this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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[–] Elevator7009@lemmy.zip 7 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Curious to hear what the criteria for "masterpiece" is, otherwise I think it is just peoples' subjective opinion of what makes a great game that they also think others might agree about being a great game. Genuinely curious, interested in discussion, not saying this to shut down any of the answers here.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Historically a masterpiece has been a (or the) work that demonstrates an artist is capable of utilizing their medium to its fullest extent, i.e. it has been mastered. Per ye olde Wiki:

Historically, a "masterpiece" was a work of a very high standard produced by an apprentice to obtain full membership, as a "master", of a guild or academy in various areas of the visual arts and crafts.

In that light, I'd say the best qualified would be games that completely utilized the capabilities of the platform they were designed for or, perhaps of interest to more people, expanded what everyone thought could be done with those systems. Games which were furthermore well polished and complete, and did not have much room for improvement taking into account the constraints they had to work with at the time. (For instance: No duh we could make Mario 64 run at a higher framerate and have better textures to look nicer on hardware now. That doesn't mean it wasn't arguably a masterpiece of its time, on the system it was on.) This doesn't just have to be technical stuff -- It could be the way the game used storytelling, its gameplay mechanics, or anything else.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 2 points 4 days ago

Spyro and Crash trilogies on the PSX, as well as the Quake 2 port, would definitely merit being called technical masterpieces

On the original Xbox, Phantom Dust would fit that bill, despite being a commercial failure at the time. The tldr is that you create a collection of spells (attacks, traps, dodges, curses, buffs) and try to grab them and the "mana" during the real time duels, in order to beat your opponents. Terrain is semi destructible and you have to take into consideration the trajectory of your spells - https://www.xbox.com/games/store/phantom-dust/9PCDNBHR11MR

[–] ladicius@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Then Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom belong to that category - run smoothly as fuck on one of the lamest consoles there is, and are beautiful and complex.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

...Just don't look at it too hard when you go to the Great Deku Tree in BotW.

[–] KOhBaby@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

In my mind a masterpiece video game can't be copied. Or at least if someone tried it would just be called a cheap clone of the original.

Then again everything can be copied but the more difficult it is to copy the closer it is to a masterpiece IMO.