determine where and how enhancements are applied to maintain each game’s unique aesthetic.”
The main focus of this DLSS 5 technology is “bridging the cinematic gap,” giving developers the tools to make video games look more akin to photorealistic Hollywood films.
In the video, the first clip utilizes Grace from “Resident Evil Requiem” as the subject for applying the DLSS 5 setting. With DLSS 5 on, she may look more realistic, but she doesn’t necessarily look like herself. The setting gives her more defined cheekbones, slightly higher set eyes, and deeper smile lines. What’s most visually apparent is how bright everything becomes, which may be due to how most AI models are trained on images and videos with lighting coming from any number of directions.
The “Hogwarts Legacy” clip additionally showcases the technologies difficulty in comprehending shadows and composition, with the hard shadows on the right side of the characters face completely disappearing.
The gaming industry has made great strides in improving visual graphics in the past 30 years. In the 1990s, it was a miracle to see games move from the 2D plane to 3D, with Doom (1993) being one of the most popular pioneers of such a feat. In the early to late2000s, game studios started to showcase the rapidly advancing technology they had developed with “Crysis” (2007) exhibiting a world filled with complex lighting, lush environments and high-resolution textures. This also signaled a time when games, particularly triple AAA games, shifted towards a more cinematic, Hollywood-like aesthetic, with “Uncharted 2” (2009) as a pioneer of this.
Most triple AAA titles released in the past ten years lean more towards a realistic art style, with more stylized games almost always being indie releases, or in Nintendo’scase, IPs that have already existed for several years.
With so much money on the line, it’s feasible to imagine that triple AAA studios lean towards this realistic style to better appeal to a wide audience. There can also be a deep-seated consumer consumption that better graphics means a better product.
Artistically, there can be many reasons why a game would want to lean towards a more realistic style. Perhaps it’s easier to emphasize with characters that appear the same as the player, or immersion was an important part in the games design.
With the advent of real-time ray tracing in 2018, a technology that simulates realistic lighting visuals and reflections, games like “Cyberpunk 2077” (2020) helped showcasethe full extent of how realistic these games can look.
Unfortunately, this realism often comes at a cost. “Cyberpunk 2077” was initiallyreleased as a graphical, performance nightmare, with the most powerful graphics cards at the time struggling to run the game. After several patches and updates, this is no longer an issue, but this pattern can be seen with other modern hyper-realistic games, like “Monster Hunter Wilds” released on Feb. 28 2025.
“Wilds” released with extreme performance issues, with many players expecting frequent crashes and overall poor visuals. Several updates have improved its performance issues, but the game still sits at a 69% approval rating on Steam.
The biggest question regarding video game graphics is the cost. A lot of reviews on “Wilds” doesn’t necessarily complain only about graphics, but other aspects about the game such as the shift away from the classic gameplay loop of what made the series “Monster Hunter” itself.
Are video games incessant focus on visual fidelity hindering other parts of it, like gameplay, mechanics and what really sets video games apart from other media forms? After all, 8 out of the 10 highest rated video games on Metacritic from 2025 do not have realistic art styles. That’s not to say realism makes video games bad, but it may be time to consider what the most important part of video games is and where technology should be developing.
