Graphics: Not a Selling Point

Mephisto Mori/ November 22, 2013/ Video Games/ 0 comments

So I was going to start with a more complicated argument comparing a pair of games based on graphics and sales when I realized there was a better one.

Final Fantasy 7 sold more than 300,000 units on its debut weekend in North America.  A sales record for the time.  It’s graphics were decidedly shit by myself and others at the least jaded point in video games history.  No one gave a fuck, case closed.  Style and story carried the sales and expanded the traditional RPG demographic more profoundly than any title has done before or since.

I could end my argument there.  Point proven.  But I won’t.

Let’s move time forward a bit more to something more drastic.

WoW vs EQ2.

My favorite quote of the time comes from Scott Kurtz: “EQ2 may have more polygons but WOW has miles of style.”  The sales reflect such a sentiment.  WoW trounced EQ and every MMORPG to date for that matter.  It had nothing to do with the fact that it had “great graphics.”  To the contrary – the ability for a multitude of casual rigs to run it was a point in its favor.

But seriously – game’s still got style.  I haven’t played it in years but I’ll never take a thing away from them in the art department just because it runs on an eMachine.

The point is style matters so much more than polygons or graphics.

But where am I going with this?  Well you see a game called Ryse exists.  Taking away my hatred for deliberate misspellings.  This is a game that deserves ridicule for a multitude of reasons, chief among them using “realism” and “graphics” in the next generation as selling points.  Graphics haven’t been a relevant selling point for a while – provided graphics are to the point that they don’t hold back your style.

Telltale’s The Walking Dead is not graphically realistic but it has style.  Furthermore the style evokes the source material of comic books and doesn’t take away from the just damn human and realistic story.

After demoing Ryse at a few cons I decided the game fell flat.  Spending a couple hours on Twitch have reaffirmed my sentiment.  Skip this one if you managed to pick up your XBox One today.

Bad story.  Bad characters.  Pointlessly long tutorial.  Then one of my personal pet peeves is touted as its greatest selling point.  The game uses the word “realism” as a crutch to stop the combat from being good.  Then it has a half-hour long scripted scene involving a self-loading, automatic crossbow.  Realism.

First of all, reality is boring.  I live in reality.  I want to play a video game where I am Godcock King of Humanity slaying dragons and demons with a weapon that defies physics.  I want fluid, robust combat with a plethora of combos.  If you can’t tell me a good story with the Beat ’em Up genre than I at least want a story that is self-aware enough for me to have fun with it like in Godhand.  If you can’t make an attempt at either of those – just give me the combat and don’t even attempt the story.  Calling it realistic because your character can attack in only two, slow labored ways with choppy animation (like they’re half-assing the camera trick from 300) is not good design.

Realism isn’t mechanically the best for gameplay.

Then there’s the realistic, great graphics.  No.  Looks like God hocked a loogey on the world.  And now that you’ve limited yourself to realism the designs of armor and enemies falls flat.  Facial expressions and animations are strained eerie things like a plastic hand puppet’s smile being stretched too far.

We reached a point where graphics were “good enough.”  That happened with Crysis 2 – a game that incidentally didn’t cripple itself style-wise to make your machine scream in agony trying to run it with double stacked-graphics cards from the future.

Dear Next Gen game developers,

Do not use graphics as your selling point.  We’ve evolved.  Your graphics should be good enough to not hamstring your style.  Speaking of which, get some style.  If realism is your style – own it.  Don’t use it as a crutch as so many of you clearly do.

PS:  Motion capture still isn’t quite done yet – just increasingly creepy every time a character moves it’s mouth in a manner that could be a smile; maybe a grimace; maybe a wince.  I can’t really tell.

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