El Presidente
Arcane
Exactly. Sure the games from the late 90's had to rely far less on more vague abstractions to represent things on the screen, but they were comparably lower-fidelity artistic symbols still, there was still room and plenty of invitation for the player's imagination, albeit on a whole different level when compared to, say, the early Ultima games or Wizardries.Those games from late 90s/early aughts, especially the ones you listed, still provided this "dreamlike" feeling because they aren't actually photorealistic at all. There is absolutely something to what blue collar Bill Clinton is trying to get across here. Graphics peaked during PS2 era and did not need to get any better. There was still plenty of room for abstraction. Art direction and photorealism contribute to that dreamlike kino that I love coming across so rarely in games.Not buying this. You can make beautiful and great stylistic games, but you can also make beautiful and great photo-realistic games. There is nothing inherently bad about photorealism, it's still all about design and implementation.
Games around early-mid 90s that were stylistic were stylistic because at that time, those were the technical limitations. As it happens, around that time, gaming industry targeted nerds/geeks and was run by small companies of enthusiasts. But that's just a coincidence. You can make an argument that photorealistic games cost more to make, and thus lead to all sorts of negative shit (large publishers, less resources for designing gameplay), but it still varies from case to case.
When games started going more photorealistic in late 90s/early 2000s, no one complained, because even though early 3D games like Half-Life, Deus Ex, Dark Forces 2, Thief, Gothic, etc were more photorealistic than their predecessors, they were still really good.
No rocky structure in this world looks liks this:
They were still working on "symbols" level. Not to mention too what JarlFrank said, because of this, there was a far greater symbiosis between artistic representation and gameplay. The visuals served the gameplay. The blocky nature of TR's level "triumphed over" the representation. Nowadays, it's the other way around. You first have the realism, then afterwards you have to solve how to turn this realism into the playable thing you're making. The result is, like the example he gave, devs having to paint climbable ledges with white paint to indicate what's climbable and what isn't. Sure you also have the latent dumbing down of video games playing a big part in this too, of course. But this is essentially a problem that derives from photorealism.
When you're playing with symbols you instantly understand and accept there are rules at play, and that you operate inside these rules. Like a board game, for example. You know you can't just take your piece and do this and fuck all:
There's a ruleset to respect and it is inherent in a way to the abstraction of the game. When the game looks just like real life on the other hand, then why can't you solve all problems with crazier real life solutions? Because you're still trapped in a ruleset still, just one that has no "veil of abstraction" between you and the game. You're not operating on "symbols-level", and yet you still have to constraint the player with just a handful of options the game allows for. That, and, going back to the original point, it leaves no room for the imagination when you are representing things in a fully direct way.