Photo-realistic Graphics lead to decline in RPGs?

[Lyric Suite]

I didn't say it doesn't have style, but it doesn't have style over realism, or it doesn't treat realism as something to scoff at and avoid.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

If you think that Icewind Dale doesn't have style, rather being purely photo-realistic, you're beyond hope.

IE games were closer to being "photo-realistic" than most other games on the market at the time. Either people here are too young to remember or they've simply forgotten.
I'll also agree that they aged well, especially the IWD games which are still beautiful.

 

[DeepOcean]

Before digital distribution, it was a pain in the ass and unprofitable to serve niche games, the reality is that most companies that served what is now considerated niche markets, they all went bankrupt on the 90's and before people claim "EA bad", "Activision bad", the reality is that if there was money to be made, other publishers would have taken their place after they went for their blockbuster strategy. Only after digital distribution became popular, then niches were profitable again and lo and behold, indie publishers and devs started to multiply.

I think the graphics revolution coincided with the death of those companies because their core audience was in reality really small to be compatible with physical distribution and their casual audience really wanted more and more graphical fidelity, reality is that the vast majority of players like passive entertainment, they dont like abstraction, they dont like optimizing systems, they dont like puzzles, they dont like strategy, if you dont go for graphics, you only have abstraction to offer and at that time, you had soccer moms and dude bros buying games on Walmart, that was the only way, good luck trying to sell your map painting game to them.

I dont think those companies would keep this audience even if there was a ban on graphical cards.

 

[Darkzone]

This is what actual "style" looks like and it's fucking amazing:

Spoiler

Wanna talk about "style", what do you think looks better, the above or Crysis?

Try to keep up. I said that putting photo-realism over style was always a mistake - and I was right. But I didn't say that photo-realism can not be stylish. If the game is photo-realistic because it fits its visual themes - great, no problem there. If, on the other hand, the game is trying to be photo-realistic when it could achieve better effects with stylistic approach, then it is a mistake. Photo-realistic Limbo would be ugly as sin.
You seem to think that the graphics are good if they are realistic - I think that consistent art direction that fits narrative themes is what makes graphics good in the first place, but that doesn't mean that it can't be photo-realistic too - depends on a game. And the things that you mentioned "shit filters, retarded effects like motion blur or depth and field" - are consequences of trying to be photo-realistic and failing at it, big time. For those games it would be better to find their own style instead of shoving this stuff everywhere.
Bottom line is, art direction is more important than photo-realism, but they are not exclusive. Your example with Fortnite is puzzling to me, since Fortnite is practically a prime example of "game without style".

The last sentence is nonsense. Everything else we can discuss on a higher level if you really wish potatolander, because what you posted is not a style per se. Oh... look many DarkZones in this picture and fog with distance and near blur and the only sharp element is the cardboard cutout of the boy in the boat. This is not a style because it could have been made just as likely with a camera and it does not contain specific elements that can be attributed to one certain specific style in my option and to my knowledge. And while not everything you like is a style, let me introduce you to Neal Adams or simply the man who introduced the more realistic drawing stylte to comics in the time as everyone was a wanna be Jack Kirby:

Important takeaway from the video:
A style is what you do wrong. That's what people do wrong. That's why you call it a style. If it were right it would have look like a photograph ... or like a Norman Rockwell painting.
Now think why i stated that the last sentence is nonsens.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

100 managers, 20 writers, 10 artists and 1 programmer. This is the problem.

 

[Tim the Bore]

If you think that Icewind Dale doesn't have style, rather being purely photo-realistic, you're beyond hope.

IE games were closer to being "photo-realistic" than most other games on the market at the time. Either people here are too young to remember or they've simply forgotten.
I'll also agree that they aged well, especially the IWD games which are still beautiful.

I meant that it had a strong artistic direction that made it photo-realistic (or, you know, as close as it could get) and not the other way around.

I didn't say it doesn't have style, but it doesn't have style over realism, or it doesn't treat realism as something to scoff at and avoid.

And I didn't say that style is opposite to visual realism, I said that the art direction always come first. Again: one does not exclude the other. You choice of style could be to make it realistic - but the concept of how the game should look like needs always be determined before deciding whether it should be realistic-looking or not. You need to figure out what your game is all about before deciding how to make it work. Because if you decide to go with photo-realistic approach before that, you won't be able to properly convey the visual aspects of your idea, since the tools that you are using to tell the story of that game need to reflect the core idea of it. So photo-realism can be that tool, but it doesn't have to. If pure realism would be the only way to go, we wouldn't have animated movies these days. But animated movies can achieve what realistic-looking movies can't, so they are necessary for certain kind of experience. Same rule applies to video games.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

If you think that Icewind Dale doesn't have style, rather being purely photo-realistic, you're beyond hope.

IE games were closer to being "photo-realistic" than most other games on the market at the time. Either people here are too young to remember or they've simply forgotten.
I'll also agree that they aged well, especially the IWD games which are still beautiful.

They aged well because they had style over photorealism. Every "photorealistic" games has aged badly and will age badly. Even FS 2020 will age badly and will be considered mediocre and "surpassed" from a graphics point of view in a few years.

 

[Lyric Suite]

No it won't lmao. Games don't "age" anymore, ever since Crysis:



Consoles are part of the issue since tech innovation is limited by pissant console hardware but i think graphical fidelity has reached a level now where improvements aren't that drastic anymore. Compare Crysis with a modern game vis Crysis compared to a game from the late 90s. Same time difference, but massive contrast.

 

[Bohrain]

That's a cherrypicked example if I've ever seen one. Every other photorealistic FPS of that era looks complete garbage brown and bloom ridden mess. Whether a game ages well or not is usually about good color harmony, unique designs that follow some cohesive theme and so forth. Photorealism has the inherent issue that your product is going to look worse in comparison in 3 years since people can just do the same building or gun design with more graphical fidelity. Heavily stylished graphics don't really have to face that, but the artist has to be able to produce something doesn't look too derivative while looking visually appealing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

That's a cherrypicked example if I've ever seen one. Every other photorealistic FPS of that era looks complete garbage brown and bloom ridden mess. Whether a game ages well or not is usually about good color harmony, unique designs that follow some cohesive theme and so forth. Photorealism has the inherent issue that your product is going to look worse in comparison in 3 years since people can just do the same building or gun design with more graphical fidelity. Heavily stylished graphics don't really have to face that, but the artist has to be able to produce something doesn't look too derivative while looking visually appealing.

They looked shit then and they look shit now.
MGS3 looked great in 2004, and it looks great in 2020.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Photorealism is linked almost completely to the technical aspect of graphics rendering, hence it easily become obsolete as the tech become obsolete. If there are not any good artistic/stylistic choices and photorealism is aimed for photorealism sake, the results is ephemeral marketing aimed at dumb teenagers that marvel at the latest graphics tech.

If I look at MGS3 now (I just completed the game for the first time few days ago) I don't see any particular photorealism, and, if the graphics is still interesting and pleasant, it is for its deliberate artistc choices and not for its photorealism. Indeed it looks more like a cartoon or animation than a photographic movie.

FS 2020 graphics will be obsolete (how it is obsolete now FS 2004) when next generation of real raytracing capable graphics cards will be available and people suddenly will realize that reflections, occlusions, light diffusion through clouds and atmospbere, and in general any light scattering in FS 2020 are all wrong, from a photorealistic point of view. The same applies to any Crysis you can think of. By the way, even Crysis is getting now its remastered version... as expected.

This is true not only in games, but also in movies when you see how badly has aged the part realized with CGI, when it was aimed to be "realistic" and nothing else.

That said, it is true that there will be a "saturation" in the improvement of the photographic fidelity of syntetic graphics tech. This is due to the physical limit of the eye and the capacity of our brain to process visual informatiion. But this is also a huge hint that photorealism cannot be synonymous of good graphics. Indeed how do you beat a real photo if you aim to photorealim? If photorealism is the main axis where you measure the quality of graphics, then any photo should be the best graphics. Then you will notice that not all the photos are good or interesting, and that there is something else to photorealism that decides if a photo is good or bad.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

If I look at MGS3 now (I just completed the game for the first time few days ago) I don't see any particular photorealism, and, if the graphics is still interesting and pleasant, it is for its deliberate artistc choices and not for its photorealism. Indeed it looks more like a cartoon or animation than a photographic movie.

You can't judge it properly because you didn't play it at release. Yes, it was definitely photo-realistic for the time. Just look at basically any review of it when it released praising the graphics.
2004 review: https://www.darkstation.com/reviews/metal-gear-solid-3-snake-eater

Graphics
Part of the Metal Gear Solid tradition is the great visuals that have been found in the first two games. Metal Gear Solid in my eyes was one of the best-looking games to hit the Playstation and MGS2 for the PS2. So can MGS3 top it off and make a third great looking game or is Snake just getting to old for this?

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a game that once again really captures the true glory of the series by creating yet again a great looking game. This time around the game takes place in the jungle, which actually translates quite well on screen. The developers did a great job of creating a very beautiful and realistic jungle atmosphere, which is by far one of the best seen in gaming to date. Snake this time around has once again got a facelift, getting a whole lot more detail and really becoming one of the best looking characters on the PS2. Although the game can be a little sluggish at times it doesn’t seem to struggle all that much.

 

[reversependulum]

Most important thing in a game is gameplay and the graphics are to enhance the gameplay experience.

If I want photo-realistic graphics, I will watch a movie or just go to a trip in real life.

 

[TemplarGR]

No, in fact photorealistic graphics (which is a stage we haven't reached yet and probably won't for another decade anyway) are a huge boon for RPGs because they directly amplify the immersion factor.

 

[mondblut]

No, you get a failed message before that happens. Something about lawyers breathing on Microsoft's neck after 9/11 about portraying crashes as too realistic.

Which, doesn't really matter because this is a flight simulator, not a crash simulator. This ain't GTA people who play those type of games are committed to do as little crashing as they can, so there's no point wasting ton of resources into that aspect of the "simulation".

What? You mean crashing planes into skyscrapers is not the biggest attraction of these series?

Did modders fix it, at least?

 

[Reapa]

EDIT: I find people's idea that video games will be good again if we go back to 8 bit graphics or clunky shit 3D of early 3D is ridiculous. The fact that Indie and AA games that becomes Codex darling usually has shit graphics/voice-works is consequences of them not having budget to afford anything better (and in part cashing on oldfags nostalgia tinted glasses). It's a matter of economy and risk taken by the studio. AAA studio doesn't make simple gameplay because they don't have the budget, but because for a long while, simple and accessible with booming graphics is selling point of the mainstream.

Does Morrowind lack wall climbing that Daggerfall had because climbing is teh hard for the console peasants (who grew on platformers and tomb raider), or because it required additional animations and having to somehow marry those animations with all those building models?

There is no action that cannot be done with a popup menu and a line of text, but modern mainstream games cannot allow the luxury of doing it this way.

bad example for an animation issue since morrowind has levitation just like daggerfall and it didn't care about levitation animations.
i guess climbing may have just been deemed superfluous. especially since morrowind doesn't have much to climb anyway.
there are several skills that have been streamlined from daggerfall to morrowind. all in connection to the fact that morrowind has a much smaller scope. sadly

 

[DJOGamer PT]

MGS3 looked great in 2004, and it looks great in 2020.

That's simply due to it's very good art direction like other titles from 2000's
Because nowadays there's nothing photo-realistic about MGS3

The game might have made an attempt at photo-realism with the hardware available at the time
But as it stands today calling it photo-realistic is a big stretch

It still looks great, and I don't think the game has "aged" much
But again that's only because it has a well crafted style as opposed to a high poly count

 

[Lyric Suite]

That's a cherrypicked example if I've ever seen one. Every other photorealistic FPS of that era looks complete garbage brown and bloom ridden mess.

Apart from the fact this has nothing to do with what i was arguing (i was talking about the fact Cryisis doesn't look as far from modern games as it does from games from the 90s or early 2000s, despite the fact the number of years is the same in either direction, which shows that games don't "age" as they used to because of the threshold in graphical fidelity achieved from Crysis onward), you are also undermining the whole "art style" argument, because that's exactly what the issue is with those brown and bloom ridden garbage games. Those games are not "photorealistic" according to the technological level of their day, they are trying to follow a specific "style" that goes against the principle of realism. Natural lighting is replaced with vomit tint because those games are trying to be "cinematic", or what have you, it's a style, as i said, and sometimes styles can be bad, which shows how this argument isn't as simple as its made out to be, and that in so far as AAA games go at the very least, photorealism would actually be preferable to this vomit tinted fuzzy bloom ridden shit that is so ubiquitous among those type of games.

 

[reversependulum]

Previously Graphics improvement always leads to a incline in games and can obscure the mediocre gameplay, story or creativity.

For example most people would play a game with 360p with mediocre gameplay over 240p game with better gameplay because people notice the graphics first AND human eyes can distinguish clearly the quality difference of 360p to 240p.

Now say Graphics improvements from 1080p to 2160p, the improvement is not that noticeable to naked eye unless you go and count the strand of hairs of a game character.

Without an improvement to overall gameplay, story or creativity there will not be an incline to games.

 

[Kainan]

No, you get a failed message before that happens. Something about lawyers breathing on Microsoft's neck after 9/11 about portraying crashes as too realistic.

Which, doesn't really matter because this is a flight simulator, not a crash simulator. This ain't GTA people who play those type of games are committed to do as little crashing as they can, so there's no point wasting ton of resources into that aspect of the "simulation".

What? You mean crashing planes into skyscrapers is not the biggest attraction of these series?

Did modders fix it, at least?

Yeah i dont get this genre. You cant do the one thing that you would want to.
I would expect an effect like in the Matrix when Trinity escapes the helicopter explosion.

 

[Lyric Suite]

No, you get a failed message before that happens. Something about lawyers breathing on Microsoft's neck after 9/11 about portraying crashes as too realistic.

Which, doesn't really matter because this is a flight simulator, not a crash simulator. This ain't GTA people who play those type of games are committed to do as little crashing as they can, so there's no point wasting ton of resources into that aspect of the "simulation".

What? You mean crashing planes into skyscrapers is not the biggest attraction of these series?

Did modders fix it, at least?

Yeah i dont get this genre. You cant do the one thing that you would want to.

If you want to play a flight simulator just to crash into things for shits and gigles, maybe you should look for a different genre. People who are serious about playing those type of games generally have no intention to crash into anything.

 

[Kainan]

Well ok. But i dont think there is that genre. Maybe some car racing game with realistic damage model. But even there there are never explosions? You would think in games at least explosions would look great by now. But they are all kind of lame and have no effect on the environment.

 

[undecaf]

Photo-realistic Graphics lead to decline in RPGs.

It certainly seems to have an effect, but voiced protagonists and otherwise full voiceacting tops it.

 

[Bohrain]

Voice acting is definitely more of an issue. It makes modded content stick out like a sore thumb since they have to make do with no voice acting or amateurs with awful mics. And adding more developer made content means hiring the same voice actors which more often than not isn't feasible if you aren't doing a whole game's worth of content.

 

[TemplarGR]

I can't play RPGs without voice acting. Having to read walls of text is so 1980s. Welcome to the 2020s you ludites.