Stylized Graphics, what's your take?

[EMWISE94]

Well, next gen is just around the corner like a surprise attack salesman and one of the things he's pitching is better graphics. For most developers this means they can finally bling their games up and make them uber shiny and realistic, because you know, in real life every street has cinematic lighting :/

Anyway, from the launch titles there's only a few games that seem to have stylized graphics like Knack, Sunset Overdrive, That other Xbox One title that has a "D" in it Iforgetthename! I've always been a fan of stylized graphics, they add the extra basting of tangy mushroom sauce on the golden roasted chicken that is the game (assuming its a properly cooked one that is); games like Team Fortress 2, Borderlands, Minecraft, Street Fighter IV just to name a few have stylized graphics which I enjoy for two reasons:

1.: They're artistic! Well, to some degree; in my books realistic graphics count more as a checklist thing rather than an artistic direction: "look, we took a great amount of time an energy to make this game resemble real life." sure it looks impressive, but its a forgettable trait in my books, whereas stylized graphics are all like: "Check it! We took time to make this game look all cool and non realistic and stuff so it can be your escape from real life!" which is what I'd personally like from a game, to escape from the dullness of my life.

2.: They age well! Go rummage through you're old PS1/N64 games, if you have any, pick up a title and play it, odds are you'll be like "yech! games looked like ass in the early days of 3D!" well, most of the games that were gunning for realism anyway. I find that the more stylized/cartoony looking games age much better, yea some still look like jagged and shaky origami but they have their charm to them... also, Nostalgia is a lying creature that'll have you believe things looked awesome back then but taking a trip down memory lane will give you the eye sore disease!

I'm sure some of you have, or plan to have, young'uns running around the house and I'm sure you'd want to show the types of games that were played by the the OG's back in the day and what a shame it'd be if they dismissed them because they look like bleh, or because future graphics make them look insignificant in comparison.

Then again this is just my opinion, I find stylized graphics amusing, I don't hate realistic ones, they work well in some games and do help with immersion. Also, there are times when stylized graphics can be misused, I'm aware of that. Anyway! Enough about my thoughts, what are yours?

Stylized graphics? Yay or Nay? and Why?

 

[Miss G.]

My favorite game is Okami. I think that's a resounding 'Yay' and for pretty much the same reasons you listed.

 

[shrekfan246]

Love 'em.

Aside from the pixelation due to how low the resolution is/was, Final Fantasy IX still looks phenomenal (well, okay, the battlefields are pretty lol-worthy, but the character models still look decent and the prerendered backgrounds are fantastic). Conversely, something like Deus Ex from the same era looks like a city built from cardboard, with cardboard cutout characters wandering around.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Kingdom Hearts have both aged remarkably well too. Sure, they might not seem that old since they were on the Gamecube and PS2, but it's still been over a decade since they released, and honestly going by looks alone I wouldn't be able to definitively say that (disregarding some of the sillier low-quality talking animations in KH, of course).

Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie hold up really well too. Texture quality aside, the cartoony aesthetic fits the occasionally blocky character models perfectly.

Aesthetic design beats graphical fidelity almost every time regardless of the style you use; While I'd say The Witcher 2 is one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen, I have to imagine it took a lot of work to get it to that point in the first place, and I imagine it's just slightly easier to make something like Okami be that ridiculously beautiful.

It helps that those unique art styles help a game to stick out, too.


Awesome!

 

[Maximum Bert]

Generally I like them Okami is excellent but others like Skullgirls, Disgaea games (or all Nippon Ichi games) Vanillawares games, Borderlands, Guacamelee, Journey, Valkyria Chronicles (love this game) to name a small selection also all look amazing. Even older ones such as Darkstalkers 3 looks absolutely stunning still I love what they did with the art work in that game.

Its not always good though personally I think the art in Streetfighter 4, SF X Tekken and to a lesser extent MVC3 looks terrible and it really sullied the time I spent with those games.

I have no problem with games being stylized or going for a more realistic look as long as it looks pleasing which I understand is wholly subjective but yeah Street Fighter 4 art style really bugged me even more than Injustices does (although Injustices art isnt really stylized its just bad (to me obv).

So usually yay sometimes nay but I hope we continue to get a mix of games that do stylized and non stylized art.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I'm very firmly in the 'yay' camp. The more realistic something is the less interested I am in it. If I wanted real life then I wouldn't be playing a video-game. It's also really restrictive and uninteresting to just focus on realism with your look too. So many games have started looking samey and the reason for some of this is because they don't go for some kind of style approach to their game. I think a good example is the Lost Planet series. When I look at it just from a look standpoint, it looks very forgettable and generic, but when I looked at the spin off game that was released called EX Troopers, I actually found myself interested due to it having a look that wasn't like everything else.

Games like Okami or anything Vanilaware puts out show, those kinds of games show me a world that's a feast for the eyes where I can enjoy just looking at everything. With a realistic world, I find myself paying less attention to the scenery due to a lot of it being stuff you already see.

 

[skywolfblue]

Yay!

I like World of Warcraft's cartoony style, Enslaved's overly bright rust and leaves aesthetic, Mass Effect's "Star Trek"-esque clean look. I even like Gears of War's gritty overmuscled aesthetic a bit.

I like some realistic-ish looking games too, Dead Space in particular.

 

[McMarbles]

Yay here! I'd rather have something interesting to look at that something painstakingly realistic.

 

[Mr Fixit]

Mostly yes I do enjoy them, but some take it to an extreme & that really kills it. Take Mad World for example, I love that game it's crazy fun, but I can only stand that horrible black & white & red for about 10 to 15 minutes at a time then it starts to hurt my head. I regularly go back & play old games on my N64 & PS1 & I have no problem with those.

 

[antidonkey]

I love stylized graphics. I find them more pleasing to my eyes than the realistic look. Not that dislike realism. Highly stylized graphics tend to hold up longer too. While realistic attempts looks amazing at the time, they tend to look terrible at a much quicker rate.

 

[Legion]

I prefer them in many cases because they don't look like an obviously fake attempt at making it look realistic. When you get something trying to look realistic, but it doesn't have the graphical quality required to suspend disbelief, it can be incredibly jarring. It is why so many games tend to look so terrible in cutscenes, as they are often required to have decent facial animations or character models, but they can't really pull it off. Hands, eyes and mouths are frequently the most noticeable.

With stylised graphics it doesn't work the same way as it doesn't need to look believable as long as it is consistent. If it has is then your brain can fill in the rest, much in the same way that we can recognise things based upon silhouettes. Whereas with "realistic" graphics your eyes will simply be drawn to the parts that stand out.

That is not to say that I dislike realistic graphics, if the game puts a lot of effort into it (such as The Last if Us) then it can look amazing, but quite often they will gave beautiful scenery, but fail when it comes to character models or other areas where they can come under close scrutiny.

 

[MrBaskerville]

I prefer stylized graphics, especially these days because realistic graphics seems to get worse every year. I'm a bit alone on this, but Grand Theft Auto V is extremely unappealing to look at imo, i hate the creepy wax faces and their plastic clothes, everything looks sterile, bland and fake, no expression whatsoever.

I prefer when it looks a bit stylized, doesn't have to be all cartoonym just as long as they don't try to imitate the real world too much, i think you can achieve more with simple facial animations and stuff like that.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Considering they age better and show that the developer wants to put more effort in making the game unique, I love them!
Even games with a realistic art style can look better when it looks stylized in some way, rather than looking like it's just realistic and nothing else.

Wind Waker for example has aged far better than Twilight Princess despite coming out four years earlier,(I prefer Twilight Princess as a game though) and it's all because of the once controversial cel shading it was made with.

 

[Thebazilly]

I love more stylized art styles. They just age way better. I will admit that realism has it's place (The Last of Us looked incredible), but I like the more artistic/cartoony games a lot. Stuff like Okami and Katamari Damacy still look pretty good even compared to current-gen games.

 

[Lightknight]

I think stylized graphics are great. I also like beautiful and realistic ones. It really depends on the game and its tone.

 

[Best of the 3]

I have no probably with stylised graphics, sometimes I like them, others I can appreciate even if I'm not a fan. For example with the look of the new game, Betrayer, in beta right now. It looks striking with it's use of 3 colours, black, white and red. But it's not something I'd like. I prefer something very colourful but I can see what they're going for.


I don't hate realistic graphics either. Depends on what you're going for. It's like the contrast between Saints Row and GTA. GTA looks more realistic but are trying to build a more realistic world. Whereas Saints Row is a more unrealistic, crazy word and their art style reflects this.

 

[elvor0]

I like raw realistic graphics from a technological stand for sure, and I will drool over the latest new thing, but I certainly get more enraptured by stylized stuff. And you're damn right, stylized graphics age SO much better. I mean Mario 64 may be a bit blocky, but it still looks good, everything still maintains its definition and visual aesthetic, Tomb Raider 2 on the other hand looks fucking hideous. Walls clip in and out of each other, you can actually see the gaps in the map half the time, everything is coloured in what looks like a low res photograph of someones ashtray and everything is so. fucking. square.

But then it sort of depends on the tone too, obviously stylized games can be serious, and realistic looking games silly, but you've gotta take the mood into account. As much as I loved Kingdom of Alamurs aesthetic, I don't think it would've worked out well for Mass Effect 3, a very sombre game by all accounts. But then I think Tod Mcfarlane should be on more games as an artist, for regardless of his questional merchandising juggernaut, Kingdoms of Alamur was fucking beautiful.

 

[SoranMBane]

Another "yay" here. In fact, having extremely pretty, stylized graphics is probably the easiest way for a game to perk my interest before I know anything about the gameplay or story. Hell, half the reason I love Don't Starve so much is because it looks like something straight out of a Roman Dirge comic. And then there's pretty much everything thatgamecompany has put out, none of which would be nearly as enjoyable without their art styles.

Of course, I can enjoy realistic graphics too as long there's something interesting for me to look at. Dead Space 2 may be one of the prettiest games I've ever played due to its use of lighting and colour within that gorgeous techno-gothic environment. There's also the Crysis series, Assassin's Creed, Portal, Skyrim, Dark Souls, even Spec Ops: The Line. Realistic games can absolutely look as interesting as a stylized game, the art directors for those games just need to realize that real is not necessarily all brown.

 

[busterkeatonrules]

Yup. I like stylized graphics for the same reasons as you do. They look great, and age well.

I also like them because stylized games do not just look different from realistic games - they are rapidly becoming the only games that look different from each other! Yeah. There's only one reality, and most modern games try their best to emulate it. This does inevitably result in piles of games that look all but identical.

I tried playing through the original InFamous when it came out. It was a fun game with a good and original premise, but I had already played through GTA IV and a couple of other top-of-the-line early PS3-era games, and halfway through InFamous was where I found that I'd finally had enough of realism. My gaming life had become as monotonous as reality itself!

I sold the game to a friend and played Saints Row 2 until something more eye-catching came out.

 

[Something Amyss]

They can be good or they can be bad. I like them, but I don't dislike "realistic" graphics.

I do dislike too large a focus on realism though, so maybe stylised gets the edge. I don't know. I'm less certain than when I came in this thread. Thanks, TC!

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