The issue with something like destructible terrain is that if your one and only goal is graphical fidelity, the only thing the AAA companies care about, then it actually becomes a massive resource hog. You’ll need to have artists render each photorealistic way that a piece of a scene could turn to debris. It’s the kinda thing that sounds simple, but could take a team of artists months or even years to accomplish.
If you look at an incredible game like Teardown which really delivers on full destructibility, you can see that they’re using voxels and the game looks a little blocky. It’s the kinda thing you can easily ignore with good art direction though, which Teardown has. The problem is that you need talented directors to conceptualize that, and most of the talent in the Western games industry is being wasted by corps that want to treat developers like single-use plastics and trash them once the current project is out.
The issue with something like destructible terrain is that if your one and only goal is graphical fidelity, the only thing the AAA companies care about, then it actually becomes a massive resource hog. You’ll need to have artists render each photorealistic way that a piece of a scene could turn to debris. It’s the kinda thing that sounds simple, but could take a team of artists months or even years to accomplish.
If you look at an incredible game like Teardown which really delivers on full destructibility, you can see that they’re using voxels and the game looks a little blocky. It’s the kinda thing you can easily ignore with good art direction though, which Teardown has. The problem is that you need talented directors to conceptualize that, and most of the talent in the Western games industry is being wasted by corps that want to treat developers like single-use plastics and trash them once the current project is out.