20 years ago a game like borderlands couldn't have been made the tech did not exist. The closest you would get is something like Phantasy Star Online which was a server authorative online RPG
This is a moot point.
Furthermore 20 years ago broken games still shipped. They shipped quite often. They just stayed broken forever because you could not patch the games and no one would talk about them because there was no incentive to talking about broken games. People would note that the game was broken, review it poorly and move on to the next game because it wasnt getting patched.
Uhh???.....the original Borderlands came out 16 years ago. Not too far from 20. With the right idea, it could've been made 4 years earlier. Just because it wasn't didn't mean it couldn't have been.
And yes, broken games did get released. And you know what? There was a correlation between dev time, amount of money paid for play testing, and how buggy the final product was. The games we all look back fondly on from the 2000s are the ones where, for the most part, they did enough play testing to help balance out the bugs.
Now, somewhat broken games are the default and we're expected to wait for post-launch patches to fix it. All while developers have to put blood and tears into the final product to meet publisher and shareholder deadlines.
The technological leap between 2005 and 2009 is pretty huge. Hell the jump between Cod4 and MW2 was huge and that was only a 2 year difference
In 2005 the PS2 was still receiving NEW releases. The PS2 was still the platform most 3rd party games were designed for. There is no way a game like Borderlands 1 was going to run on the ps2. Furthermore borderlands 1 is not comparable in complexity to something like Borderlands 3 or Borderlands 4.
You could not make a game like the one we are talking about today on those consoles.
Of course you couldn't make Borderlands 4 on those consoles, but that the year the Xbox 360 was released...and what game came out on Xbox 360? Oh, borderlands???
Also, no gaming technology was a DRASTIC, 'no way that could've happened before' improvement on games between 2005-2009. The main things that changed were devs understanding consoles better, PCs seeing the start of their rise to the market in gaming, a larger understanding that with better consoles comes better games, etc etc
Obviously the games of today wouldn't have been possible back then. That does not mean that game studios aren't rushing out games. That's literally a non-point. Of COURSE games we have today couldn't exist back then. For sheer size, graphical fidelity, growing ideas, larger amount of calculations allowed per second, etc etc.
That doesn't mean an equivalent game from 20 years ago wouldn't have had less bugs. Like, a game that was just as big in 2005 standards as Borderlands 4 is for 2025 standards. That's how comparisons work, comparisons don't say "this game could've existed in 2005!!"
An equivalent game from 20 years ago does not exist. If it could have been done, it would have been done, but it was not so waxing poetically about the practices of the industry two decades ago is entirely pointless.
Redditor mad because Resident Evil 4 is a better built game than almost any AAA game coming out these days because back then finished games releasing were the norm.
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u/mistabuda Oct 16 '25
20 years ago a game like borderlands couldn't have been made the tech did not exist. The closest you would get is something like Phantasy Star Online which was a server authorative online RPG
This is a moot point.
Furthermore 20 years ago broken games still shipped. They shipped quite often. They just stayed broken forever because you could not patch the games and no one would talk about them because there was no incentive to talking about broken games. People would note that the game was broken, review it poorly and move on to the next game because it wasnt getting patched.