graphics in games really don't impress me anymore.
polycounter lvl 18
i'm talking about the actual graphics themselves, i can still be wowed by style, but after playing tons of far cry, joint operations, etc, i'm not impressed anymore by sheer technology. i probably wont be impressed until a few years off, when the next generation appears. even elder scrolls IV screenshots arent impressing me to a great deal. sure it's beautiful, but im not wowed. 
Replies
When I play games, I don't care how it looks :P
meanwhile, i've actually gotten bored of playing doom 3 (havent even beaten it yet) and yet i'm maxing out my system playing it at 16x12 @ medium settings
But if I compare the Unreal3 shots & videos to that... not sure but it just doesn't give me that much of a wow feeling, even though they are impressive. Now if you think a little bit ahead: what will be the feeling when it actually hits the shelves? Probably more of a "seen that done that".
I guess only a great artistic non realistic rendering technique (remember my post on the old 2d&3d forum?) will make me go "wow" again in short term... in long term photorealistic graphics might do the trick as well, but I guess advantages in AI and stuff like speechrecognition etc will be far more impressive.
"do we Really need all this thecno-flafla for or game to be interesting?" we can still make beautiful game without bump-map, normal, offset, dynamic light etc etc...
i found stylised game is the way to go. i'm sorry but i'm kinda fedup of playing the usual marine with big gun surround by monster/zombie BUT with superbe special effect.
maybe like sal_manilla said , maybe we tend to overlook our work to much. artist syndrome maybe
i found overuse of bump map and is kind will ruin a beautiful game as a poor gameplay will or Boob & explosion in a movie .
Sal's words about marveling at things like effects and art assets are tied together in a convincing or impressive way is something that will always amaze me also.
I guess I still get tired of samey design motif's but I'm routinely amazed by what is possible with the new tech as there are a whole new world of characters and environments that are possible now and much less needs to be squashed down to stylised representation.
The Point being is that we are coming into an age that will let us have the quality of movies like Shrek on our home machines. Moreso than ever, the only limits that will be imposed upon gameart will be our imagination and the ever threatening retraint of time.
I'm pretty excited about that.
Games like Doom3 and HL2 are an incredible leap forward.
Sometimes I find it easy to knock the genre I work within because it tends to produce Bruckenheimer style action movies and I prefer the Coens films.
It's a genre that takes the role of pathfinder more than other genre's though and lately I've grown to respect that more again.
But do graphics need to impress? Isn't it all about the gameplay? I can't say Vib Ribbon had the best graphics ever, some would HATE them, but they worked to such a perfect degree.
My all time favorite game is still by far TIE Fighter because of the story behind the game and with what a great job they did at progressing your character and making you feel like you were making a difference. I almost shat myself when the flight officer told me that Darth Vader specifically requested me to help him transfer the new TIE Defenders.
From time to time I sit in front of my computer and ask myself why the hell it is so easy to make me freak out because of cool graphics. Every once in a while there is a game that impresses the hell out of me just because of its visuals. The funny thing is that in most cases it is not a game like Doom3.
The last game I played through was Prince Of Persia and currently I am addicted to KOTOR. I consider both of them really good looking games. However both of them have only very few state of the art features.
But what makes the difference is the way they are used. They just seem to fit. The bloom effect in POP just underlines the persian setting and the art in the game so nicely and the facial expressions in KOTOR really make a difference when important parts of the story are told.
Unreal2 is a good example of what I don't like (sorry Rorshach, I know you worked on that one). The graphics were in most cases amazing, but still the game bored me to death. The visual effects couldn't make up for that. Doom3 is even worse, because I don't like gameplay AND graphics.
The thing is, cool visuals can add such a lot to a game for me that I go crazy about how cool the looks are. But if the rest of the game sucks, the graphics are rendered useless.
I am like Sal amazed at features in new engines (Q3A texture shaders rocked my world when it came out), but what impresses me even more is the way they are used in a game. And that does include how they are related to things like story, setting, mood, sound etc.
Ror, your example with the movies is pretty good.
I loved it when Independence Day came out, because everything went boom and it was fun to watch at that time. And I know that there will be movies again that'll do the trick for me. But it's movies like Amelie and Oh Brother, Where Art Though that I will watch again and again...
For game graphics to impress me the whole visual package has got to be complete where before I could drewl over just a game character or map texture. The last game that really really impressed me was the PC version of Mafia because it was just completely done in my opinion. I (ofcourse) was impressed with Doom3 and FarCry because they do have great visuals but still that didn't do it for me.
For me its game play that does it and as long a sgame has that and a at least a consistent art style taht brings it all together then id proberly play it. Doom3 was all art no gameplay and ive got as far as alpha section 3 and kinda lost intrest.I lerant my lesson never to buy a game on the basis of screenshots again.
But then again if I wnat to look at art id come on to polycount and knock down the door of one of the cottages or check the pimpin section....if I want to play a game ill play a game.
John
Set designer? wardrobe? special effects? No. It's the screenwriter.
Game dev. need a new title -'Interactive writer'(or something like that) He has to be able to write a good story that has to involve a randomly acting character(you) He/she should write in a way that the gamer thinks he is pushing the plot but he is really being led down the garden path.
The IW should be paid well not as good as say a AD but better than a Level des.
I know I keep going on about this, but the graphic side is fine. Hell it's better than fine. It's the other side of my brain that wants more.
Really while Im on the subject, I think the change will come from the new generation of game designers, young guys who will fight to sneak in some original content into their first "barbie jungle adventure" gba title. I mean really most publishers dont really play the games they put out. It's just some marketing ivy league pricks, who only care if it's just like title x which sold 7 million copies.
i i think we reache a point we're we should ask ourself
"do we Really need all this thecno-flafla for or game to be interesting?" we can still make beautiful game without bump-map, normal, offset, dynamic light etc etc...
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Amen. Thats all I can say. I think that pursuing realism is the stupidest thing possible. I want to show that which cannot and never will be able to be real. I like games that have gorgeous style, WoW, Abes Odyssey, Final Fantasy, etc. Screw the tech, I think its all just a massive programmer circle jerk anyway. And marketing morons who think that you have to have the latest buzzwords to compete. The personal game project I am working on is simple, no extra passes, all about the visual style. I think people need to get over what you CAN do, and start focusing on what you SHOULD do for your particular game. Sure normal maps are cool, when used correctly, but are they needed for your game? same thing with every other tech/pixel shader/lighting effect.
"Buzzwords"- How the hell is "normal map" a buzzword...its the dullest name I have ever heard for such a cool process.
*BACK TO TOPIC*
John
Amen. Thats all I can say. I think that pursuing realism is the stupidest thing possible. I want to show that which cannot and never will be able to be real. I like games that have gorgeous style, WoW, Abes Odyssey, Final Fantasy, etc. Screw the tech, I think its all just a massive programmer circle jerk anyway. And marketing morons who think that you have to have the latest buzzwords to compete. The personal game project I am working on is simple, no extra passes, all about the visual style. I think people need to get over what you CAN do, and start focusing on what you SHOULD do for your particular game. Sure normal maps are cool, when used correctly, but are they needed for your game? same thing with every other tech/pixel shader/lighting effect.
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I disagree completely. Realistic in visual art doesn't mean things which are "able to be real," it means things that are throughly believable when based solely upon the quality of their reproduction. The Lord of the Rings films were great in part because of the story, but they wouldn't have been nearly as compelling without such thoroughly engaging visuals. If Gollum looks like some rubbery, disengaged sprite rather than the almost living, 'realistic' creature, it wouldn't be nearly the film it is.
The issue, in my opinion, is the reliance on realistic visuals to replace narrative or atmosphere or any of the other ingredients that are necessary for a piece of art (movie, game, whatever). The Star Wars prequels are a good example of that, with realistic imagery used to substititue for fascinating entertainment rather than accentuating it, as it does with LotR. The first time the fellowship entered the main hall in Moria I damned near jumped out of my seat it was so incredible - it was a combination of all the elements of good art, but without the spectacular visual effects that moment is lost.
Digital imagery is just a tool and should be treated as one, but that in no way means that the tool shouldn't be mastered as completely as possible. The day I can fully suspend disbelief as a creator of digital content and be fully drawn into a film or game... well, I think that'll be fantastic, and it's a goal I personally intend to move towards with my work.
Doom 3 is the best example of this so far. The locations, in particular, are just plain boring. Walls with lots of random bumpy technological doodads all over them... Who cares? There's nothing there for people to connect to visually. It's like they were afraid to have areas that were realistically subtle, or even plain, the way that most in-door locations are in real life. Having a visual touchstone to the real world is especially critical in the horror genre (scifi or not) because people won't be frightened of things that are so completely alien to them that they have no strong point of reference to use as a base for the experience. That point of reference can come from either the locations or the characters (or both). Since D3 didn't have any real characters to identify with (only the purposefully generic marine and a bunch of unintentionally generic side characters), that only leaves the locations. But rather than making the locations believable through use of subtle details that we can associate on some level with our own day-to-day lives, they set the whole game in a bumpy scarcely-lit techno-industrial labrynth... on Mars. The graphics were technically good, but the artistic choices actually worked against the overall effectiveness of the project as a horror game. (Or as a dramatic piece in general-- and any game with any semblence of a story should be able to succeed on some level as a dramatic piece, just like action movies)
I'm impressed with the graphics of games like GTA3 and some of the Silent Hill series, because they use the graphics technology to make their settings believable. Both of those games, though completely different in style, made good use of what they had available and made choices that would help the player to identify with the locations in the way that they intended. Silent Hill games are mostly character based, so they spend a whole lot of polygons on making their characters believable, and then texture up the settings with hyper-realistic levels of grit and rust to sell the idea that the locations have aged, and therefore must solidly exist. GTA3 wanted to dehumanize their characters almost as much as possible, reducing most of them to either completely generic expendable pedestrians or ridiculously stereotypical caricatures, so their characters were simple and not terribly realistic. Meanwhile, they managed to fully convey the appearance of a city that could be instantly recognized as New York City, even without mirroring any actual specific portion of the real city to any major degree, AND that functioned as a realistic location and a fuctional location while speeding around it in cars.
That to me, is an example of impressive graphics. Melding the fuctional aspects of gameplay with the dramatic considerations of the story or setting, without even neccessarily calling attention to itself.
As I said before, graphics are just a tool, one ingredient that goes into making the soup. Sometimes you need one item and sometimes the recipe calls for another, but you want to use the highest quality ingredients, whatever they might be. I don't see any reason to deliberately avoid the trend towards realistic digital content, as games that thrive upon realism will be better served by it, assuming it's used properly.
The deamons looked great, not only technically but also great in style, and after the initial boredom in the alpha complex, and getting used to the general low light level, it was actually quite enjoyable.
Did it live up to the hype? Probably not, but I have the feeling that a lot of people just don't like its style and never played any further than the first few minutes (and probably also on bright day having icq running in the background, if you know what I mean
i found stylised game is the way to go. i'm sorry but i'm kinda fedup of playing the usual marine with big gun surround by monster/zombie BUT with superbe special effect.
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Most definately so. I'm currently in the process of beginning a somewhat simple Quke 3 mod with heavy use of stylization instead of just graphics.
I mean, hey, how can you make rodents fighting cats serious anyway?
I don't see how a game like Max Payne, which is supposed to have a very detailed, gritty urban realism, could be anything but improved by higher fidelity graphics.
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I totally agree. I just recently played Max Payne 2, and the lack of realistic complexity and detail was one of the things that I really thought was missing.
http://www.futuremark.com/download/
Maybe it's a question of waiting for hardware/software upgrades?.....to be impressed.
Actually I loved Q2, it rocked me to pieces and I think I once played it like 7 hours once with no potty breaks. You guys laugh, but 7 hrs for a married bloke is like 3 days if your young or single.
That is why I am looking forward to Q4, for a sweet peek at top notch eyecandy with a fast paced, small mapped, tight corned dm. Deathmatch grabbed me by the balls with Q1 reaper bots and has never let me go.
We sometimes whine about not upgrading to the next cycle and video card, but for many of us it is not an option, it just costs too much, otherwise I would do it in a heartbeat.
Further back in the day, people where "omg"ing when Duke3D came out.
Nowadays, it's just "oh look, a game that's a bit prettier than the last one"..
But yeah, a good game doesn't need good graphics, but they sure are welcome.
Seriously, I have Amiga, PSX, C64 emulators, even friggin' DosBoX lying around, so that I can play teh good ole' games! xD
And when I've had enough of the oldskool stuff, I load up SWG, Nexus - Jupiter Incident, UT2k4 and StarWars Battlefront...
In other words, /agree Mishra..
Vig oh Pal, please for gaming's sake tell me what GBA game, I sold all mine and have a lonely GBA SP sitting in my desk, waiting for a new lover. SPEAK MAN SPEAK.
I still do think gameplay is greater than graphics, and I rarely notice graphics unless they're really shoddy NEVER because they look amazing (I do in films, though!).
I think graphics play a bigger part in sports game over anything, and I don't know why. Football (soccer) being the main one, and you can often notice when the game is arcadey via the art style - think NFL Street, or any of the EA Street series.
On Doom3: It was a shitty game, and didn't impress me in the slightest. Was in the same category as Serious Sam, people liked it, but I didn't. If I was rating it, it'd get like 6 out of 10. 64% out of 100 or something of that nature.
We told ya a bunch of great games and you didnt like them
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On the contrary I liked a few of them, I was expecting more on the GBA SP format, I literally played the bloody hell out of Tony Hawks, up until 3 one night, Mario Kart, Castlevania HOD.
Oh and thx for other comments in the other string, I should be B!tch slapped for forgeting the good old Scotts!