Beyond Realism: The Future of Video Game Graphics?

by Roberto Flores, COMMUNITY WRITER

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Editor's note: As more video games strive for realism, Roberto champions those that create a unique graphical style. Which visual direction leaves a lasting impression with you? -Rob

What started out as a bunch of dots on a screen in the '70s evolved into cartoony figures in the late '80s. Blocky 3D figures shooting aliens emerged in the mid '90s and transformed into high-definition mythical warriors who leapt onto the backs of colossal giants -- all while wielding impressively fiery blades -- in the latter half of this decade. Video game graphics finally seem to have reached a technological and aesthetic plateau.

Where can visuals go from here?

Our obsession with realistic, life-like images has taken us all the way from Combat on the Atari 2600 to Modern Warfare 2 on today's consoles and PCs. Still, I can't help but notice that the games which attempt to mimic real life end up looking dated years later, while those that strived to attain a unique and compelling style managed to remain visually striking.

No better proof of this exists than the comparison between Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat, both released in the early '90s. While Mortal Kombat's "photo realistic" characters look way beyond cheesy today, Street Fighter 2 still holds up as a visually appealing 2D fighting game.

Street Fighter 2 still looking good; Mortal Kombat, not so much

Developers who are able to mix past, present, and future technologies will always manage to create more striking, impressive, and lasting visual experiences than those who only aim to push the limits of life-like graphics. Yoshi's Island's mix of beautiful 2D sprites, Mode-7 effects, and some of the very primitive polygon-pushing capabilities of the FX Chip are a prime example of top-notch visual design, as are games like Jet Set Radio Future and the recently released Borderlands.

As talk of the "last generation of power consoles" starts to fly around the web, we should begin to ask ourselves: Do we really need something more realistic than Heavy Rain?

Real enough for you?

The current global economic recession makes investing in new, big-budget polygon and texture-pushing productions more difficult for triple-A developers; however, smaller -- sometimes independent -- studios are looking on the bright side and creating fun, visually stimulating games like 'Splosion Man and 3D Dot Game Heroes.

From Software's unique artistic style for 3D Dot Game Heroes

So where does the future of video game visuals lie -- more real or feel? All I know is that I'd take Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhone before any hyperrealist painting of the same.

Nothing quite like it

Tags: Heavy Rain, Combat, Mortal Kombat, Borderlands, Street Fighter 2, Jet Set Radio Future, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

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Jason Wilson

November 24, 2009

Visuals aren't as important to me as good game design. I wish the industry -- and gamers -- would focus more on well-made games instead of how flashy the visuals are and how many new missions, guns, or foes a game introduces.

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Roberto Flores

November 24, 2009

[b]@Jason[/b] I totally agree with you. In the end, good game design is what makes a truly compelling gaming experience. However, I do think that a creative visual design can help boost it even further. I'm not talking about hyper-realistic graphics, but rather interesting ones, ones that can challenge a gamer's perception about what good graphics are [i]supposed[/i] to be instead of what we're frequently told they [i]should[/i] be. I'll take "Echochrome" as a prime example. The gameplay mechanics are great and the amazing, minimal visual style just simply adds a lot to the game's mystique. [img]http://www.blog.lessrain.com/wp-content/upload/eschaaa.gif[/img] [i]Echochrome[/i]

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Sean Haas

December 14, 2009

Nothing ever reaches a plateau, progress merely slows; the differential between shifts becomes less clear, less defined. Good game design should marry a multitude of things, one of which being an appropriate art style. It isn't a matter of choosing one over the other and planting a flag. 'Heavy Rain' is not the end of the line for realistic graphical fidelity, and games like 'Rez' or 'Pixeljunk Eden' are not the pinnacle of abstraction. Within art, all things are possible. It is folly to denounce the hyper-real as empty and the abstract as meaningful if your decision is based merely on a subjectivity to aesthetics. I'll take a realistic version of anything if it appeals to me over an abstraction that exists merely for the thought of it.

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Will Newell

December 14, 2009

I agree with the premise that, stylistically, games are starting to reach the limit of photorealism before they would take a dive into the Uncanny Valley. However, I disagree that graphics have reached a technological plateau because of this. Consider that round surfaces are still defined as a collection of triangles, and making objects appear rounder centers around throwing more triangles at them (in addition to clever shading tricks). Fluid dynamics, breakable objects, and foliage, for example, still leave much to be desired, as well.

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Sean Haas

December 14, 2009

Will, I would offer that a few titles within the last year or two have not only fallen into but crossed the Uncanny Valley. For the most prime example see: Uncharted 2.

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Lucas Goudie

December 14, 2009

The heavy rain, it doesn't look real. Its photorealistic, but the expression, the way shes holding her head. It just looks unnatural. I'll take HL2's graphics over that any day.

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Chris "Cosmo" Ross

December 14, 2009

You're right! Pretty much any 2D side-scrolling game is still playable today, but if you try and play the early 3D stuff, it's an eye strain. Great article!

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Roberto Flores

December 14, 2009

[b]@Sean[/b] You make a very interesting, and very [i]true[/i] observation. I cannot base my decisions on subjectivities. I think I went off the rails when I used a painting as an example at the very end of my post, that was a mistake. The question I intended to raise was: Do we really need videogame visuals that are more realistic than the ones that have been achieved in the past few years in order to create visually transcending gaming experiencies? We don't look back on videogame graphics in the same way we look back on schools of painting. I cannot set an Expressionist painting and a Hyperrealist painting side by side and claim that the Expressionist painting seems dated, they are just different. This, however, is often done with videogame graphics. When a game reviewer utters the words "The graphics look dated" he/she is, more often than not, comparing it to the more realistic graphics of the time.

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Roberto Flores

December 14, 2009

[b]@Will[/b] You make mention of fluid dynamics and breakable objects. Again, this is needed in order to strive for a higher level of realism, but -- again -- do we really need that? Where do we draw the like between an interactive enternainment experience and a 1:1 recreation of life?

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Roberto Flores

December 14, 2009

"Where do we draw the [b][i]line[/i][/b]", I wrote "like", my bad. [b]@Sean[/b][quote] Within art, all things are possible.[/quote] I will [i]never[/i] disagree with you on that :)

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Gerard Delaney

December 14, 2009

I think we should strive for realism in games in different avenues. If graphics truly have reached some kind of plateau then I think we will see a push in other technologies that can be shown off in trailers and screenshots such as physics engines. They are pretty sophisticated now but can certainly be improved and provide a greater feeling of immersion the more ubiquitous they are, I think back to my first time walking down the street as Niko and bumping into someone as an example

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Stephano Nevarez

December 15, 2009

Personally, while I think that graphical fidelity may be slowing to a crawl, I agree with Will that developers still have a long way to go towards making their worlds look AND feel real. Photorealism is nice, but that's exactly it, it's a photo of the real thing. When I'm playing in Modern Warfare 2 the steps I tread have no weight. Were I to look down at the ground there would be no changes. Were a tank to do the same the ground would, again, neither budge nor morph. I think we're hitting the point where we are going to see a transition from pixel counts to the detail of the worlds themselves. Honestly, until the actions I or anyone, real or not, can actively scar, beautify, or otherwise influence the world around them, well, I'm not ready to say we're quite done yet, if we'll ever be.

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Alex Gagne

December 15, 2009

I don't think that developers need to stop working on pushing realism in games. I mean, in some ways I agree that we are pushing it to the limit, but people have been saying that ever since the SNES. It might seem that we are at the very boundry of making games look "real", but how do we know [i]really[/i]? I also don't think that developers should stop at pushing graphics into the surreal or "cartoon" direction either. If they could do Okami on the PS2 I can't imagine what we may see in the next few years. What it really comes down to is style, and both types are valid and can be gorgeous when applied well. There will never be a pinnacle, because hardware will always be getting better (same with the mastery developers have with it). I do believe, however, that doing things more and more realistically is more difficult when compared to the quality you would get out of a more arty looking game.

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Daniel "Eddie Bax" Wilson

December 15, 2009

There's a lot to be said for stylised graphics - WoW, for instance, has aged better than a lot of games because it was never 'realistic' and cutting-edge, graphically. Look at PS1 games - now there's an example of the cutting-edge aging very badly. If you want to talk about 'realistic' graphics, there's still a long way to go. Skin tone looks weird, movement animation is still not quite right, facial animation is not quite right, even with anti-aliasing there's still plenty of jaggies. Environments where every object has realistic physics (including those of destruction) don't exist yet. Also, current generation consoles are less powerful than their manufacturers make out they are. '1080p' output is often an actual resolution of 600-700p, internally upscaled. -Eddie Bax (hoping I don't an 'a guest' attribution again)

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David Matos

December 15, 2009

I'm fairly sure Omar Yusuf wrote an article on this subject a few months ago. I would check it out if people are really interested on this subject. It was a good read.

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Joonas Laakso

December 15, 2009

At least for me, I don't want my videogames too realistic. The best FPS games, graphically, are on the very edge of what I want in my games - far beyond this level and it'll just become gruesome, nasty, and not something I want to engage in.

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Stephen Savage

December 17, 2009

The bigger problem with realism is the uncanny valley. If you look at stills from [i]Heavy Rain[/i], then you can see this principle in action. The character just doesn't look right. Personally, I think that the textures in games are already good enough. Developers should spend more time trying to make animations look natural.