GRAPHICS AND THE SORTS

Yeah, I didn't mean it as true avant-garde, more like simply non-standard, uncommon, unique, like Sa-Ga Frontier 2 with its marchen book illustration-like graphics, or Killer 7 with its highly stylized cell-shading.

But no, avant-garde does not equate lack of substance. As with everything there's good and bad artists. If there was no avant-garde (assuming its broadest definition) we'd all be stuck with hyperrealism or, well, FPS brown-on-gray graphics for all games.

And no mana games :c
And those super creative art styles you see in indie games or some older games.

I actually liked Xenosaga because I found the story pretty interesting, and the gameplay, while fairly brief at times, was also pretty well thought out an executed for the most part. However, I can definitely see how people could become frustrated with those games very quickly.

I think the key to keeping player interest during cutscenes and story segments is to give them some kind of input. The Mass Effect games did this very well by having the player choose through dialogue trees which way the scene was going to go. This approach adds tremendously to the experience, imo.

I also agree that realistic games can have very different approaches to art design; tone, colours, set design, etc. all determine the feel of a game, whether it is realistic or otherwise. Compare the gritty and earthy Call of Duty games to the saturated and colourful Shadows of the Damned (yes, I know that one has demons, but it uses a lot of realistic settings). Or compare the wholesome-looking Deadly Premonition to the bleak Left for Dead; both environments use modern buildings, but think of how differently they are used.

author=Archeia_Nessiah

author=DE
I sustain my statement that most games of today, especially AAA titles, strive for photorealism and not avant-gardism.

Truth. That I have to post that I agree with this by over 9000.

I disagree (with the caveat that avant-gardism in this case doesn't mean true avant gardism but means stuff that isn't trying to be photorealisitc. Or maybe just things that try to be a bit stylish. If "true" avant-gardism is mentioned then I'd just have to say that there NEVER has been a time when AAA titles strived for avant-gardism. If you don't believe me share with me a year when the majority of games were avant-gard)

However I disagree that games today aren't varied in appearance and colour schemes and whatnot. In fact I could make the same statement as for my "true" avant-gardism. Find me a year when most of the games were photo-realistic. (Now I have to admit I'm not entirely certain how photo-realistic a game has to be to be counted as one. Does Batman Arkham City or Saints Row The Third count as photorealistic even though they're very cartoony, yet also somewhat realistic?)

And even though I say this, that there's an overabundance of weird-looking games out there I'm also going to say something that might sound like a contradiction. It wasn't better in the past either. In fact due to the sheer amount of games these days I'd say that in graphical variety we currently live in the best time ever. There's games of all kinds for all tastes. They're cel-shaded, fake 2d, 2d, fake 3d, 3d, vector-based graphics, blue, green, red, black, white, brown. There's something for everyone. And that's just graphics-wise.

But looking back things weren't much better. Many genres have for the longest time tried to make graphics as realistic as possible. Sure we laugh at it now, by back in the days graphics-whoring games such as Power Blade and Snake's Revenge were so close to photorealism it was crazy. It wasn't some kind of "artistic integrity" that kept the graphics retro those days (the way it does these days), it was actual limits in the technology.

Today all limits are removed (except for the few on the cutting edge, who push it further for everyone else's enjoyment) and that's why we get such varied-looking games.

Hey man, I'm cool with long cutscenes if the story is good. Second disc of xenogears was not good, not intentionally bad either, obviously ran out of budget.

I'm also cool with over the top 3D photorealistic graphics... as long as the rest of the game doesn't suck. Unfortunately many of them do. Y'all know what games I'm talkin about.

Feldschlacht IV

Shinan
3d can do anything 2d can and more. Basically 3d is superior in every way imaginable. You can lock the camera similar to how it is locked in a 2d game in a polygon world. You can also limit the camera in far more interesting ways than in a sprite-based world.

You can also change perspectives and "direct" scenes with far more ease than in a 2d game. (try changing a "camera angle" in a 2d cutscene... yeah, that's a lot of work isn't it?) So DE you're basically wrong on every single account.

3d offers more freedom, more variety and more options.

I guess somewhere in the mid-nineties I was vary about 3d, because it just seemed to make everything look so much worse. But that was fifteen years ago. I know we are the rpgmaker community that thrives on old times but sometimes you have to get your head out of the sand. Seriously.

Oh man, this pretty much turned me off to the entire discussion.

<Shinan> I make perfect sense.
<MOG> I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE

I'll always like the look of pixel art, but I can't disagree with Shinan or Darken.

EDIT: How is Shinan being condescending? He's just stating that you're incorrect with valid points. Saying that 3D games DON'T use their technology to height of their potential doesn't mean the potential isn't there, it means that commercial games need to step up... their game.

author=emmych

author=LockeZ
If avant-garde just means nonrealism then yeah, I'm glad there are also games with more stylized graphics, though I totally disagree that all realistic games have the same visual style. That's like saying all live action movies have the same visual style. They don't! There are lots of different visual styles within live action and realism; they just don't hit you over the head with them like stylized graphics do.

Mm, I agree and disagree on this one. While the possibility for different realistic styles is there, I don't see it used that often. I can't think of any games that play with HOW it's done that much. Admittedly, I haven't actually played many newest gen games (I'm a broke student OKAY ;__;), but I've seen enough that nothing has particularly stood out to me.

I mean, there are some really pretty and interesting looking realistic things out there, but the graphical style for L.A. Noire doesn't interest me like the vibrant colours and other graphical improvements made to the remake of Ocarina of Time. (Really, there was nothing beyond the initial "oh hey real life faces that's cool that they have the technology to do that" - like, actually seeing it wasn't interesting to me at all. OTL)

L.A. Noire is a great example of a game with its own visual style, and I'm not talking about the facial muscle movements. For the most part it's the tone and setting that creates the visual style in a realistic game. L.A. Noire, Knights of the Old Republic, Batman: Arkham City, and Dragon Age 2 have four extremely different visual styles. Lighting, coloration, choices of settings, props and objects, menus, loading screens, recurring themes, and the appearances of characters and enemies all contribute to making each of these games feel like it has a wholly designed specific look. I will totally agree, though, that there are also plenty of games that don't have their own visual style - they veer all over the place and as a result nothing about the game visually stands out.

I'd like to see more style pulled out in 3d games. I guess perhaps there was more or less a split in the culture of graphics in games. The graphics of 2d games comes much more heavily out of graphic design and art traditions with the technological capability aspect playing a role only in so far as it matters how many colours can be on screen or the resolution etc. As graphics have got more advanced it seems the "art traditions" play a much more secondary role to technological capabilities in what we see being put out there. Sure, they're still incorporated in "making stuff look nice" in modern 3d games but it seems like there was a much greater emphasis on that in older 2d stuff when the technology wasn't available.

There have been some decent attempts at being more artistic with the visuals of 3d games but it's just "not the same" I guess.

I disagree with the pure superiority of 3D. While 3D has some possibilities 2D doesn't have, 2D has the capability to evoke certain styles and graphical tricks that don't work in 3D.

While I can see the advantage of 3D in a lot of situations, it's not the end-all be-all of game art. Classical art improved over the centuries as skills and techniques grew and tools were improved; after a certain point, however - and also due to the advent of photography - artists began to branch out into stylistic approaches to art such as cubism.

I believe the same will happen to video games. Even after the advent of truly realistic 3D recreation of the real world, stylistic re-interpretation will always exist and will always be able to compete with complete realism. 2D art will have its place in this, as well as 3D and probably other art approaches we've never even imagined.

wtf was that a bug?!