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DSWii

Gaming's Graphical Future

by Nick DiMola - September 19, 2008, 10:59 am EDT
Total comments: 38

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.

Talkback

KDR_11kSeptember 19, 2008

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

Bill AurionSeptember 19, 2008

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 TwitchSeptember 19, 2008

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 guySeptember 19, 2008

Quote from: >

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.

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.

UltimatePartyBearSeptember 19, 2008

Quote from: anti-thatguy

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 guySeptember 19, 2008

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.

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.

CalibanSeptember 19, 2008

Quote from: Silks

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.

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_11kSeptember 20, 2008

Quote from: Bill

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 KeySeptember 20, 2008

Quote from: Silks

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 MonkeySeptember 20, 2008

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_11kSeptember 20, 2008

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

Infernal MonkeySeptember 21, 2008

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

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.

ShyGuySeptember 22, 2008

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

KDR_11kSeptember 22, 2008

Descent :P

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 SaneSeptember 22, 2008

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 *hugglesSeptember 22, 2008

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

StogiSeptember 22, 2008

I agree with Ian.

Setting and style are way more important than graphics.

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.

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.

KDR_11kSeptember 23, 2008

Why does art or innovation have to be experimental? Experimental tends to mean "we thought we had a cool idea but couldn't really get it to work so you guys go appreciate the coolness of the idea".

Mario 64 isn't just ugly, the levels suffer from lowpolyness, there are slidey surfaces that look no different from regular ones, the whole thing feels like a mess.

StogiSeptember 23, 2008

This

Quote from: KDR_11k

Mario 64



And this:

Quote:

the whole thing feels like a mess.

In the same sentence....

is....

is....

FAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLUUUUUUUUUURRRREEEEEEE

and so is this:

Quote from: KDR_11k

Why does art or innovation have to be experimental? Experimental tends to mean "we thought we had a cool idea but couldn't really get it to work so you guys go appreciate the coolness of the idea".

PlugabugzSeptember 23, 2008

Okami + Headache-inducing blur = SUPERFAIL.

If games are increasingly about style, then ensuring they don't wreck my head is a good start.

KDR_11kSeptember 23, 2008

M64's level design constantly felt like the lack of system power forced them to shape the levels as horrible to navigate as they did. Huge slopes, areas where one polygon was slippery while another wasn't, no real path that didn't feel like breaking the physics system in some places, ... Maybe that happens when you play a game like that for the first time after having already had a Gamecube but if it decays like that I wouldn't say it stands the test of time. Sunshine may have been a tedious gmae but at least it felt like the designers could do what they wanted to do. Many NES games also massively suffer from the memory limits and the level design limitations that brought.

StogiSeptember 23, 2008

Your whole argument is that technology is restrictive. That doesn't make what comes out of that restriction innately bad; Mario 64 is a great example of that.

CalibanSeptember 23, 2008

Quote from: Plugabugz

Okami + Headache-inducing blur = SUPERFAIL.

Was it that bad for you? I hardly noticed it.

NinGurl69 *hugglesSeptember 23, 2008

It's real bad.

Worse than Mega Man 9's lazy ugly graphics.

Sophisticated games like Okami: Zeldog are supposed have qualities that bring the medium forward, not awful.

CalibanSeptember 23, 2008

hahahahaha wow

Did...uh...NinGurl seriously just say that the graphics of MM9 are lazy and ugly? Does she not realize that the entire point was to recreate the look and feel of the old NES games? Does she have no sense of history or artistic achievement?

Again I say--not every game needs to look like a photograph. Wario Land: Shake It! has very stylized graphics, it looks like a cartoon, that's the whole POINT. Mega Man 9 looks like an NES platformer from 1990. Again, that was the intent, and Capcom succeeded wonderfully.

DAaaMan64September 23, 2008

Quote from: Halbred

Did...uh...NinGurl seriously just say that the graphics of MM9 are lazy and ugly? Does she not realize that the entire point was to recreate the look and feel of the old NES games? Does she have no sense of history or artistic achievement?

Again I say--not every game needs to look like a photograph. Wario Land: Shake It! has very stylized graphics, it looks like a cartoon, that's the whole POINT. Mega Man 9 looks like an NES platformer from 1990. Again, that was the intent, and Capcom succeeded wonderfully.

NinGurl's aka Pro666's poasts are witty satire. I wouldn't take anything he says seriously unless it's longer than 1 paragraph.

StogiSeptember 23, 2008

He does have some 1 liners that are impeccable.

Hostile CreationNovember 12, 2008

I have problems with this argument, the division between artistic style and photorealism.  As many of you are probably aware, I'm an avid supporter of interesting and radical artistic styles in games.  Aside from merely liking them, aesthetically, I think they're philosophically integral to the art or style of gaming: games are, in large part, a visual medium and I think varied and dynamic art styles are essential to fully exploring the possibilities of the medium.  I've been outspoken about Wind Waker since its visual design was revealed, and I still feel the same way: it's one of the most visually inventive, fluid, fun, interesting, and overall appealing experiences I've had SEEING a game (that is, the part of playing a game which consists of seeing it).  The game was great but artistic design managed to elevate the game.  This applies to many other games, and I think it's interesting that people are pointing toward retro games: they're a magnificent example of a distinctive art form that developed as a result of limited technology -- and I wouldn't have it any other way.  Those games mean worlds to me, and a large part of that is the visual sense I associate with them.

At the same time, I think those technological efforts which press toward photorealism and expanding the possibilities (in a purely technical sense) of graphics are also admirable.  As dated as some games may look, they were essential stepping stones to where we are now (and where we'll be in the future).  I think some people take these things too seriously, and rely too heavily on mere technical specs, but these games have opened up new possibilities in gaming and the ways games are played and seen.  And the technical achievements in turn help those productions which may not be as technically/financially savvy, but which have an artistic vision which will be broadened by the technical possibilities introduced by more mainstream games.  Of course, I really admire games that push the technical qualities of a system but which also have a great visual design/art direction.
I think a good example of that might be Twilight Princess.  The game adopts a much more realistic style than Wind Waker (akin to OoT), where the color scheme, proportions, and movement roughly reflect those of reality.  At the same time, though, it does have many visual flourishes and shows a clear influence from Wind Waker: caricatured characters, exaggerated movements, some purely unrealistic elements (for instance the walking cannon), and many distinctive details.  These traits have long been a staple of the Zelda series, a certain visual leniency and charm (which could be attributed to the childhood exploration/fantasy element of the game; it has storybook elements).  It's an admirable balance of the two styles, and while I prefer the bolder, more radical style of Wind Waker, both appeal to me very much and their visual styles very much compliment the atmospheres they develop as individual games within the same series.

Art direction in games can be traced along a lengthy timeline of artistic achievement.  For a long time, visual artists (painters, sculptors, filmmakers, etc) have tried various styles and have gone through various movements in accordance to these styles.  They are often split between more realistic depictions and expressionistic depictions.  For instance, the Impressionist painters were very much concerned with the dynamics of light and how it shone on things, reflected off of surfaces, the shadows it made; this is not so different from game designers nowadays, trying to make the lighting effects as realistic and interesting as possible.  On the other hand, you have surrealism, or expressionism, or any number of artistic styles, which present things as exaggerated or altered forms, reality filtered through some level of the artist's perception.  Surrealism is meant to evoke the images from dreams and they are not realistic, but strange, elongated, morphed, or logistically incoherent.  If a game strives for the same effect, why should its visual style be realistic?  Isn't that counter-productive?
I am drawn to stop-motion animation, illustration, puppetry and make-up effects, rather than 3D modeling and CGI.  Even if those things show their artifice sometimes, they are more interesting, more dynamic and unusual, than the "flawless" efforts of computer generated images.  They are visceral and unique.

Miyamoto once said something I agree with wholeheartedly.  He talked about puppetry and how the heart of something lies not in how it looks, but in how it moves -- how it expresses itself.  It is not so important, I think, that a game mirrors reality as closely as possible.  What is important is that a game is expressive of reality, or some version of reality, or of an idea or a mood, and by expressing that it draws us into its world and makes us a part of the game.

KDR_11kNovember 12, 2008

Now where did you copypasta that from?

Hostile CreationNovember 12, 2008

From mah brains.

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