you know what?...fuck it....graphics ARE important

[rutger5000]

It's not the graphics, it's how they are used. Games with horrible graphics can still be great, if the art design makes good useage of what it has. Similairly games with amazing graphics can still be horrible if the art design just squanders around.
I'd like to compare graphics with painting utilities. Imagine an artists having only a pencil, said artist could still make great works. Now imagane the same artist but now with a whole set of painting utilities. It's more then likely this work will be better, then the one drawn with just a pencil. Now imagine a person with no talent whatsoever, regardless you give said person a pencil or a whole set of painting utilities his/her work would suck.
All in all graphics have only a minor importance, they can help making something good better, but that's all they can do.

 

[Flare_Dragon123]

The level of graphic polish is not important.

Is it enjoyable to play a game without having to wiggle the old video input cord to kill the flickers? Yes. Is it enjoyable to see highly detailed character models running through intricately detailed worlds? Absolutely.

Does it make the game? NO. NO IT DOES NOT.

There are people who play Nethack which is so old school it doesn't even know what a polygon is. They play it for the gameplay which they find fun in the almost complete lack of graphical display.

Now tell me how Gears of War is amazing because of its looks, better yet, tell me how its better than FFIX ONLY because of its looks.

Tell me how graphics dominate gameplay, story, and aesthetics (by arguing that graphics are important you are saying aesthetics are not)

 

[Naeras]

A game that looks good doesn't need to be graphically impressive, though. I think Bastion looks better than any of the Modern Warfare-games, to be honest.

 

[Wolfram23]

I guess your lucky

and no...I don't "get" dancing....in fact what I don't "get" is:

"hey! she isn't dancing, she must be really sad and she's probably really shy and needs somone to coax her out of her shell so she can dance and be happy!"

"yeah, I'm shy and I apreciate your thourght, I really do....BUT FUCK OFF AND STOP TRYING TO GET ME TO DANCE!"

What? You don't like rubbing your genitals against another person whom you don't know's genitals? What is wrong with you!?

Anyway, I totally agree. It's hard to look at some games. Although I pretty recently picked up the first Fallout and I'd say the graphics in that game are ok, although it probably helps a metric tonne that it's sprite based and not 3D.

I also just recently bought Vampire Bloodlines: The Masquerade. It is a Source engine game, and although the graphics have a lot of oddities, especially on character models, it's still good enough (particularily the environments) to put me in the game.

I'm also a bit of a graphics whore, and any game that claims it will blow my socks off with it's amazing graphics gets my interest by default. It helps that some of them are actually good, IMO, like Crysis 1/Warhead and Metro 2033.

Also, you haz Steam?

EDIT: Just for fun, I thought I'd share this. Someone did some tweaking in the ORIGINAL Crysis and produced this image. By tweaking I mean tweaking the default stuff, no added graphic coding or magic or whatever.

 

[Tippy]

The point of improving graphics was to make the game look and feel more photorealistic so the gamer could connect and be "convinced" so the game could deliver it's message.

And I believe these days we've more or less hit the plateau of how good graphics need to to get the main point of the game across. Yes this is probably the same thing that developers said years and years ago, but jesus christ look at CryEngine 3 and Frostbyte 2. They are aiming for photorealism and they're almost there.

So now that the powerhouse game engines are there and the next generation of consoles can be better equipped to handle them, we just need developers to aim at making the game AESTHETICALLY pleasing both in terms of look and feel.

 

[TheLazyGeek]

There was this guy, he's a pretty well-known kinda guy because he made this thing of films called...what was it, Star Trek?

I can't remember, anyway, he once said "A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." and I think that applies to video games with how the graphics of a game are a tool for the rest of the game. That's not to say they're not important, because they are, but it's not how many pixels you can fit into a cut-scene that's important, but rather the style of the game that bends around the other elements of a game.

Ever seen Fantasia?

No real story just pure animation to music. It is a fireworks display. Doesn't need a story to be entertaining.

So is Rez and Flower. Their own graphical styling lends itself to the type of game that they are, just as the look of Fantasia works for what it is; an aesthetically-pleasing orgy of color and sound. But in either case, the graphics still are a tool to be used to express that, alongside the sounds and music.

captcha: sky's the limit
...Fuck that, I'm going to the moooon!

 

[craddoke]

Bull - "realistic" graphics are the bane of gaming. Here are my counter-arguments:

1. Deus Ex's unsatisfying graphics were the "ultra-realistic" graphics of the 1990s. Deus Ex would have held up better if it had settled for a stylized aesthetic like other adventure and RPG games of that same period.

2. Better graphics hog development time and system resources, limiting gameplay options. I would rather have lackluster graphics and interesting mechanics and/or story options.

 

[Lunar Templar]

It's kind of disheartening to hear that people can't play older classics because of something like graphics . It's almost like spitting in the faces of those who worked so hard to build the foundation of gaming. Forgetting our roots, forgetting the games , and more importantly , the people that made gaming what it is today .
.

its not like I mean to disregard older games....its just the way it is

it's still sad.

ignoring great classics because 'they don't look good by today's standards' is stupid to me, since the 'hyper realistic graphics' every one has this misplaced hard on for will, pretty much be 'out dated and ugly' in a year or so, unlike the sprites used in older games as example.

of course

it's also possible that i dislike the 'super high graphics quality' cause the AAA market hasn't really done a damn thing game play or story wise to make me care it looks good (hence i tend to play a lot of older games)

 

[DioWallachia]

You see why so many indie gamers prefer the 8-16 bit kind of art? because it could look prettier and may stand the test of time much better than the period of gaming with scary poligon people.

 

[daveman247]

Graphics on the scale of 1/10 are about 4 for me. Gameplay, story and balanced mechanics, origonality are much more important. Graphics are "not as" important as the bulk of what makes a good game. Take the Theif series for example, terrible graphics due to its age but it makes up for excellent stealth gameplay. That can not be said for its poor cousin Splinter cell (excluding the first game).

But chaos theory has some of the best stealth EVER and still looks quite good ¬.¬

 

[daveman247]

snip

The suffering had the BEST monsters, maybe even rivaling silent hill They need to make a new one... too bad midway died...

 

[Zenn3k]

Depends on the game and the experience its trying to convey.

A game like Skyrim needs the best graphics it can have, the elder scrolls in general have always been a pusher for good graphics, because it allows that series to create more interesting and immersive locations.

However, a game with slightly worse graphics, but WAY better gameplay improvements will still be the better game, because as important to immersion as those graphics are...every time something "strange" happens, or the game limits me because of those graphics...that immersion level is broken slightly.

You take a game with say, "Oblivion graphics", but perfectly polished, no bugs, amazing menus, huge branching dialog trees...etc etc. It becomes a better game than Skyrim, even if graphically inferior.

So yes, good graphics, the best you can easily handle...absolutely, however, great gameplay will ALWAYS trump that.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Snip

You forgot that you can't understand this "brony" thing.

OT: Graphics are actually pretty damn important. But really, it all comes down to how dated the game is. Three games that come to mind with dated graphics, but are still damn good are Metal Gear Solid 1, Half Life 1 and Deus Ex. Those three have SHIT graphics, yet they are still good because they have pretty amazing gameplay to boot. But the graphics still take away from the game, especially with Deus Ex and MGS1. Those two feature a lot of humans talking to eachother, and with humans that basically just move their heads without doing anything that's bad. Half Life on the other hand's characters are aliens, or humans you barely even look at anyway.

 

[daveman247]

snip

You must have HATED the recent fallout games then
*looks at avatar*... Oho?

 

[ToastiestZombie]

It's kind of disheartening to hear that people can't play older classics because of something like graphics . It's almost like spitting in the faces of those who worked so hard to build the foundation of gaming. Forgetting our roots, forgetting the games , and more importantly , the people that made gaming what it is today .
.

its not like I mean to disregard older games....its just the way it is

it's still sad.

ignoring great classics because 'they don't look good by today's standards' is stupid to me, since the 'hyper realistic graphics' every one has this misplaced hard on for will, pretty much be 'out dated and ugly' in a year or so, unlike the sprites used in older games as example.

of course

it's also possible that i dislike the 'super high graphics quality' cause the AAA market hasn't really done a damn thing game play or story wise to make me care it looks good (hence i tend to play a lot of older games)

I have this attitude with 8 and 16 (maybe even 32) bit games because well, they all have pretty damn good pixel art. I think they may be talking about games such as Deus Ex and MGS1. I found it really hard to get into both even though I knew they had amazing gameplay because well, they were so ugly and outdated. Simple as that. The realistic PS1/N64 era games all suffer from this problem, yet from Gamecube onwards I don't think anyone except for massive graphic bastards wouldn't be able to get into a game because of its graphics.

 

[n00beffect]

Anyone who claims that graphics are completely un-important and have no impact on a game, deserves to have all their current-gen technology taken, and be left with a fucking n64 for the rest of their life. Seriously.

However, graphics can become detrimental to a game when that's the only thing dev's have focused on, and gameplay-wise the game is a stack of bull-poo-poo. Graphics ought to be a side-thing, not a must. if your core gameplay is faulty/unintuitive, then graphics won't be your saviour, at least not in my eyes. I enjoy my high-def graphics, when they compliment the game's complexity, but they're most certainly not a vital necessity and will be overlooked if the game itself sucks.

 

[daveman247]

snip

DAMMIT i wish wipeout fury was on xbox, hands down the best racing game ever

 

[sta697]

graphics are important since they have to promote the aeshetics.aeshtetics is the point though it's subjective you love or hate it,its what communicates the whole visual message to you .is graphics important?ofcourse as a tool,but a game with the best graphics won't appeal to me unleash it has substantial art desing