Topic: Gaming's Graphical Future

[Nick DiMola]

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/blogArt.cfm?artid=16706

  Traditionally a game's graphical prowess has been determined solely by the number of pixels it was able to push on the screen. Everything was about the latest and greatest technology and the everlasting quest to attain life-like graphical output in real-time. While this quest is a noble one, I don't feel that it will truly pave the future of graphics in gaming.    

The Wii with its underpowered graphical prowess has already provided gamers with some of the best looking games of this generation. How is this possible, one might ask? Simple, outstanding art direction. We have seen games like Super Mario Galaxy, Okami, No More Heroes, Zack & Wiki, de Blob, and the upcoming Madworld. Every one of these games oozes with style and has a very distinctive artistic style that allows its lackluster graphics to outshine the pixel-pushers of some of the other systems.    

Of course this isn't anything new, but only now has it become clearly apparent with the Wii and DS being significantly underpowered when stacked against their rival machines. Not only will the stylistic presentation of games with great art direction outshine most "realistic" games, but they will likely stand the test of time as well. As technology pushes forward, these games will simply be seen as relics of the past, artifacts of a time when technology was only capable of doing so much.    

I think the perfect example of this can be seen when looking at Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. Granted Twilight Princess still looks great, but Wind Waker is literally breathtaking and its stylistic approach to the series will always be remembered and revered.    

I can only hope that more game designers start to see this simple fact and adjust their goals to achieve great art rather than great graphics. While this approach shouldn't and won't work for everyone, it would be nice to see a longer list of companies who take the stylistic approach rather than the realistic one.

[KDR_11k]

It's cheaper. Isn't that reason enough?

[Bill Aurion]

Actually that depends on how it's done...Wind Waker was actually harder to make since they had to develop two layers (the standard 3d model and then the toon-shaded layer on top of that)

But yes, I need more stylistic games like MadWorld and Kizuna!

[King of Twitch]

Whine Waker: blue ocean, distance blur, ugly Link
TP: great animation, emo black and white areas, adult midna

The graphics winner is clearly tilted toward TP

[that Baby guy]

Whine Waker: blue ocean, distance blur, ugly Link
TP: great animation, emo black and white areas, adult midna

The graphics winner is clearly tilted toward TP

You can't be serious.  Look at TP compared to what's to come, look at Wind Waker compared to what's to come.  Wind Waker will always have a great look, while TP's style is going to be pretty terrible in retrospect.  Already, I look at what's in Brawl from TP and hate it's style and design.  It looks cheap, and out of date by standards just two years later.  By comparison, what I see from Wind Waker still looks great.

It's the same thing as we delve back into older generations.  Some games look great, some don't, even if they used to.  Take a look at Final Fantasy VII, for example.  The game was praised, through-and-through, for outstanding graphics upon release, right?  Now, however, we see that the way the pre-rendered backgrounds are a pain to manage, with you navigating character being in ambiguous places when the perspective draws back.  The characters, when not in a battle are hideous.  Sure, the cutscenes might look alright, I don't remember them, but to be honest, the game, on a pure visual basis, does not withstand to the same degree Chrono Trigger, SMRPG, and Final Fantasy VI do.

Sure, at the time, the "graphics winner" was VII, but now, it's clear the earlier ones looked much better.

[Halbred]

I wrote a big long post but it didn't post for whatever reason. Basically, it boiled down to Scott McCloud's "Picture Plane" and why it supports abstraction over photorealism in video games. Wind Waker wins by default of human nature.

[UltimatePartyBear]

It's the same thing as we delve back into older generations.  Some games look great, some don't, even if they used to.  Take a look at Final Fantasy VII, for example.  The game was praised, through-and-through, for outstanding graphics upon release, right?  Now, however, we see that the way the pre-rendered backgrounds are a pain to manage, with you navigating character being in ambiguous places when the perspective draws back.  The characters, when not in a battle are hideous.  Sure, the cutscenes might look alright, I don't remember them, but to be honest, the game, on a pure visual basis, does not withstand to the same degree Chrono Trigger, SMRPG, and Final Fantasy VI do.

FF VII looked terrible when it was released.*  The character models were hideous even for the time.  When people praised the game's graphics, they were just mesmerized by the pre-rendered bits, but it's still true that those pre-rendered bits have not held up very well.

*I acknowledge that I'm in the minority on this, though I have no idea why that is.

[that Baby guy]

Meh, I agree with you, Party Bear, but I'll admit that they looked a whole lot better then than they do now, even if they were laughable at the time.

[NWR_Lindy]

With 2D graphics, the look of the was basically determined by the quality of artists.  The level of possible graphics detail was fixed, so it came down to art.

With 3D, more polygons = more detail = better-looking models and environments.  There's a much higher ceiling there.

[Caliban]

With 3D, more polygons = more detail = better-looking models and environments.  There's a much higher ceiling there.

Ehhh, not necessarily. I would say it is pretty much equal on both fronts. Then again I think comparing 2D to 3D can be like comparing apples with oranges so to speak.

[NWR_Lindy]

Well, what I meant was that with 3D you can always make things look better with better technology, because you can stuff more polygons in there to make things more detailed (or even if you aren't going the photorealistic route, you can make round things even more perfectly round).  You aren't dealing with a flat surface like you are in 2D, so you can always make the shapes you're moving around even better-looking shapes.

For 2D, it pretty much comes down to how beautiful you can make the image that you're going to slap on that flat surface.  That's fixed, because for any console there are only so many pixels that you can put on the screen.

[KDR_11k]

Actually that depends on how it's done...Wind Waker was actually harder to make since they had to develop two layers (the standard 3d model and then the toon-shaded layer on top of that)

Meh, been there, done that, way easier than trying to get realistic material textures. Also I presume you mean they had two textures, separate geometry wouldn't make sense.

[Shift Key]

That's fixed, because for any console there are only so many pixels that you can put on the screen.

Technically speaking, 3D is also limited by the number of pixels you can put on the screen.

Doesn't matter what "type" of graphics you're doing, the end product is the graphics card switching pixel values and pushing the data to a display device. Its only pipeline operations that differ between 2D (straight pixel operations) and 3D (operations on vertexes and triangles, then rasterised to pixels), the end product is the same.

Unless of course you're mixing up graphical processing power (the processing required to layer 3D objects in a space requires more power than comparable operations with 2D models) with screen resolution (480p vs 1080p)...

[Infernal Monkey]

This generation's going to be one of the most painful to look back upon; the majority of games are going to age so badly thanks to the obsession with graphics > frame rate. Last generation sure had its big name offenders in this regard (Shadow Of The Colossus), but this gen takes the sluggish cake.

For every silky smooth Burnout Paradise and Dead Rising there's about eighty thousand other huge selling disasters that choke at any sign of action.

BUT THEY LOOK SO KEWL!!!!111

[KDR_11k]

Eh? Is that something you need a non-Wii to see?

[Infernal Monkey]

I'm not even talking about the Wii, so I guess so! ;o

[NWR_Lindy]

I think the worst generation in terms of dated 3D graphics was the PSOne/N64.  Some of those games are just hideous to look at, even the "good" ones.

I downloaded the id Super Pack off of Steam last week, and playing Castle Wolfenstein 3D and Doom was an LOL session.  I love those games to death, but God damn do they look terrible nowadays.

[ShyGuy]

So what was the first 3D game to hold up graphically?

[KDR_11k]

Descent

[NWR_Lindy]

I'd say Super Mario 64, followed by Ocarina of Time.  Both of those games have a style that doesn't require realism.

Metal Gear Solid looks pretty assy nowadays.

[Ian Sane]

See I find if a game is too stylistic it looks, well, odd.  I don't like the way Wind Waker looks pretty much at all.  I don't like cel-shading.  It looks too much like flash animation - that horrible "everything is a solid colour" look.  It's something I tolerated because, you know, it's ZELDA and it's an awesome game.  TP was a little dull entirely because they just lifted Hyrule from Ocarina of Time.  I thought it looked great, it's just that the areas were too familiar.  But graphically the game looked great.

What I kind dull is stuff like Call of Duty because the setting is dull.  I like things a little more fantastic.  I like it when I'm fighting zombies or aliens or cyborgs or demons.  I like it when my character is a ninja or a space marine with furturistic weaponry or an elf with a sword.  Part of that is probably nostalgia.  When I was a kid the settings for videogames were always very over-the-top.  Few games had generic settings.

Something like Metal Gear Solid works for me because the villians are like something out of comic and Snake is pretty much a superhero.  Most Tom Clancy games however bore the crap out of me except Splinter Cell because again the superspy concept is more fantastic.

So to me Zelda is already fantastic enough to not look dull.  You're an elf with a sword and shield and you explore ancient temples full of walking skeletons and giant rats with boomerangs.  YEAH!

The biggest problem with games these days to me is that companies like EA and Ubisoft 90% of the time come up with dull generic settings for their games.  It's like a photo.  Photos are more realistic than drawings but it all depends WHAT you take a photo of.  Same with movies.  What are you filming?  That's the difference between boring and exciting.  Not every game has to look like Killer 7 to have graphics that stand out.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Yeah, every game has to look like shiny bump maps or NES crap.

[Stogi]

I agree with Ian.

Setting and style are way more important than graphics.

[NWR_Lindy]

Ian, I think a lot of it has to do with how much something has been done before.  CoD4 is a graphical masterpiece, but its setting and characters - a war-torn current-day/WW2 battleground populated by grizzled soldiers - has been absolutely done to death.  I think that's why people love, say, Team Fortess 2 or the TimeSplitters series so much, because they take you to a world that's very different from all the other games out there.

De Blob is another example.  The gameplay has been done elsewhere (and done better), but it has so much graphical charm that people are really drawn to it.

[Halbred]

However, I think this generation has the potential to be the most artistically brilliant. The technology has gotten good enough that we can see really experimental games--and good-looking experimental games. Imagine a wonderful Patapon world on the big screen, controlled with the Rock Band/Guitar Hero drumset. How awesome would that be?

Or look at Ratchet & Clank. Before the PS3, Insomniac wasn't able to do the kind of character animation you knew they always wanted to. The cartoony pirates, especially Rusty Pete, simply wouldn't have been possible on the PS2. Developers are suddenly able to do great characatures. You don't need photorealistic graphics. You can make a game look like a cartoon, too, but it can be a really good looking cartoon. More powerful graphical hardware can also be used to make more abstract things, and that really interests me.