Graphics aren't important? Bullsh*t

[Sarka]

QFT.

 

Graphics are important, but when I say graphics I don't mean realism, I mean art style. Twilight princess has a brilliant manga feel to it, wind waker was a beautiful game. Thats what makes the graphics of those games immersive.

 

I think the argument is more about the developers than the wii itself. The wii has enough power to warrant wonderful graphical styles for games, but it appears that some developers haven't bothered to make the game look as pretty as it could.

 

Yes, we all know the wii would be far better if it had ps3 graphics as well as the innovative controls...but for now its either one or the other, and I choose controls.

 

I 100% agree with you. Another thing, this White Knight Stoy looks nice - but I always would prefer playing Paper Mario or TWW instead of this. I can see this (well, not quite) in higher definition by looking outside. I want VG's to capture my imagination and beautiful cel shaded or cool art styles (Mario Galaxy's shininess appeals to me big time!) win it for me everytime - and Nintendo usually have really nice art styles.

 

I have never cared if someone has said "look at those kick ass water effects!" as I wouldn't mind if it was a big pool of blue with some waves in it. It really doesn't bother me at all.

[JetSetWilly]

I think it's also about what's appropriate for the genre. The trailers for MGS4 look incredible. Kojima needs the horsepower that the PS3 gives him in order to deliver the visual feast that is expected of him. It doesn't instantly mean MGS4 is a great game to play but the audience expectation of MG games is that each iteration is even more of a visual treat than the last. I don't think there'd be nearly as much hype about that game if it had PS2 visuals.

 

In her interview with Destructoid on gonintendo Perrin Kaplan said that the other next-gen consoles have more power than the casual gamer/non-gamer needs in order to enjoy video-games. I think that's a very revealing quote of where Nintendo wants to head.

 

EDIT: dabookerman speaks the truth. Excellent post.

[gorrit]

Yeah sure, graphics are important, but are they so important?

 

The best looking PS1 title according to me? Legend of Mana, it's a pure beauty, and that's only becouse of it's great art, not any technical thingamajiggys with 10 gazillion polygons. The best looking Gamecube games? Sure, RE4 is there, but it's not only it's technical greatness, it's very much becouse of it's art direction (which fits the techical style perfect) but it's also Killer7, which almost lives only on style. Then there is Wind Waker, which sure is a technical masterpiece but also a game with a great style and art. Graphics are important, but there are alot more to graphics then amazing technical stuff, and the things that last, it's the style, the design, the art direction, not the technical mumbojumbo.

[dabookerman]

I think it's also about what's appropriate for the genre. The trailers for MGS4 look incredible. Kojima needs the horsepower that the PS3 gives him in order to deliver the visual feast that is expected of him. It doesn't instantly mean MGS4 is a great game to play but the audience expectation of MG games is that each iteration is even more of a visual treat than the last. I don't think there'd be nearly as much hype about that game if it had PS2 visuals.

 

This is what i dont like, the graphics are brilliant for MGS games, but alot of people always forget some of the great gameplay elements that are added with each installement.

A lot of the trailers are really to get fans wet as was demonstrated with an easter egg at the end of yesterdays trailer with the appearance of Young "Sean Bean" Snake.

 

MGS3 didnt get that much hype, because MGS2 took the PS2 to a completely new level, and it was hard to really improve that drastically again, the same can be said with Metroid Prime, the game was so damned perfect that it was really hard to surpass that with Prime 2.

[zora_prime]

the next N console will support HD and I think up to 1080 easily. i guess next N console will be the power of ps3 maybe slightly supped up, and you can see ps3 already preparing for 2xhdmi maybe even hd surround (3x1080) in later titles.

 

but graphics are near photo-realism and once they reach it there's no where to go from there, and N is going towards it, but at a slower pace. once the best graphics are achieved then the only direction in gaming is gameplay (motion sensing, vibration feedback), maybe stereoscopics (;P), better physics and sound, but Sony is wrong to jump so quick toward "teh best graph"

 

sience advances at a slower pace than technology <--- that's a fact

[Pit-Jr]

Regarding HD, i was under the impression that Nintendo took that out so they could achieve next gen graphics in SD. Seems i was wrong, and frankly the only place ive seen their processors being used in an impressive way is their fucking photo viewer.

 

I want VG's to capture my imagination and beautiful cel shaded or cool art styles

 

Those posts combined sum up my thoughts on the Wii. It CAN be an awesome machine if Nintendo and 3rd parties will assert some quality control.

 

I was under the impression that Nintendo was far more prepared for the Wii launch than the GC one, yet GC got Luigi's Mansion on Day 1, one of the the best-looking AND best playing games on GC to date. I look forward to 2007 for some real Wii games

[Nintendork]

Why look forward to it? We've seen Mario Galaxy.. that looks the tits, it's photogenic, full of ideas and the posterboy for Nintendo.

[dabookerman]

Those posts combined sum up my thoughts on the Wii. It CAN be an awesome machine if Nintendo and 3rd parties will assert some quality control.

 

I was under the impression that Nintendo was far more prepared for the Wii launch than the GC one, yet GC got Luigi's Mansion on Day 1, one of the the best-looking AND best playing games on GC to date. I look forward to 2007 for some real Wii games

 

Dont get me wrong, but even games on the Wii with an art style is really lacking.

[ZeldaFreak]

I think were forgetting something here its the way game developers design there games, e.g N3(Ninety Nine Nights) sure it looks resonable but the AI is the pits the story is utter crap but the graphics are pretty.

 

Now we have the opposite end of the spectrum where we have fantasic designed games but not the decent graphics to emerse you in to the story line, eternal darkness was for me the greatest example of this.

 

Nintendo should of allowed a slighty easier development system whereby they could of created great looking games, like Nintendo could of created a development tool similiar to that of the unreal engine idea- but put it so the bar was set in the middle of the systems graphic capabilities so the graphics could improve over time but have a far more balanced game system especially for that £180, with a demo game called Wii Sports. So 3rd part titles and even there own looked more 'New' next gen

[JetSetWilly]

dabookerman - I'm not sure I follow your response to my post. I agree with it, but I don't think I get what you don't like about what I said about MGS4.

 

Someone posted earlier to say that graphics lose their wow factor quickly. That's true enough, but the Wii controller is not immune to the same effect. When the next Zelda comes and it is developed for the Wii from the ground up people will expect it to look better than TP. Else what new ground can it cover? In TP you can shake the controller to swing the sword. In the next Zelda the novelty of that will be gone.

[Pit-Jr]

Why look forward to it? We've seen Mario Galaxy.. that looks the tits, it's photogenic, full of ideas and the posterboy for Nintendo.

 

thats also 1 game. Im not buying the Wii just to play Mario Galaxy. Its great that Nintendo can adapt old characters to the Wii-mote , but how about adapting the Wii-mote to new characters instead huh

[assofaman]

The current Wii games aren't necessarily indicative of the sorts of graphics well see on Wii for the duration of its life. The current games having less than spectacular graphics is in part due to Nintendo being unorganised on releasing the final dev kits and specifications of the console, leaving third parties having to assume the true power of the console and base their games on the console knowledge they had at the time which prior to a couple of months ago was rather limited. The graphics will improve over time as developers become accustomed to the console and adequate standards are reinforced to filter out sub par efforts. For now though, don't worry so much about how the games look and enjoy the "FRESH" experience that Wii will provide for us.

[Nintendork]

[demonmike04]

Graphics are currently shameful. Theres like what, no games that use the Wii capabilities?

Ok maybe I was too strong saying none of them, but theres not much of an advancement as they originally said. Mario galaxy looks bloody stunning, but its just a little advancement in the area's graphics compared to what we saw in Sunshine. Red steel looks kinda better too, the big advancement we saw was in the early demo with the glass shattering and the water pouring and splashing.

 

Zelda: Just cube graphics. Its just cube graphics and it has the most amazing graphics currently for the wii in my opinion. Thats shameful. I've lost confidence that the games will look good like they said, it may be launch, but why has it downgraded from the cube?

 

Graphics make a game look more appealing, and its eye candy. We love it. We like feeling we're in the sorroundings, we like the environment, the slight realism astounds us. But the Wii has gone to shit. Developers are being lazy pouring these half assed games into pre-order lists, and this will be Nintendo's downfall.

 

Because although these games have gameplay and shit, most are basic idea's with shite graphics and nobody is going to want to buy them. Nobody buys your game on that system, what do you do? Go support another system. Nintendo loses a developer. It wont be Nintendo's fault, but they have spent too long convincing developers to support it, that they havent convinced developers to push the system to see what wonderful games they can produce which will appeal to us.

 

All the effort i've seen is from Nintendo and Ubisoft. Everything else is a slight advancement over N64. Put your game on the virtual console, dont waste shelf space taking up games we want to buy.

[Konfucius]

Graphics certainly aren't the most important part, they only make for a great look but gameplay is most important because in the end you won't complete a game because you like the graphics so much.

 

But graphics will make a lasting impression. When you first saw the great Deku tree in OoT or Hyrule field it made an impression on you because you never saw something like this before.

I didn't play OoT back on the N64 and while it was a lot of fun the graphics looked a bit poor for me.

When I played Attack on the Death Star in Rogue Leader I was stunned how it could accurately recreate the look of the film.

Then in WW I was completely blown away by the ocean and for instance the tower of Gods.

 

Whenever I think of that games these things come to mind and I get a nice nostalgic feeling.

Now if the Wii will offer GC-like graphics there'll be (almost) nothing technically impressive that will let you stare at the screen in awe because any mid-range PC and of course the other consoles will outshine it graphically by far.

 

Sure the Wii will still be very much fun to play and offer good games but it's natural to want the best and the best would be great gameplay and great graphics.

[Shino]

There is nothing we can say to change this, yes PS3 games look good, and most third party games look like shit on Wii, non of us here has played with it so we can't say that the gameplay is so good that graphics don't matter, just like we judge people we start by judging it's appearance.

 

Most games are ports, even Mario Galaxy, and games like Red Steel had less than an year to be developed. And If Zelda is the best the GameCube has to offer, than we can surely expect much better on the Wii, similar to these White Knights stuff.

 

Just like the DS, I expect the Wii to prove it self later in its life.

 

Remember that the N64 had a innovative controller and the best graphics avaible at it's time, and it still "floped".

[Hellfire]

The way I see it is: if a game has gorgeous graphics and bad gameplay it would be stupid to play it, if a game has amazing gameplay and bad graphics it would be stupid not to play it, ergo graphics are a nice complement to the game, but not what I lose sleep over.

[pedrocasilva]

PGR3 could be done on the Xbox, but it would look exactly the same as PGR2. The cars in PGR2 compromised of just over 10,000 polygons each, the cars in PGR3 consist of upto 105,000 polygons, more then a 10-fold increase. Many of the gameplay features also wouldn't have been able to make the transition (Gotham TV) etc..

 

Heck, If you're going to take that stance, Gears of War and Metal Gear Solid 4 could have been done on the XB/PS2 in some form or another.

Is that so...

 

Messing with fanboys aside...^

To put things into perpective, the T-REX in the original Jurassic Park had 75,000 polys... Yup, anyone that says the 360 isn't nex gen needs to get thier heads checked.

To also put things in perspective, a star destroyer in Rogue Leader for GameCube had 125,000 polys...and there were TWO of them at the end of the game along with tons of other models onscreen.

 

Does that mean a GameCube launch game is next-gen? No, and neither is PGR3 to me, until they show how many polys are in that gorgeous enviroment onscreen at once.

 

That, and we need to know if this is an in-game count, or just for the showroom, and how many cars can be shown onscreen in a race before the framerate crawls to hell.

 

This is being REALISTIC regarding developer/publisher hype. And don't get me wrong, I'm a PGR fanboy to tell the truth (it's the spritual successor to MSR on Dreamcast), I just know when to see things for what they are.

 

Hopefully everyone else here will see that too- a next-gen console should be able to do a helluva lot more than 96k character/car models.

 

I was waiting for you to say that. The star destroyers were mostly in space where there was less environmental geometry.

And I was waiting for you to say that.

 

Star Destroyers are against a starfield, that much is true. However, there are also OTHER ships (50+ TIES onscreen at once plus Star Destroyers, player craft, and Rebel Frigates), and all sorts of effects (DOT3 bumpmapping, dynamic lighting, and in the Rebel Strike version, light scattering/diffusion).

 

Not saying that PGR3 doesn't do much more in its environments, but Rogue Leader's backgrounds, though seemingly static, have alot more going on than you think.

 

Personally, as much as I like PGR, I don't think I'll get PGR3 just yet during launch. I've enough time as it is playing the original PGR, and I avoided PGR2 because the excellent Rallisport and Rallisport 2 came in as great diversions.

Source: http://forums.g4tv.com/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=505569&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=arc&STARTPAGE=2

 

Yeah, but how many. Right now with the cars alone PGR3 has triple the ammount of polys.

 

Since when is 96,000 three times more than 120,000 polys?

How many polys are those tie fighters pushing?

 

The models range from 6-10,000 polys, depending on the angle of the camera- which is the same issue with the cars of PGR3, or any other game for that matter.

 

THEN, there are player craft, which are constructed of 18,000 polys, Millinium Falcon is over 20,000 polys.

 

THEN, there are the Frigate stations (up to 3) and they range from 30-45,000 polys, again depending on the camera angle/LOD.

Enough to make up the 550,000+ polygons PGR3 is pushing before you add in the actual city and spectators?

 

550,000 polys at 30fps is only 16 million polys sec, and with Rogue Leader doing more than that in smaller stages (and even more on those stages using the Rebel Strike engine), it's safe to say that this number is eclipsed in that game.

 

whatever PGR is doing per frame, it'd better be more than 2 million polys if it's going to be considered next-gen technically.

 

And Cloudsoul, I wouldn't directly compare any of the MSR/PGR series to Gran Turismo. That series has always been (at the core) more arcade-like in nature, with more focus on stunt points (Kudos) than shaving microseconds off your previous time.

Source: http://forums.g4tv.com/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=505569&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=arc&STARTPAGE=3

 

Wii could probably push PGR3 rather easily, I might add.

[Guest Stefkov]

There is nothing we can say to change this, yes PS3 games look good, and most third party games look like shit on Wii, non of us here has played with it so we can't say that the gameplay is so good that graphics don't matter, just like we judge people we start by judging it's appearance.

 

Most games are ports, even Mario Galaxy, and games like Red Steel had less than an year to be developed. And If Zelda is the best the GameCube has to offer, than we can surely expect much better on the Wii, similar to these White Knights stuff.

 

Just like the DS, I expect the Wii to prove it self later in its life.

 

Remember that the N64 had a innovative controller and the best graphics avaible at it's time, and it still "floped".

I wholey agree there.

I remember in each generation im sure the weakest console has won. NES, SNES, Playstation, Playstation 2, and then the DS is winning.

It seems that games really do play a big role in the win or loss of a console.

NES and SNes had loads of games cos they was the first of their kind-ish. Then the playstation with their CDs got more developers, then the playstation 2 because of the playstations success.

The ds has so many more games for it than the psp i believe.

The Wii support is growing and growing. with the VC aswell.

Graphics play a major role in games, i do believe. Mario Galaxy and Zelda IMO rank up nicely with Say oblivion in my books. Zelda looks immense, and to think that the GC could do those graphics. If the GC had good support then i think it would have been used to the max, and we would have been seeing games like Zelda last gen at least a couple years ago.

I dont know what im ranting about.....

[Dante]

DMC4 runs at 100fps! :shock:

 

"By using new techniques, we have become able to truly express light, shadow, etc. We are now able to draw 100 frames every second and display incredibly smooth imagery as a result of the PS3"

 

Can TV's run at 100fps?

 

Edit: Nevermind was a typo. O_o

[Shyguy]

ok i cant really be arsed reading most of this topic. what what the majoraty mean Stoka... is that if graphics were imporved over last gen, it wouldnt have the same effect from before that.

 

i mean if you look at games like Halo 2 and Residen Evil 4 (many more im sure)

 

but to be honest... if graphics were better than those games... i wouldnt really give a crap... i wouldnt buy a game if they have imporved visuals over gameplay. which is why people turn to Wii... it still has fantastic graphics.. looking at MP3 and SMG

 

and most of us wouldnt really be bothered if they were better than that

 

all this HD mumbo jumbo stuff is crap.. i havea friend with a 360... playing Dead Rising on a 15" TV in his room

 

doesnt mean i dont like the game, i think Dead Rising is amazing but i wouldnt care if it was on a 50" HDTV or not.. i have a 19" Monitor on my PC and i can get better Resolutions than a PS3 with a Geforce 6600

[fatnickc]

Graphics are important, but they don't tend to 'win' a game for me. I would sometimes prefer nicely drawn 2D graphics to 3D, but it looks like 2D is a dying art.

[DCK]

Ok, when people say 'graphics are not important' they mean that graphics don't make a succesful game. It's exaggerating, but accept it.

 

Of course graphics matter, but the Wii is doing fine for me. Games don't look like shit anyway, as most spammers try to make it seem. The Wii loses it to the 360 and PS3, but I don't care.

[mcj metroid]

I'm sure the PS3 looks just fine in SD most. And as for the price, remember it's got a brand new shiny Blu-ray player with it, that does raise the price a bit.

As for this White Knight Story, I'm impressed. Very impressed. I guess this is the PS3's Elder Scrolls IV. But Heavenly Sword still kicks total arse (and is actually the title I'm most anticipating); it's PoP on steroids.

People dont want that stupid unproven player.People will argue that the ps2 MADE the dvd but dvd players were around before then.

Id bet my life that this format will fail.its my opinion

[Fresh]

Graphics are important, but they don't tend to 'win' a game for me. I would sometimes prefer nicely drawn 2D graphics to 3D, but it looks like 2D is a dying art.

 

^^ i agree, If the game is made well, has a decent storyline ect. And as long as it has a good finish i dont realy care about graphics. Look at Trauma Centre, its not the most visually amzing game but the character art is very nice.