Photo-realistic Graphics lead to decline in RPGs?

[Falksi]

3-D itself was a bigger hit to RPGs IMO.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

However the problem with transitioning to more and more photo-realistic graphics is the production cost of games began to skyrocket.

Many of the late 90s/early 00s cRPGs that Codex loves had cutting edge graphics for the time.
e.g., Gamespot Baldur's Gate review

the graphics would have been unsurpassed if Baldur's Gate had come out when it was initially targeted for release a year ago, they are still easily the best graphics to ever be featured in a role-playing game and a big step up from the dated pixels that usually appear in games of the genre.

 

[Kazuki]

Baldur's Gate at the time of release is Triple A Game with possibly the greatest graphic back then.

 

[Sigourn]

Answer: no.

You could have isometric RPGs with photo-realistic graphics and nothing would be lost (what's the reasoning behind that anyway?). What lead to the "decline" in RPGs is that the market has grown much bigger since the 80s and 90s, and people prefer non-traditional RPGs (like Action RPGs). It's not that isometric RPGs of today are "good" (or not shit, the Codex seems to think even niche RPGs are awful so it's not like the AAA industry is to blame) because they don't have photo-realistic graphics. They don't have photo-realistic graphics because the devs can't afford them since the games aren't that popular to begin with.

You can most definitely think photo-realism is boring, but to say it lead to a decline in the games themselves period is retarded. If anything, it lead to a decline in artstyle. And I agree: at least back in the 90s and early 2000s "photorealistic" games all had their distinct look.

 

[Axioms]

Good graphics, sound, voice acting, and fancy UIs lead to a decline in games because they take so much time and money. Not because they are inherently evil. The more intense the assets for a game the harder it is to add new mechanics. Also the decline itself is more relative. The quality of the mechanics isn't reversing necessarily, though it is in some cases, it is just not improving because all the technical advances and financial growth is being spent on assets not gameplay.

 

[Shadenuat]

preferably you want 3d graphics in rpg when rpg systems require 3d geometry.

player gets used to bad graphics, but also player gets used to good graphics even faster. it is much harder to get used to shit gameplay

player never gets used to graphics which bothers them during gameplay, like if beautiful 3d photorealistc TM units overlap onto each other or blur bloom shit make game difficult to play

Art Direction trumps technological advancement, although tech advancement can help with art direction: a lot of beautiful grafix in Ori: The Blind Forest was done purely on power of shaders.

 

[Tim the Bore]

One thing for sure, the unnecessary pursuit of the elusive photo-realism made a lot of games much uglier. Solid art direction that reflect themes and makes the game visually consistent is much more important in the long run. Unfortunately, only few people are actually capable of properly discussing the nuances of good-looking art (I can't for example, though at least I'm aware of that) while everybody can compare some numbers and declare that because this game has n more polygons than the other, it's therefore better.
In the end style wins over photo-realism every time. It's just that making good-looking game is simply a difficult thing to do. That's said, photo-realism wasn't the main reason for a decline, but rather constant (and succesful) pursuit of wider audience. Photo-realism was a symptom, not a cause.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Graphic whoring isn't even a thing anymore and games are still shit.

The fallacy with this argument is that it assumes gaming companies COULD produce games with great or complex gameplay if only they didn't spend so much time on muh visuals, an assumption however that is not based on any concrete evidence, where as there is plenty of evidence that many gaming companies just have shit designers that wouldn't be able to come up with anything good regardless of how they decided to devote their resources.

In order for this argument to work, you would have to explain why a game like Pillars failed despite the lack of AAA graphics and while Kingdom Come achieved a good RPG experience (especially compared to the raw sewage spewed forth by Bethesda) despite having said AAA graphics.

The argument is essentially a materialistic argument that assumes there is no qualitative differences between developers and their talents.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

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.

Daggerfall had a quasi-3D system where the monsters and NPCs were 2D sprites and the boundaries of the 3D environment, such as dungeon walls, were comprised of completely flat planes. Moreover, perspective was strictly first-person, with the player-character visible only in certain menu screens. Therefore, it was simple to simulate climbing as movement up or down a 2D plane. Morrowind, by contrast, was fully 3D, with more complicated environments and with the player-character as a 3D model that could easily be viewed by the player. At the time, I considered it understandable that climbing had been removed from Morrowind due to these added complexities, although I hoped that the next Elder Scrolls game would be able to re-implement this feature (instead, Oblivion needlessly removed more capabilities that had still been present in Morrowind).

 

[Lyric Suite]

One thing for sure, the unnecessary pursuit of the elusive photo-realism made a lot of games much uglier.

Bullshit. What made games ugly is the stepping away from photo-realism (or realism proper) into "photographic" or "cinematic" bullshit, with shit filters, retarded effects like motion blur or depth and field etc.

This is what actual photo-realism looks like and it's fucking amazing:



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

 

[Darkzone]

Photo-realistic graphics have nothing to to with the decline of RPGs and it like saying that the dull knifes spoiled the boiled potatoes. The bad developers are the reason for bad RPG games and not the good graphics.

 

[Vlajdermen]

Blaming everything on graphic whores is so 2012

 

[Vlajdermen]

The real reason for the decline is that the devs don't respect us anymore. The developers of Fallout, Arcanum, Morrowind, etc. were all talented, but they also trusted us not to be scared off by unusual or janky games. Despite being a better game in every aspect, PoE is (sort of) held in the same regard as Skyrim because they're both too comfortable. They feel like tasteless mush.

What I said about fallout goes for every good modern RPG. KCD, No Truce with the Furfags, Age of Decadence, and even Underrail and ATOM. They rely on our famiarity with Fallout, but they use it as a jumping board, not a crutch.

 

[Bony Hands]

One thing that is true that more advanced graphics means more work and money. If you want to make a model that's voiced and fully animated, you need plenty of people doing their own job, and you need to do that for each character. But if you have the money to do all of that, you probably have the money to spend on all the other stuff. They might not have good game-play simply by being incompetent or playing it too safe.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

No. Some of the best RPGs in the last 10 years had great graphics: Witcha 3, KCD, BotW. Also, as you can clearly see from the Kickstarter wave of shit, iso games with shitty Unity level graphics (D:OSs, PoEs, Wastelands, Shitmakers) have been just as shit as the mainstream shit. So the quality of graphics has not direcrly caused the decline.

However, you CAN argue that it has contributed to it in some way, being part of the overall trend to games becoming more expensive to produce (along with physics, voice-overs, localizations, more detailed worlds of first-third person view, etc). And this trend, together with the mainstreaming of the gaming target audience has caused the decline.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Some of the best RPGs in the last 10 years had great graphics: Witcha 3, KCD, BotW.

Of these three games only KCD could qualify as RPG, though

 

[Darth Canoli]

Photo-realism graphics didn't lead to decline, they were just a symptom of the growing graphic-whoring.

It was part of a forging ahead movement no matter what (just like trying to impose 3D as a standard) aiming to virtual reality.
That shit isn't necessary for video games and isn't even aimed at them but video games are a means to an end.

 

[Vlajdermen]

RPGs

BotW

 

[Funposter]

Did using stones and fire lead to a decline?

 

[mondblut]

Daggerfall had a quasi-3D system where the monsters and NPCs were 2D sprites and the boundaries of the 3D environment, such as dungeon walls, were comprised of completely flat planes. Moreover, perspective was strictly first-person, with the player-character visible only in certain menu screens. Therefore, it was simple to simulate climbing as movement up or down a 2D plane. Morrowind, by contrast, was fully 3D, with more complicated environments and with the player-character as a 3D model that could easily be viewed by the player.

That's the point I am trying to make.

 

[Kainan]

One thing for sure, the unnecessary pursuit of the elusive photo-realism made a lot of games much uglier.

Bullshit. What made games ugly is the stepping away from photo-realism (or realism proper) into "photographic" or "cinematic" bullshit, with shit filters, retarded effects like motion blur or depth and field etc.

This is what actual photo-realism looks like and it's fucking amazing:



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

What happens if that plane crashes? I bet it just clips into buildings.

 

[Tim the Bore]

One thing for sure, the unnecessary pursuit of the elusive photo-realism made a lot of games much uglier.

Bullshit. What made games ugly is the stepping away from photo-realism (or realism proper) into "photographic" or "cinematic" bullshit, with shit filters, retarded effects like motion blur or depth and field etc.

This is what actual photo-realism looks like and it's fucking amazing:



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

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

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".

 

[Lyric Suite]

One thing for sure, the unnecessary pursuit of the elusive photo-realism made a lot of games much uglier.

Bullshit. What made games ugly is the stepping away from photo-realism (or realism proper) into "photographic" or "cinematic" bullshit, with shit filters, retarded effects like motion blur or depth and field etc.

This is what actual photo-realism looks like and it's fucking amazing:



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

What happens if that plane crashes? I bet it just clips into buildings.

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".

 

[Lyric Suite]

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

Yeah well, while i can enjoy a game looking like when i feel like it, i'd rather game try to be as realistic as possible, especially on certain specific genres (first person shooters being one of them, simulators also which they must by definition).

I remember when i first loaded Icewind Dale i found the game breathtaking:

And i very much prefer this over that artsy style you just posted.

And let's not pretend the Codex didn't salivate all over this when it came out:

 

[Tim the Bore]

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