Ultra Real graphics arent always as stunning.

[Matt-Sama]

*updated* One of the twilight princess pics wouldnt upload right at first.


So it got me thinking, games like gears 2 and uncharted 2 and all that lot look amazing, very realistic and so well made.
But is that always amazing to look at? From a certain degree yes.
But in away I want to be taken out of the realm of ultra realism and see the world in a different game.

Example.

Looks great doesnt it? Technically breathtaking but in a way so real you couldnt believe these type of creatures.





But look at this, not as graphically powerful but in away far more beautiful to look at, not incredibly believable but because of its nature it doesnt need to be.





Lets go back a generation, to the days of the gamecube.
Resident evil 4, one of the first steps into hyper realism, I like many others were blown away by these screens.
Its one of my all time favourite games, but where its so real its so grey and we've seen it all before in a sense.


Below, thats some serious detail.


But it in my opinion doesnt look half as good as say. Wind waker.
Some people hate it, but i think the game looks beautiful, no slowdown and such a large world with out any real loading.

If I saw this not knowing about zelda i'd actually think it was a cartoon.





Star fox on the gamecube also looked absolutely amazing without having to look hyper realistic.


Maybe im a sucker for art. But even mario galaxy isnt ultra realistic but it looks so beautiful.

[kirbykiller4]

I was bored to death by twilights graphics,and galaxy had a layer of sleek on everything that seemed to be a crappy coverup for the non detailed textures.

You're also forgetting that for quite a while now,developers have employed smoke and mirrors programming to achieve realism,this is why screens always look so bad compared to actual footage,because when you stop the motion,the illusion fails and the true look of the game is revealed.

Take that starfox screen for example,notice the small hill to the far left of the screen,definitely doesn't look too great does it? But if you were actually playing the game you would never notice that,it would look as good as everything else in the game.

And I remember the first el gigante corpse i saw,it looked like an ugly mess of polygons,but that was because i stopped and looked at it.

Even now games still use the illusion techniques,take gears of war2,they basically admitted that the unreal 3 enjine uses a gaggle of mirage effects,like spawning a bunch of simply animated drones to run in the backround,making it seem like you were in a full scale war,or how the very edges of cover can be blown off.

They even found a way to make regular enemies degrade into simpler models when they are far from your view,this was apparent once i zoomed in on skorge during multiplayer and found that he was still rendering,despite being on the map for a good 3 minutes.

These techniques are used to make the frame rate stay smooth,no doubt making over a hundred enemies,all with their own artificial intelligence,would bring any engine to its knees.

This is the same reason there has never been a fully destructible environment,where every building will realistically chip away from your bullets,the only possible way to do this would be to construct the entire building out of specially animated blocks that would have there own weight and physics threshold,this would be impossible,at all times the engine would have to take that building into account,just having one building like that would be far too much for the engine.

So in short,the games of the past look far more breathtaking,because they had to make do with what they had,nowadays developers have good enough technology that they don't have to resort to eye trickery like cel-shaded graphics.

[kirbykiller4]

And is this another one of your discussions that you'll copy onto screwattack afterwards?

[Matt-Sama]

Nah, its not. I know screens dont look as good buy hey, I think starfox looks amazing. And I suppose its preference, I dont like hyper real graphics because Im play the game to be taken away from "real".

[kirbykiller4]

After all that time and effort that I put into that post you still managed to completely miss the point I was making.

FUCK

[Matt-Sama]

I did get it totally, Im just saying I like art rather than ultra realism simply because I like being immersed but I like being in a different style world.
Gears is fun, but if games carry on being on so graphically powerful it will make them dull.

[kirbykiller4]

Well no you didn't, or you wouldn't be arguing with me,as i wasn't being argumentative at all.

[Matt-Sama]

Im not arguing, you're probably taking me the wrong way.
I like artistry better because, one day all games will look so real they'll look the same, each one will get a 10/10 for graphics because they look so great but as nobody changes style the scores will go down and people will be less interested in graphics,
I miss 16 bit.
Games like ff13 look amazing but keep an anime style to it so it isnt considered amazingly realistic in that sense.


Im so glad ff13 is comming to the 360, im not an rpg fan but the way this game looks as if the combat is mixed up, it should be awesome.

[kirbykiller4]

I still don't believe that's an actual screenshot.

[Matt-Sama]

Then I suppose it does its job, because it is.

This is a cutscene.
I mean look at the detail on her face, the freckles and everything yet it keeps an anime-esque style.

This is a screenshot.

[kirbykiller4]

Until i see them actually playing it onscreen i will not believe that it's a screenshot.

[Matt-Sama]

Why can you not believe this? The games been in development for like 3 years already.
But fine, check out the ff13 thread for more information.

[kirbykiller4]

They did the same god damn thing with ff7 you fuck,thats why.

[Matt-Sama]

Yeah but that was showing the power of the console. FF7 is gay and overrated anyways.
Plus this has all the menus and stuff on screen.

Anyways this isnt the point, we need more peopel discussing if they like photo realism or an art approach in there games.

Discuss ff13 in the thread about the game.

[kirbykiller4]

FF games are for FFags

[Matt-Sama]

I've only played 3 FF games all the way through, 5, 7 and 8.

5 was great. 7 was ok, and 8 was above average, I dont follow trends with these games. But meh, ff13 looks good.

DAMN BACK TO NON FF RELATED THINGS.

The only true graphical advance now is to go back to 16 bit.

[kirbykiller4]

I still wonder what the next gen will be,as i really don't see developers working that hard on a game to make them photo realistic.

I wonder what gears 3 will look like?

[latimer-kun]

it'l look the same, dark and gritty and mundane, the shoot em ups always look like this to keep up with the macho style theme. graphics dont concern me but id rather have a good game with simple graphics then a boring game with amazing graphics

[Matt-Sama]

A gears 3 trailer is out there somewhere or atleast leaked screen shots, on gametrailers I think.
I hate how people sometimes by games because of the graphics, a prime example is kill zone 2, it looks very realistic but it will suck, its your average shooter and the original didnt even get very good reviews, its retarded.

[kirbykiller4]

Dec 16, 2008 11:11:50 GMT -5 Matt-Sama said:

A gears 3 trailer is out there somewhere or atleast leaked screen shots, on gametrailers I think.

You fucking idiot,they couldn't possibly have screenshots of a game that may not even be in development yet.