Interview Todd Howard Claims Graphics Are Important

[Jaesun]

Well considering this IS GraphicWhoreDex he's right.

 

[Indranys]

Behold!
Todd Howard The Anti-Avellone had spoken!
The Holy War has just begun!
Will Our Beloved Avellone succumb to the temptation of supa graphic??
Or shall the Dreaded Todd finally realize his heresy and embrace the Sacred Teaching of well written quests and dialogues??
This shit is too awesome to exist!
God I must be dreaming again.

 

[Infinitron]

Metro anti-Brofisted this.

 

[Shannow]

Todd considers graphix to be very important.
The vast majority of Bethesda's "fans" consider graphix to be very important.
Todd sees a chance to further improve graphix with the next gen consoles (and babbles something about always pushing the graphix because they are on PC which does not compute with the other statements or reality but whatever).
Future Bethesda games will look better than previous titles and the fans will be - for the most part - satisfied.

This is news how?
Seriously, not even VD could deconstruct this in a significant way (and thus make it interesting).

 

[ironyuri]

The basic premise of his argument (and I'm sure half the people viewing this thread won't watch that video) holds true.

The quest for graphic fidelity, equated with "photorealism" rather than graphic fidelity as equated with "stylisation," with regard to the gameplay being presented (ie. an understanding of how visual representation affects mechanics and mechanical functionality) is rooted in a kind of game development 'false consciousness' or mauvaise foi.

Visuals, as graphical representation of action in games, exist to represent and present the function-in-practice of gameplay mechanics. His point about Minecraft highlights this: the world of Minecraft, as represented visually, looks like a world composed of (Lego) blocks. This engenders an implicit understanding of both the construction of the world and the impact of the player on the world. Breaking down and replacing blocks, as an abstract function of the player's engagement with the gameplay, is interpolated through the visual representation of the game world and made easily comprehensible to the player. Thus, the graphic stylisation of Minecraft is married to the mechanical functionality of the game itself.

Worlds represented in "realist" style, (Skyrim, Fallout (3, or New Vegas), Call of Duty, and so on) encourage an implicit understanding that the impact of the player on the world, made possible by the player's engagement with gameplay mechanics, will unfold in a "realistic" way. Photorealism encourages "realistic" gameplay, just as in cinema, realism or "live-action" encourages "realist" representation. Thus, by contrast, animation encourages surrealist or contra-realist abstraction. Take for example, the recent (Oscar nominated) Disney animated short Paperman, which, although employs a realist representational style of animation, is able to introduce surreal elements (the swarm of paper planes) primarily because it is animated. Suspension of disbelief occurs in that space of abstraction between the photo-real and animated.

In game design, therefore, the drive towards photo-real as the acme of graphical fidelity, rather than encouraging new possibilities, would in fact be harmful to the industry. Games such as Psychonauts, Stacking, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Fallout (1), Arcanum, etc. would suffer if they were represented as photo-real. How would one render spell effects as "photo-real"? The Mechanus Cannon of Planescape: Torment as "photo-real" would be an impossibility.

While graphics and advancement of graphic art in video games is important, the photo-real is not. A diversity of representation is more important than a ruthless drive towards the purely "life-like." Often, the stylised will hold longer lasting appeal than the photo-real, primarily because the stylised is often shaped by a much deeper and more consistent aesthetic (Grim Fandango is an excellent example of this), which regardless of age and perceived blockiness, or ugliness, will look as good as it did at release. The sequel to The Longest Journey is a good example of why stylisation is more appealing as a form of abstract representation in games, than the drive towards photo-realistic. The original The Longest Journey was beautiful, in an artistic (character design, world design) sense, if not purely graphical sense (jaggies, outdated 3D) and remains beautiful, whereas its 'successor' is highly forgettable.

Anyway, I was about to draw the threads of this argument together into a concluding point, but I'd rather end by saying: fuck you for reading this.

 

[Excidium]

Of course graphics are important in a video game. But gameplay is always more important.

 

[Regdar]

The purpose of any kind of visual media, or art, is the dramatization of reality. This is accomplished through character stylisation, pre-written dialogue, music, choreographed movements, etc. The prospect of suspending their knowledge of the real world and immersing themselves in an imaginary one where different laws apply is what attracts people to any kind of visual entertainment. We have never seen visual media lacking at least some form of this quality so we don't know what will happen when such a specimen appears - arguably, no one will be interested in it. Even in classical painting, photorealism isn't held in very high esteem.

So, CoD may achieve photorealistic graphics (doubtful), but CoD will never be realistic. It will always be a dramatization of reality. Like porn.

 

[Israfael]

How about making a normal skeleton animation in your games and do something more akin to gothic I/II/NoTR, and not lifeless MMO.. See-through windows and buildings would be great too.

 

[racofer]

How about making a normal skeleton animation in your games and do something more akin to gothic I/II/NoTR, and not lifeless MMO.. See-through windows and buildings would be great too.

Obvious technical limitations of the current gen. Next gen will overcome all these shortcomings.

 

[Excidium]

How about making a normal skeleton animation in your games and do something more akin to gothic I/II/NoTR, and not lifeless MMO.. See-through windows and buildings would be great too.

Now, come on, let's have patience. It took Bethesda 10 years to add animations for walking diagonally. Small steps, man.

 

[Gozma]

He's making next gen console noises. The goal is to make the first panoramic view the player sees to allow them to say, "Boy indeed I am not feeling buyer's remorse at all." If he were putting something in at the end of a console gen he'd be all gameplay imagination bluh blah bleh

 

[Israfael]

Obvious technical limitations of the current gen. Next gen will overcome all these shortcomings.

I take it the obvious solution to this would be adding more blur and shaders?

 

[Viperswhip]

There is a minimum level of graphics required, somewhere around the PC DAO level. After that level is reached concentrate on systems and gameplay, and quality assurance. The Witcher 2 may be an ideal for a lot of devs, but it's not actually required to reach that level of graphical fidelity for gamers (well, the PC over 25s anyway), to enjoy a game.

 

[Lautreamont]

Often, the stylised will hold longer lasting appeal than the photo-real, primarily because the stylised is often shaped by a much deeper and more consistent aesthetic (Grim Fandango is an excellent example of this), which regardless of age and perceived blockiness, or ugliness, will look as good as it did at release.

Am I a graphics whore if I actually prefer early 90s graphics for their aesthetic value alone? Games like Crysis and Far Cry may be photorealistic, but they look insipidly mundane. Large pixels and poor rendering are not defects if the art direction is inspired. Thief, for example, is far more immersive than any FP game I've played since. And I'd rather play Daggerfall than Skyrim, not merely for the gameplay but because I like the look of the game. It feels like an alternate world, whereas many outdoor areas in Skyrim look like my neighborhood after a blizzard - banal in other words.

I don't understand the craving for hyper-realism in games. I thought we played them to escape from reality?

 

[Dorateen]

There is a distinction between developers who see cRPG titles as just video games marketed for the masses, and those folks who put the emphasis on RPG, as something more elevated. A genre that flourishes in the theatre of the mind, where stats and storytelling and character concepts reign, and graphics as a priority are ranked very, very low.

 

[Jasede]

Graphics are very important, but won't save an otherwise terrible game. Art design is extremely important.

 

[Kahlis]

snip

You're not alone. I love the dim, clean lighting of late 90s and early 2000s games, or the dreamy impressionistic flat shaded mountains unfolding before you at 15FPS in Frontier: Elite 2, like a fleeting glimpse of some distant place or moment in time that might have once been but we can only recognize it through its vaguest forms and the sentiments it evokes in us. /cleve

Or the way limited color palettes cause everything to fade away into an impassive and lazy grey color behind 5 foot fog in TES: Arena. For some reason with many newer games (especially multiplatform ones) I'm just immediately inclined to start noticing the flaws, like the horrible UV wrapping or the 64x64 spec maps.

 

[Dexter]

Anyway, I was about to draw the threads of this argument together into a concluding point, but I'd rather end by saying: fuck you for reading this.

Well, I agree with this at least. Fuck everyone for going through that hipster shit, including the guy that made that stupid video (lol @ him only showing one PC game in the entirety of it, that came out in 2007 and trying to prove points by comparing to games that all run on the current generation of consoles, which is at least 6-7 years overdue).

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a good example of failed mechanics, with the slack being picked up by "cinematisation," or the introduction of cutscenes to fill in the blanks where gameplay should exist.

There is no game whatsoever that I know of that is "photo-realistic", they all have their specific styles and just because the level of detail, lighting, viewing range and general depth of objects gets better doesn't mean it is becoming more "photo-realistic", nor does it say anything in specific about the art style of the game. In the case of Aliens: Colonial Marines it's not only a good example of "failed mechanics", but also a really good example for gross technical incompetence and looking like it's from a decade ago.

They even purposefully deceived people (including "Gaming Journalists") by pulling a bait'n'switch on them with that game:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6832-A-LIE-ns-Colonial-Marines

Some actual "photo-realistic" looking content has only been closely approximated on recent proof-of-concept demos:

Spoiler

As for the entire rest of the thread, I see every single betterment in graphics and general rendering as a net positive, especially after a standstill in that department of about 7-8 years. Certain software and games directly benefit from it, the big contenders in the game industry for "Next Gen" consoles have already blown their load over the past few months, there's Epic Games with their Unreal Engine 4, CryTek with their scalable CryEngine 3, EA with Frostbite 2 (made by DICE, but they seem to be pushing a lot of games on it e.g. Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 3, Command&Conquer: Renegades 2) and Square Enix has also shown off their Luminous Engine. See my thread over here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...square-enix-luminous-studio-tech-demos.73082/

What needs to be drilled into the heads of your usual backwater developer (and preferably publisher) though, is that NOBODY IS FORCED to compete with those studios. Look at the entire Indie scene with technically limited games selling very well and Crowd-Funding as of lately and see that there are many and various alternatives and demand for other types of games. Frankly if some publishers and developers are too stupid to avoid competing with those "big players" even though they aren't qualified, they deserve to crash and burn. Just because "big-budget" action blockbusters with lots of CGI are possible in cinema doesn't mean that everyone on the world should make movies that way or try to ape Hollywood, but I wouldn't want to miss that part of movies entirely because despite a lot of them ending up being shit, some actually turn out to be rather good.

What most people also seem to miss while going on about “nobody needing better graphics” is that a lot of other things improve with better hardware too that everybody benefits from. Things like the size of levels/increased scope of level design, view distance without having to stream data usually causing Pop-Ins which requires lots of RAM, most notably improvements to AI and more complex AI routines, less loading times, amount of objects and entities being displayed on the screen at once (bigger Total War battles and similar possible), physics components and computations (real-looking hair, water/fluids and have things react physically correct and not just like rigid bodies. In a lot of games this would also allow for more realistic gibs/wounds and the likes instead of your typical Fallout 3 or Dragon Age 2 effects.)
Once and if Virtual Reality takes off, which I am rooting for, for instance with the Oculus Rift there will be all sorts of other things and paradigms to rethink too.

Check this for simple dynamic AI pathing options and similar built in-engine:


There's also other kind of technological development the money from both the gaming industry and CGI-based movies combined has pushed, it definitely benefited other fields like medical science and general (voxel imaging) as well as CAD tools and supercomputers (the most high-performance one recently dubbed “Titan” for instance being made out of 18668 Nvidia GPUs clocked at over 20 petaflops and is used for climate research, astrophysics, nuclear research and similar)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...8bf2e98-2110-11e2-8448-81b1ce7d6978_blog.html

Again I don't see why general technological improvements, making games that were trying to render a detailed and somewhat realistic looking 3D world better have to be considered as something "bad" by residents of the Codex, when something like Real-Time RayTracing, better Lighting systems and Physics engines would help everyone and improvements in general engine design and tools will ultimately also trickle down and help Indie devs and Mid-Tier devs (just look at all the Unity-based games being made lately and check some of their latest Tech Demos: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/02/01/directx-11-competition/ )

 

[Kirtai]

Graphics are very important, but won't save an otherwise terrible game. Art design is extremely important.

Far too many people don't know the difference between a games graphics and art design.

 

[Black]

That's rich coming from a faggot who makes horribly looking games, aesthetically, animation-wise and tech-wise.

Or maybe that's a hidden jab at all the indie, kickstarter and smaller studios making games who can't afford BRAND NEW CREATION ENGINE DO NOT STEAL TOTALLY NOT GAMEBRYO

 

[winterraptor]

Fuck you, Todd.

As for 'moar graffix', in general, it's great to see technology (theoretically) improve for it's own sake despite that I don't really care, and furthermore if this period of stagnation has shown anything, it's that not needing to escalate graphics has not profited us in the 'quality RPG' arena at all, at least in AAA terms. Their patterns will continue to be pushing the pretties and appealing to the masses who are their only ticket to recovering their costs (which was the point of forcing everything to consoles in the first place...). Granted there is the odd (half-decent) opportunity that worms it's way in ala Fallout: New Vegas but inevitably they have to make their new engines and focus on making them more 'accessible' to the growing, devolving amoeba-gamer-organism. So for me, let them go moar graffix, that's what they do and increasingly all they're good at advancing. It certainly isn't in designing reactive systems when games from the 90's still make them look like the retards they are. Though I suppose that is ultimately the average customer. So, at best, pandering sycophants of casual feel-good wish-fulfillment.

Indie or 'Good For What It Is' is the future of RPG Gamer semi-enjoyment it seems. Which is still more promising than pre-Kickstarter shenanigans and Thursday.

 

[TripJack]

graphics are indeed bethesda's greatest area of expertise

 

[Kahlis]

Lighting's better in mine.

 

[Micmu]

(btw. I tried finding a picture from Morrowind with the protagonist holding a sword, inside a dungeon

I have something...

NSFW spoiler

orc pussy >> graphics

Also... Toad Wohard is a hack.

 

[DalekFlay]

Graphics do help IMERSHUN, which is important for explorefag games like these. I wouldn't even say they are the most important aspect to that though, a well designed and interesting world is. I find Morrowind more immersive than Oblivion by a factor of 29.6.

And for fuck's sake turn off HDR in Oblivion before you hurt someone.