Good graphics in a crpg

[pernat]

So, i`m running a crpg branch on some gaming discussion board and there was a statement made sometime ago that good quality graphics help a player better live up to his role. I found it ridiculous since quality of graphics have no possible connection with quality of roleplaying, it can`t help you play your chosen role better or worse, imo. But to my surprice i found kinda strong dissagreement. I`ve been lurking here for some time, so i decided to bring this thing here.

So, what part do graphics play in crpg games? And closer to the original topic, what does quality of graphics has to do with roleplaying?

 

[roguefrog]

RPGs don't even need graphics. Case in point - roguelikes.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

If you have a good imagination, graphics aren't a problem. Not to say that you should just draw up a bunch of shitty MSpaint stuff, but at least make an effort. If you're the worst artist in the whole wide world, make a rougelike or if you need graphics for some reason, hire an artist to do them for you.

 

[Kamaz]

Well, graphics could be lacking (like in roguelikes), but they sure create much of atmosphere and overall feeling. What would Fallout have been unless it had that rusty, militaristic design, style? Sure, it would have been great game, but graphics added heck of enjoyment when I played the game.

For me graphics are important in cRPG very much. But I am willing to try game even if it is not vey good looking or is actually ASCii and if I like gameplay, I will enjoy this game anyways. Graphics are important but not critical. That works inverse as well - shiny graphics dont make me play the game. Good game has to have as graphics as gameplay. ANd no matter what genre is it.

 

[Revasser]

I don't believe expensive, 'photorealistic' graphics necessarily add anything to an RPG. Though I don't really think that having good graphics makes an RPG automatically suck, either.

But the fact is that, usually, when a developer focuses heavily on making flashy graphics and touts it as one of the main attractions of their RPG, it is in indicator of the sort of attitude that developer had when the game was being produced; basically, that looks come before good roleplaying potential, which is a pretty counter-productive attitude to have when trying to make an RPG. It's the difference between "let's get the graphical shit done cheaply and easily so we can focus on the roleplaying" and "let's get the roleplaying shit out of the way cheaply and easily so we can focus on teh purdy graphics.'

Then there's the whole opportunity cost thing. If you're spending more money/time/effort/team member on graphics, you're spending less on everything else. So while focusing nice, expensive graphics doesn't preclude an RPG from having good roleplaying and mechanics, focus on the graphics often indicates a lack of focus elsewhere.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Do I like eye candy and graphics? Sure, absolutely.
Do I think they're necessary to have an amazing RPG experience? Nope, absolutely not.

 

[Balor]

Graphics has nothing to do with roleplay... expecially since roleplay is not limited to CPRGs, and in P&P there was no graphics at all.
Imagination FTW!
By the way, I think that poor graphics actually worse then no graphics at all, cause it's 'graphical' enough to stiffle imagination, and crappy enough to cause aversion.
Unless it's REALLY simple graphics, like in roguelikes... if it can be called graphics at all, of course.
Of course, if one's REALLY good, one can abstract from the existing graphics and 'redraw' the picture in his own imaginations, but that require extra (and unneeded) effort, so - see above.

 

[truekaiser]

they don't really help or hurt in a direct way.
what graphics do though is raise or lower the bar for the game in question.

if the graphics are very good it raises the bar for the rest of the game, meaning the game play and the story have to be at or above the quality of the graphics to make the game good.

if the graphics are poor it makes it easier for the other aspects of the game to look good in comparison

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

Long live text-based games!

 

[Twinfalls]

RPGs are all about imagination.

Graphics in RPGs should therefore serve to help stimulate the imagination. How is this achieved? IMHO, they should, wherever possible, contain as much of a distinctive style as possible. 'As possible' meaning without looking contrived, over-stylised, etc (not that any game ever seems to approach anything like that, these days...)

Sadly, it seems graphics are the biggest reason for the decline in popularity and quality of RPGs. A gaming genre which is all about imagination suffers the most when the use of imagination is replaced with the explicitly 'hi-fi' visuals of modern graphics.

And it's led to a decline in standards. A certain famous CRPG series went from sprite-based NPC graphics, with wonderful, heavily populated cities, to all-polygons - and ghost-towns. If only the sprites could have been retained and improved, it'd be a better series even now, IMO.

 

[LlamaGod]

If you need graphics to jumpstart your imagine, please go watch TV.

I dont give a single shit about graphics, so it pisses me off that modern games all focus on graphics and silly little trendy things like omg physicss!1 and stuff instead of gameplay.

And all reviews, previews and all that shit talk about is everything but gameplay.

'CHECK OUT THESE GRAPHICS, THIS GAME WILL BE AWESOME'

 

[Twinfalls]

You're misreading the word 'stimulate'.

Graphics should be sub-servient to gameplay. And gameplay in an RPG is essentially about the player's imagination. When it is the imagination in which all the action is really taking place, then you haver real RPG goodness, as opposed to twitch gaming and munchkinism. Which doesn't mean there should be no graphics, but rather, the graphics ought to stimulate - ie, serve the imagination, rather than displace it - same with the game mechanics. This would make the graphics 'good'.

I think maybe game mechanics can do exactly the same kind of damage to the use of imagination as graphics can. KOTOR's 'watch the combat play itself' reduces the use of your imagination. Similarly, IMO normal-mapped high-poly 'realistic' faces are worse than stylised, cartoony bitmap faces, because with the latter, your imagination 'fills in' more details, whereas with the former, it's all done for you, and tends to look mundane.

The imagination always wins out over realism in coolness.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

On the other hand, if a game's graphics can pull you into the world to a large enough extent, in other words, if the game is immersive enough so that you feel like you ARE the character you're pushing through that world, I think that can be a great boon to roleplaying as well. You end up using your senses more -- did I just see something beyond that tree? What was that sound behind me? And looking through the character's eyes, you feel "I -AM- this character," as opposed to "I am some omniscient presence dictacting my character's actions through an abstract world that I pretend is realistic."

As long as the experience is compelling, challenging and fun, I think that's pretty cool, too. I love reading, and I also love going to the movies. I love playing pen & paper RPGs, and I also love video games. I don't think that the experience is diminished -- it's simply a different experience that uses different parts of your mind. And both are cool.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

You end up using your senses more -- did I just see something beyond that tree? What was that sound behind me?

This could easily be done with a little text message in the message box or something, like Fallout did. If you have high enough perception you get something like "You see something shift behind the trees to your left" or "You hear something sneak up behind you."

Geneforge did this also, and despite it's "crap" graphics, is one of the most immersive games I've ever played.

 

[Vault Dweller]

You end up using your senses more -- did I just see something beyond that tree? What was that sound behind me? And looking through the character's eyes, you feel "I -AM- this character,"

YOUR senses, not your character's.
Nothing beats a perception check and "You have noticed something beyond that tree. Do you want to investigate?" message box. Then again, I'm an old school gamer and things like "OMG! I can see stuff so I -AM- this character" are beyond my comprehension. No offense meant, btw.

 

[Twinfalls]

What I'd like to see is great graphics (meaning yes, high-poly, but also great artwork and a unique style) combined with more text. I don't see why graphics mean prose has to be junked.

MSFD - remember in Arena, there were all those little bits of descriptive writing, things like when entering the Mages Guild, the passage all about the weird feeling you got from the place, with things like devilish eyes looking at you, etc, which really improved the atmosphere of the game? They were on top of the graphics. Daggerfall had some too, though not as much.

Is there any reason Oblivion couldn't feature a return to this kind of thing? It'd be good for all those kids playing the game and not reading instead....

 

[Kamaz]

You end up using your senses more -- did I just see something beyond that tree? What was that sound behind me? And looking through the character's eyes, you feel "I -AM- this character," as opposed to "I am some omniscient presence dictacting my character's actions through an abstract world that I pretend is realistic."

Right, that is great...if it actually WORKS. Gothic games cannot be immagined without that 3D world since it is crucial part of the gameplay/immersion. Wandering around in mountains, sneaking past beasts, fearing for my[character's] life in a forest when night is coming was the best part of the game for me, not some annoying combat, pretty boring lame storyline, crappy/unbalanced/uninteresting character system. Gothic used the graphics to push forward that immersion and feeling thing. And thats good.

Now, the problem is when people making RPG with good graphics focus on graphic solely, just implementing it, not using its advantages for the gameplay purposes. Like, Bloodlines gained much from character facial expressions in the dialogues. So you, gamedevs promise us gift in a shiny package but what we actually get is just shiny package with no gift in it. Sure, shiny package could help us enjoy the gift, but without gift it is useless and, even more, frustrating.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

I have a pretty strong feeling that some of those messages popped up because they couldn't handle it any other way, not because they wanted everything to be stats based, old school computers being what they were Nowadays you could do things like visually brighten a darkened tomb if the player character had night vision, exaggerate locational sounds for a player character with keen hearing, or even highlight objects to varying degrees for characters with high perception.
There's a lot you can do visually and aurally now that you simply couldn't do before, and I think that that lack of capability played a large part in how older RPGs were designed -- that and the transition from P&P was still relatively new, and that's what most people expected from RPGs and were familiar with. I hope to see more stats-based capabilities being expressed in ways other than text in future RPGs. Oblivion does some of this -- for example when you're sneaking, the reticle turns into an abstract eye shape that becomes more or less opaque, depending on whether you're being detected or not, so you know how well your character is doing (something a stealthy character WOULD know.)

As far as text goes, in Oblivion there's a tremendous amount of text. Huge amounts in dialogue of course, plus quest info and updates, messages like "Your yield has been rejected" or "Your Sneak skill has advanced" or "You have insufficient magicka," etc., all the books in the game of course, descriptions of skills and stats, descriptions of skill perks when you earn them, etc. There's probably more text in the game than the average action gamer will be willing to read, I imagine

 

[DamnElfGirl]

I have to admit that good graphics design is an important part of the RPG experience for me. Note that I say "good graphics design", not "good graphics". For instance, Everquest II may have good graphics, but it has shitty graphics design. I would far rather play a game with stylish sprite-based graphics.

Throwing out text-based games for the moment (personally, I find text-based adventures more appealing than text-based RPGs), as soon as you visually represent things on-screen, you are removing them from someone's imagination to some extent. Early games on lo-res systems (and some modern roguelikes) could only visually represent things in the crudest symbolic fashion, still leaving a lot to the imagination. Do much more than that, and you really are replacing people's imagined images with your own. If your own graphics are fugly, it interferes with the enjoyment of the game, because the player has to struggle to imagine the world as better than it is when what's in front of their eyes is clearly something puked out of MSPaint.

So I enjoy a game most when it has interesting and consistent graphics design coupled with good interface design. One of the best things in my book about improved graphics is the improvement in finding one's way around. Modern graphics make it much easier to either have a strong mapping system or to make locations distinctive enough that a person can actually find their way around using landmarks. I prefer a game that has the second or both.

I don't want to go back to the days of EGA graphics, but I would like to see a greater concentration on good graphics design than on "photorealistic 3D worlds" where the people look like lame poser models. North American designers could learn a lot from JRPGs (OH NOES!) in this way... many JRPGs work first and foremost to have classy graphics design and to create character models that clearly express the emotion they're feeling during conversations. Whatever you may think of JRPGs, you have to admit that it'd be nice to talk to NPCs that smile or frown while talking to you.

 

[Twinfalls]

As far as text goes, in Oblivion there's a tremendous amount of text. Huge amounts in dialogue of course, plus quest info and updates, messages like "Your yield has been rejected" or "Your Sneak skill has advanced" or "You have insufficient magicka," etc., all the books in the game of course, descriptions of skills and stats, descriptions of skill perks when you earn them, etc. There's probably more text in the game than the average action gamer will be willing to read, I imagine

I was talking more about prose, you know, descriptive writing like in novels. Apart from the books, I don't see that there's any prose in-game, and the novels must be actively read. Arena and Daggerfall put up bits of prose onto the screen every now and then no matter what.

Oblivion does some of this -- for example when you're sneaking, the reticle turns into an abstract eye shape that becomes more or less opaque, depending on whether you're being detected or not, so you know how well your character is doing (something a stealthy character WOULD know.)

Hang on - depending on whether you're more noticeable (like Thief), or whether you're actually being noticed by someone?

If it's the latter, it sounds worse from a gaming perspective than the former.

I have a pretty strong feeling that some of those messages popped up because they couldn't handle it any other way, not because they wanted everything to be stats based, old school computers being what they were Nowadays you could do things like visually brighten a darkened tomb if the player character had night vision, exaggerate locational sounds for a player character with keen hearing, or even highlight objects to varying degrees for characters with high perception.

Now look at all those potential new skills for a TES game you've come up with. Night vision, what a cool skill that'd be!

 

[Twinfalls]

I have to admit that good graphics design is an important part of the RPG experience for me. Note that I say "good graphics design", not "good graphics". For instance, Everquest II may have good graphics, but it has shitty graphics design. I would far rather play a game with stylish sprite-based graphics.

If your own graphics are fugly, it interferes with the enjoyment of the game, because the player has to struggle to imagine the world as better than it is when what's in front of their eyes is clearly something puked out of MSPaint.

Hell yes! EQ2 is garish, horrid rubbish. Daggerfall looks a shitload better, I consider Daggerfall to have better graphics than EQ2, once design is included in the definition and not just poly count and texture res.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I have a pretty strong feeling that some of those messages popped up because they couldn't handle it any other way, not because they wanted everything to be stats based, old school computers being what they were

Maybe, but the point is it worked well, it worked much better than what's the advanced graphics have brought us so far.

Nowadays you could do things like visually brighten a darkened tomb if the player character had night vision, exaggerate locational sounds for a player character with keen hearing, or even highlight objects to varying degrees for characters with high perception.

How many games have done that and how well it was implemented? The potential is there, but would we ever see that? Most companies, Bethesda including, would choose to work on something that everyone would benefit from (bows) than to do something that only a selected group of players would enjoy (throwing & xbows). Same applies to what you've mentioned above, unless it's in and that would be the biggest surprise of all.

 

[Revasser]

I really agree with DamnElfGirl's point about 'good graphics design' over 'good graphics'. The design and content of the graphics are important in any game, not just RPGs, and I find that it is far more important to the experience than the actual technical whiz-bang snazziness of what your computer is wasting resources rendering.

For instance, despite various issues I had with the game, Morrowind, I thought, had great graphics design, for the most part. One of the major things that really helped me to enjoy the game was the uniqueness and conistancy of the style used. The actual technical quality wasn't nearly as important as the quality of the design. Planescape: Torment didn't have fantastic graphics from a technical standpoint, but what it did have was an excellent style, and obviously fertile imaginations behind the design, which really enhanced the experience for me.

Now, technically impressive graphics don't necessarily hinder an RPG in any way in themselves, but as I said earlier, focus on having the latest, greatest, meaningless buzzwords incorporated into the graphics is usually an indicator of the overarching attitude taken with production. For a big name, commercial FPS game, state-of-the-art graphics are practically essential, because, generally FPS games <i>are</i> their graphics. With an RPG, there is a lot more focus needed on non-technical aspects to really make it shine, and when graphics are touted as one of the big attractions of an RPG, you can tell that it's likely that an exclusively 'action game' attitude was taken with it's production.

 

[pernat]

Graphics do not make a game immersive, not the graphics alone at least. Remember Looking Glass games? The atmosphere they had is yet to be beaten, imo. You could feel yourself as a character quite easily, aspecially in a thief case. The graphics they had is crap nowadays, but no graphical progress could beat atmosphere these games had. But then again, these were not even crpg. So back to the topic, what does immersion has to do with roleplaying. Feeling yourself as a character in a gameworld is not roleplaying, nor does it help to do it better, since such thing as a rolemodel does not even exist on a monitor screen. But the question was, how does quality of graphics and surroundings they create help you to roleplay better, or even do they at all.

And comparison with PnP is pointless, imo. Cprgs are a whole different issue now. It`s not an imaginative world in your head, but a drawn one and it sets it`s own limits, when in PnP the only limits you had were your and DM`s imagination.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I have to admit that good graphics design is an important part of the RPG experience for me. Note that I say "good graphics design", not "good graphics". For instance, Everquest II may have good graphics, but it has shitty graphics design.

I disagree, freeport was one of the best cities i've seen.


Cheerio.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

See, now I disagree with the contention that immersion inhibits role-playing. I think that immersion can HELP role-playing, because it allows you to concentrate on your character, and not on the imagining how the world is around you.

In a P&P RPG, it's not the players, but the GM who describes the world to you. Yeah, the players can imagine how the details look, but it's the GM who paints the broad strokes. In a cRPG, the computer can do that -- and, as they say, a picture paints a thousand words. And it's really a matter of technical limitations that have prevented a purely visual and audible CRPG from attaining what is possible given a really good GM. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to attain -- indeed, I think it's a goal worth striving for.