Artistic Direction

Im not really into this blogging stuff. But this is a subject that is amazing to discuss since there are so many diverse opinions regarding the subject. So lets cut the small talk and jump in.

Artistic Direction

Let me start by saying that Legend of Zelda Wind Waker is my all time aesthetically pleasing game. Now when I say this on any of the number of message boards that I frequently visit I get a barrage of 360 and PS3 fanboys saying I am wrong whilst constantly throwing Gears of War, Uncharted and Killzone in my face. And before we go any further, I do not consider those games to have bad visuals. Far from it actually. From a technical standpoint they are some of the biggest benchmarks set in the industry today. Artistically they are all pleasing.

But I find it a shame that I always get the 1 dimensional knucklehead responses. Its like all that matters visually is a good poly count etc. I cant for the life of me understand why people dont use examples of games like Valkyria Chronicles, Folklore, Viva Pinata, Prince of Persia or even Mirrors Edge (Mirrors Edge is a beautiful artistic take on the real world). But yeah art comes down to taste and luckily I have a diverse taste.

16 bit era

So yeah I get flamed for pointing out that Wind Waker has amazing visuals. This is where I need my Flame Shield equipped with +200 fire resistance. I actually love the 16 bit art style. Dont get me wrong its a fairly new appreciation of the artistic brilliance represented back in that era BUT it grew on me quickly.

I can NEVER convince anyone that it is my actual honest opinion when I say some 16 bit games look better than some games released today. The sheer thought that someone likes a snes games graphics more than a title on PS3 or 360 generates so much flaming its unreal. But I can only assume some people cant look past the fact that graphics dont have to be realistic to look amazing.

I love 16 bit sprites. If you ever play a game again with 16 bit sprites again I want you to look at how they portray emotion. Its amazing how technically advanced we are these days and yet a snes games character model can be as charming as a PS3 or 360's character model or even surpass them. A good example would be Final Fantasy 6. The way the characters portray emotion really warms my heart.  Another great example would be Chun Li in SF2 when she KO's an opponent. These games look amazing and surely im not the only person who likes visuals from so long ago am I?

To wrap it up

If theres anything I want you to take away from this blog, its the fact that you should not hate on someones opinion on what game looks good. Feel free to hate on my opinion on the main board because everyone knows (or should know) that 95% of comments there are total bull.

BUT seriously not everyone wants the same thing from our visuals. You may want the most technological advanced looking game there is. But loads of us are happy with games that have amazing art. A lot of people are happy with their Killzones, Gears and Uncharteds. But dont think because these games are huge feats technology wise that they are the best looking games. Because its a matter of OPINION and in actual fact people may think a game with more "out of the box" visuals are better.

Oh and FLOWER looks AMAZING!

Thanks for reading guys :)
 
(please list your best games visually)

[thor]

I think it may be very similar to the difference between books and films; in a well-written book you can use your imagination a bit more to portray the characters, whereas in a film that is taken out and depending on how your mind works you might find that worse. Much like 16-bit representations of characters vs almost-accurate 3D models.

There is a reason that most games are in shiny 3D though and that's because they look more impressive that way. You can see that more work has gone into them.

Nostalgia is also a big factor - the reason many games of today get bad scores are not because they aren't fun in their own right, but because they aren't anything new. Had they come out and been the first to offer what they do, they'd have garnered a massive fanbase and people would look back at these games saying "I wish they could make games like that nowadays".

Personally I think Valkyria looks pretty poor. In fact often I think that the reason a dev opts for cell-shaded graphics is because the engine isn't that powerful and cell-shading hides any crappy lighting, and generally reviews give a high mark for graphics because of "art style" when actually the engine is quite poor, and cell-shading doesn't really look that great in my view.

[lh_swe]

Saying something is aesthetically pleasing is not the same as praising the graphics but for me when the atmosphere created from the surrounding makes me pause in admiration, not in the ohh my god look at the detail of that candle type of way but more of the set-piece as a whole, few games achieve that, Flower & Mirrors edge are two that very recently appealed to me for that very reason.

And while Uncharted 2 has amazing graphics and some moments make me pause to admire the graphics the game doesn't appeal to that same artistic appreciation that games like Flower do.

[ozsman]

The most aesthetically pleasing game i have ever played was Oblivion. Standing in the middle of a field.

[Crayola]

Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian.

I agree, I like how a lot of sprite based games look more than a lot of the 3d, normal mapped, ZBrushed games that are released today tend to look.

[gersh]

Dragon Quest
Eternal Sonata
Valkyria Chronicles
Odin Sphere

[I_LOVE_MYSELF]

VC looks amazing I agree, not to mention Eternal Sonata too :O