Shadowcat on 19/4/2016 at 12:34
After Minecraft, everyone just gave up trying?
nicked on 19/4/2016 at 14:34
I think Minecraft proved you could have a mainstream success story without impressive graphics.
faetal on 19/4/2016 at 15:00
Minecraft has some amazing graphics if you zoom out far enough.
catbarf on 19/4/2016 at 15:08
I think a big part of the resurgence of low-fidelity graphics is the rise of indie gaming in general. It's easier than ever for a small team to build and release a game, so keeping the graphics simple to minimize art workload is a plus. The AAA teams are still making AAA games that look like the latest iteration towards genuine photorealism, they're just not the only games getting mainstream attention anymore.
Muzman on 20/4/2016 at 06:16
Lately there's been a bit of coverage of System Shock and System Shock 2 in the news that has caused a natural interest in the old games.
Every time it comes up there's usually a good deal of people who will comment (apart from the controls) that "I tried to get into the old game (either of them) but couldn't get past the graphics".
So the answer to the question is no.
Has the push to higher fidelity leveled off a little and tastes in graphics styles diversified? I'd say yes (but then don't people generally blame console generations for that anyway? As one generation reaches a general pinnacle the fidelity does too. Then a new one comes along and the cycle starts over.)
icemann on 20/4/2016 at 06:25
Though with SS2 you also get into the side discussion on whether or not to use the graphics upgrade mods.
Take me for example on that topic - I use the texture upgrade mods, but don't like the enemy gfx replacements so don't use those ones. Game still looks great to me.
Muzman on 20/4/2016 at 07:24
Quote Posted by icemann
Though with SS2 you also get into the side discussion on whether or not to use the graphics upgrade mods.
Take me for example on that topic - I use the texture upgrade mods, but don't like the enemy gfx replacements so don't use those ones. Game still looks great to me.
Interestingly people tried that and the result was still the same for some folks. The point was, I think, that if you don't play a lot of triple A type stuff and keep one foot in a few styles and eras all the time (like probably most around here) then you can at least adjust. But if you don't play old FPSs in particular very much it seems very sparse and un detailed, even for a game with a clean sci-fi design aesthetic. Which isn't something better textures and so forth can really improve on.
I can overlook it and I quite like it still, of course. But it was apparent to me once when I jumped from, say, Alien Isolation to SS2 one day. And apparently there's people out there who just can't get past it.
Such people might even enjoy 'retro' graphics in general as well. I wonder sometimes if there's a curve not unlike the uncanny valley at work, where toleration of graphics' style aging moves from current and accepted and slides down to 'dated' and distasteful and then back up to 'period' and acceptable as a style choice again as time moves on.
It would be interesting to see if some indie game intentionally wants to look like a late 90s FPS in a few years (there's already some that look like early 90s ones on purpose)
Sulphur on 20/4/2016 at 08:26
Okay. Couple of things here. First, gameplay always wins out over graphics, and I say that as a graphics whore. If your game is instantly compelling and gets its hooks in, the graphics won't tend to matter as much. Sure, they could be better, but if the game offers an experience that keeps people playing, they're less likely to complain about the visuals. See: N, Saints Row 4, Hotline Miami, The Walking Dead. People bought these games despite the art, IMO, not because they looked visually pleasing. Having said that --
One: AAA devs/games absolutely focus on graphics. They're the reason dev teams are so big in the first place. This has not changed - all the heavy hitters launched graphically complex games this generation. Ubisoft, Rocksteady, DICE, Crytek, Crystal Dynamics, various new studios, even From Software's games have been getting shinier and tricked up with all the bells and whistles, like Bloodborne and DS3. Heck, the recently released Ratchet & Clank game's gameplay almost looks like an animated movie at times.
Two: Indie games. They're more popular than ever. This is not because people don't like new shiny grafx, but simply because they're well-represented and more accessible now than they were before digital distribution became big. And even then, you tend to see a lot of them doing beautiful art that no one else in the AAA space attempts: Hyper Light Drifter, for example, is a pixel art game, but its art direction makes every screen visually pleasing regardless, because of a well-judged colour palette, tactile animation, and painterly touches to the backgrounds. Ori and the Blind Forest is probably the most beautiful platformer ever made. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter tends to look like a painting at times, and photorealistic at other times, thanks to photogrammetry, which DICE went on to use in Battlefront.
faetal on 20/4/2016 at 09:15
The SS2 example is a bad one. It's a game which uses immersion as one of its key features. This immersion is hurt by the perceived advances in graphics since then. New immersion games are no longer marketing so hard on graphics because the recent changes haven't yielded such large differences. This doesn't mean that differences between contemporary games and older ones isn't a factor.
icemann on 20/4/2016 at 13:01
I wonder if the emulation scene in any way helped the indie scene from a graphic stand point. I know that the amount of people playing games via emulators has been steadily rising as time goes on. So you have all these people playing these games, with often the same exact graphical styles at work.
Nostalgia would be another. I'm just theorizing.
