I would say GoW and SotC at least take realism as inspiration, but aren’t realistic. They’re like an idealized version of realism. They’re detailed, but they’re absolutely stylized. SotC landscapes, for example, look more like paintings you’d see rather than places you’d see in real life.
Realism is a bad goal because you end up making every game look the same. Taking our world as inspiration is fine, but it should almost always be expanded on. Know what your game is and make the art style enhance it. Don’t just replicate realism because that’s “what you’re supposed to do.”
Look, don’t take it personally, but I disagree as hard as humanly possible.
Claiming that realism “makes every game look the same” is a shocking statement, and I don’t think you mean it like it sounds. That’s like saying that every movie looks the same because they all use photographing people as a core technique.
If anything, I don’t know what “realism” is supposed to mean. What is more realistic? Yakuza because it does these harsh, photo-based textures meant to highlight all the pores or, say, a Pixar movie where everything is built on this insanely accurate light transfer, path traced simulation?
At any rate, the idea that taking photorealism as a target means you give up on aesthetics or artistic intent is baffling. That’s not even a little bit how it works.
On the other point, I think you’re blending technical limitations with intent in ways that are a bit fallacious. SotC is stylized, for sure, in that… well, there are kaijus running around and you sometimes get teleported by black tendrils back to your sleeping beauty girlfirend.
But is it aiming at photorealism? Hell yeah. That approach to faking dynamic range, the deliberate crushing of exteriors from interiors, the way the sky gets treated, the outright visible air adding distance and scale when you look at the colossi from a distance, the desaturated take on natural spaces… That game is meant to look like it was shot by a camera all the way. They worked SO hard to make a PS2 look like it has aperture and grain and a piece of celluloid capturing light. Harder than the newer remake, arguably.
Some of that applies to GoW, too, except they are trying to make things look like Jason and the Argonauts more than Saving Private Ryan. But still, the references are filmic.
I guess we’re back to the problem of establishing what people mean by “realism” and how it makes no sense. In what world does Cyberpunk look similar to Indiana Jones or Wukong? It just has no real meaning as a statement.
If anything, I don’t know what “realism” is supposed to mean. What is more realistic? Yakuza because it does these harsh, photo-based textures meant to highlight all the pores or, say, a Pixar movie where everything is built on this insanely accurate light transfer, path traced simulation?
The former is more realistic, but not for that reason. The lighting techniques are techniques, not a style. Realism is trying to recreate the look of the real world. Pixar is not doing that. They’re using advanced lighting techniques to enhance their stylized worlds.
Some of that applies to GoW, too, except they are trying to make things look like Jason and the Argonauts more than Saving Private Ryan. But still, the references are filmic.
Being inspired by film is not the same as trying to replicate the real world. (I’d argue it’s antithetical to it to an extent.) Usually film is trying to be more than realistic. Sure, it’s taking images from the real world, but they use lighting, perspective, and all kinds of other tools to enhance the film. They don’t just put some actors in place in the real environment and film it without thought. There’s intent behind everything shown.
I guess we’re back to the problem of establishing what people mean by “realism” and how it makes no sense. In what world does Cyberpunk look similar to Indiana Jones or Wukong? It just has no real meaning as a statement.
Cyberpunk looks more like Indiana Jones than Persona 5. Sure, they stand out from each other, but it’s mostly due to environments.
I think there’s plenty of games that benefit from realism, but not all of them do. There are many games that could do better with stylized graphics instead. For example, Cyberpunk is represented incredibly well in both the game and the anime. They both have different things they do better, and the anime’s style is an advantage for the show at least. The graphics style should be chosen to enhance the game. It shouldn’t just be realistic because it can be. If realism is the goal, fine. If it’s supposed to be more (or different) than realism, maybe try a different style that improves the game.
Realism is incredibly hard to create assets for, so it costs more money, and usually takes more system resources. For the games that are improved by it, that’s fine. There’s a lot of games that could be made on a smaller budget, faster, run better, and look more visually interesting if they chose a different style though. I think it should be a consideration that developers are allowed to make, but most are just told to do realism because it’s the “premium” style. They aren’t allowed to do things that are better suited for their game. I think this is bad, and also leads to a lack in diversity of styles.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Or, I do, but if I do, then you don’t.
I think you’re mixing up technique with style, in fact. And really confusing a rendering technique with an aesthetic. But beyond that, you’re ignoring so many games. So many. Just last year, how do you look at Balatro and Penny’s Big Breakaway and Indiana Jones and go “ah, yes, games all look the same now”. The list of GOTY nominees in the TGAs was Astro Bot, Balatro, Wukong, Metaphor, Elden Ring and Final Fantasy VII R. How do you look at that list of games and go “ah, yes, same old, same old”.
Whenever I see takes like these I can’t help but think that people who like to talk about games don’t play enough games, or just think of a handful of high profile releases as all of gaming. Because man, there’s so much stuff and it goes from grungy, chunky pixel art to lofi PS1-era jank to pitch-perfect anime cel shading to naturalistic light simulation. If you’re out there thinking games look samey you have more of a need to switch genres than devs to switch approach, I think.
By “all games look the same” I’m being hyperbolic. I mean nearly all AAA games and the majority of AA games (and not an insignificant number of indies even).
Whenever I see takes like these I can’t help but think that people who like to talk about games don’t play enough games, or just think of a handful of high profile releases as all of gaming.
Lol. No. Again, I was being hyperbolic and talking mostly about the AAA and AA space. I personally almost exclusively play indies who know what they’re trying to make and use a style appropriate to it. I play probably too many games. I also occasionally make games myself, I was the officer in a game development club in college, and I have friends in the industry. I’m not just some person who doesn’t understand video games.
Well, then don’t be hyperbolic, let’s see where that takes us.
That video is still nonsensical, just eloquently nonsensical. Makes me think he hasn’t been to Bilbao, for one thing, but talking about games, not architecture, he caveats the crap out of a tautology just to end up in a tautology: AAA games look like this because a AAA game is a game that looks like this, whatever “like this” means.
For one thing, man, do I wish Detroit had never existed. It’s amazing that for a while there we had this little cottage industry of doomsters that used Detroit to show how bad anything ranging from David Cage’s games to Sony to graphics, apparently turn out to be. To such a degree that I have very rarely seen a defense of Detroit, I’ve never played Detroit, the game seems to not have done that well and Cage has never published another game. It’s a consensus entirely predicated on opposing a fanbase of defenders that seemingly never existed.
All the while this guy argues that AAA games have a look (then caveats that some don’t) while showing clips from, if you’re keeping track, a game about robot dinosaurs set in a lush jungle full of red plants (which is shocking imagery pulling inspiration from super nerdy, niche illustration work), a bleak but beautiful zombie apocalypse made out of grungy rural clothing, a superhero game and a gorgeousely unique take on norse mythology. None of those games look alike in any way that makes sense. Not more than Spider-Man 2, Transformers, A Quiet Place and The Northman look alike. Photographing people as a technique is not an aesthetic, and it certainly isn’t an aesthetic limitation. That’s like saying that only animation is creative while photography isn’t. It’s such a disservice to creativity.
But even from a 2020 video, things have moved in the direction he wants, if only because the games industry is unraveling, I suppose. If you peek at game awards in the interim, the games that got most attention in those five years include The Last of Us II, but also Hades, Elden Ring, Balatro, Astro Bot, Animal Crossing, It Takes Two, Baldur’s Gate III, Alan Wake 2 and Tears of the Kingdom. In the recent batch of first party events there was a genuine splash of discourse about which rendition of fake stop motion looked better between the Louisiana fantasy Wizard of Oz reimagining and the creepy claymation… horror FPS thing? What are we talking about again?
Let me drop the pretense for a moment and make a case for what I think we’re talking about: this narrative is part of the problem, if there is a problem. These contrarian takes are being tautological for the sake of affecting elevated taste and elitist insight others lack. The truth is games look all sorts of ways and explore wildly different art styles, scopes and concepts. But the discourse is antagonistic and narrow. People latch on to games not to praise them and explore them but to complain and wear them down, and so gaming gets reduced to whatever we don’t like, with whatever we do like being passed as a secret hidden gem or an outlier even when it’s wildly popular. It’s why there’s more discourse about Concord, which is a game that looked bad, wasn’t great and nobody played, than about Marvel Rivals, which is a game that is just as expensive but looks bright and colorful and cartoony and is extremely popular. In the games industry people sometimes refer to that look as a “mainstream look”, because so many popular games look like that. It’s the look of Fortnite and The Sims and World of Warcraft and Team Fortress, and it’s gradually going more anime as mainstream games pivot to Asia, becoming the look of Genshin Impact, and Zenless Zone Zero and Marvel Rivals.
This is a talking point people like to drop to feel fancy and elevated that implies that we’re somehow still living in an industry circa 2008 when home console single player action adventure games dominated the sales charts and smaller games were a dying breed barely kept alive by a group of plucky indies. For better and worse, we haven’t lived in that world for a while. If anything, I miss the mid 2000s AAA approach to gaming. Nobody is doing it outside of Sony and a couple weirdos like Sam Lake, and it was a comforting, creative, interesting approach that has unfortunately run out of runway while presumptuous commentators keep beating a dead horse because either they didn’t get the memo or because it’s perhaps too depressing to look at the real state of the industry.
Did I drop the Socratic pretense too hard? Got too real? We can go back to pretending we don’t know what we’re talking about if that makes everybody feel better.
Well, then don’t be hyperbolic, let’s see where that takes us.
Dude, we aren’t in a court room. Informal language is the expectation in a casual online forum. Get out of here.
… but talking about games, not architecture…
Are you going to come here and imply there’s no similarities between different forms of art? Should I not have used painting as an example earlier because we must only discuss video games?
I never played that game, but it’s amazing that for a while there we had this little cottage industry of doomsters that used Detroit to show how bad anything ranging from David Cage’s games to Sony to graphics, apparently turn out to be. To such a degree that I have very rarely seen a defense of Detroit, I’ve never played Detroit, the game seems to not have done that well and Cage has never published another game. It’s a consensus entirely predicated on opposing a fanbase of defenders that seemingly never existed.
I haven’t either, but that was a tiny part of the video and doesn’t matter. However, I want to point out that you haven’t played it so have no basis to judge. Then you claim the dissent must only be to fight the defenders and not just because it was a bad game? How to you make that judgment. You’re speaking out of your ass just because you want to say something, but you don’t have anything meaningful to say about it.
All the while this guy argues that AAA games have a look (then caveats that some don’t) while showing clips from, if you’re keeping track, a game about robot dinosaurs set in a lush jungle full of red plants (which is shocking imagery pulling inspiration from super nerdy, niche illustration work), a bleak but beautiful zombie apocalypse made out of grungy rural clothing, a superhero game and a gorgeousely unique take on norse mythology.
Setting and style are two different things. They all have the same style, though different settings. Compare Monet to Van Gogh to Corbet. Even when they’re painting similar settings their styles are wildly different. If you take the style of Horizon and plug it into the Indiana Jones game it’d look almost identical.
I don’t think you’re understanding this distinction. You’re constantly on the offense saying I’m the one who doesn’t understand, but it’s you who isn’t getting it. Look at the game Sable as an example. They could have rendered it realistically, but the style they chose turns it into something totally unique while also supporting the game and improving usage of development resources. The style is not realistic, even if the setting could be. These are very different things, and I’m speaking about style and have been the entire time.
Those quotes are all asides or insubstantial to the point being made. I have nothing to add beyond pointing you back to my previous post. Except perhaps that the points about Detroit and architecture are both directly responding to statements on the video you linked (he mentions Detroit defenders and gets super stuck on using the Bilbao Guggenheim as a proxy for samey architecture as a proxy for game visuals).
Oh, and that I’m not confusing setting and style, I’m saying that you can take the idea of leaning towards a photoreal treatment of light transfer to go along with leaning into performance capture and still have style around that choice. The statement that the retrofuturistic aesthetic of Horizon is somehow “almost identical” to the 80s movie homage of Indiana Jones is baffling. I will keep repeating this until it lands: nobody would argue that Raiders of the Lost Ark looks “almost identical” to… I don’t even know anything that looks like Horizon… let’s go Conan the Barbarian just because they both point cameras at people. Technique does not dictate style (or what in movies you’d call production design). That is a purely videogame-y hangup from the historical misunderstanding that technology is the main driver for aesthetics. If that ever made sense, it certainly stopped fifteen years ago.
I suppose that’s at the core of the meme in the OP. Growing up in an era where going from beautiful pixel art to ugly lo-fi 3D was seen as the natural evolution of game aesthetics and never having figured out to distinguish the tech from the art as separate concepts.
I would say GoW and SotC at least take realism as inspiration, but aren’t realistic. They’re like an idealized version of realism. They’re detailed, but they’re absolutely stylized. SotC landscapes, for example, look more like paintings you’d see rather than places you’d see in real life.
Realism is a bad goal because you end up making every game look the same. Taking our world as inspiration is fine, but it should almost always be expanded on. Know what your game is and make the art style enhance it. Don’t just replicate realism because that’s “what you’re supposed to do.”
Look, don’t take it personally, but I disagree as hard as humanly possible.
Claiming that realism “makes every game look the same” is a shocking statement, and I don’t think you mean it like it sounds. That’s like saying that every movie looks the same because they all use photographing people as a core technique.
If anything, I don’t know what “realism” is supposed to mean. What is more realistic? Yakuza because it does these harsh, photo-based textures meant to highlight all the pores or, say, a Pixar movie where everything is built on this insanely accurate light transfer, path traced simulation?
At any rate, the idea that taking photorealism as a target means you give up on aesthetics or artistic intent is baffling. That’s not even a little bit how it works.
On the other point, I think you’re blending technical limitations with intent in ways that are a bit fallacious. SotC is stylized, for sure, in that… well, there are kaijus running around and you sometimes get teleported by black tendrils back to your sleeping beauty girlfirend.
But is it aiming at photorealism? Hell yeah. That approach to faking dynamic range, the deliberate crushing of exteriors from interiors, the way the sky gets treated, the outright visible air adding distance and scale when you look at the colossi from a distance, the desaturated take on natural spaces… That game is meant to look like it was shot by a camera all the way. They worked SO hard to make a PS2 look like it has aperture and grain and a piece of celluloid capturing light. Harder than the newer remake, arguably.
Some of that applies to GoW, too, except they are trying to make things look like Jason and the Argonauts more than Saving Private Ryan. But still, the references are filmic.
I guess we’re back to the problem of establishing what people mean by “realism” and how it makes no sense. In what world does Cyberpunk look similar to Indiana Jones or Wukong? It just has no real meaning as a statement.
The former is more realistic, but not for that reason. The lighting techniques are techniques, not a style. Realism is trying to recreate the look of the real world. Pixar is not doing that. They’re using advanced lighting techniques to enhance their stylized worlds.
Being inspired by film is not the same as trying to replicate the real world. (I’d argue it’s antithetical to it to an extent.) Usually film is trying to be more than realistic. Sure, it’s taking images from the real world, but they use lighting, perspective, and all kinds of other tools to enhance the film. They don’t just put some actors in place in the real environment and film it without thought. There’s intent behind everything shown.
Cyberpunk looks more like Indiana Jones than Persona 5. Sure, they stand out from each other, but it’s mostly due to environments.
I think there’s plenty of games that benefit from realism, but not all of them do. There are many games that could do better with stylized graphics instead. For example, Cyberpunk is represented incredibly well in both the game and the anime. They both have different things they do better, and the anime’s style is an advantage for the show at least. The graphics style should be chosen to enhance the game. It shouldn’t just be realistic because it can be. If realism is the goal, fine. If it’s supposed to be more (or different) than realism, maybe try a different style that improves the game.
Realism is incredibly hard to create assets for, so it costs more money, and usually takes more system resources. For the games that are improved by it, that’s fine. There’s a lot of games that could be made on a smaller budget, faster, run better, and look more visually interesting if they chose a different style though. I think it should be a consideration that developers are allowed to make, but most are just told to do realism because it’s the “premium” style. They aren’t allowed to do things that are better suited for their game. I think this is bad, and also leads to a lack in diversity of styles.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Or, I do, but if I do, then you don’t.
I think you’re mixing up technique with style, in fact. And really confusing a rendering technique with an aesthetic. But beyond that, you’re ignoring so many games. So many. Just last year, how do you look at Balatro and Penny’s Big Breakaway and Indiana Jones and go “ah, yes, games all look the same now”. The list of GOTY nominees in the TGAs was Astro Bot, Balatro, Wukong, Metaphor, Elden Ring and Final Fantasy VII R. How do you look at that list of games and go “ah, yes, same old, same old”.
Whenever I see takes like these I can’t help but think that people who like to talk about games don’t play enough games, or just think of a handful of high profile releases as all of gaming. Because man, there’s so much stuff and it goes from grungy, chunky pixel art to lofi PS1-era jank to pitch-perfect anime cel shading to naturalistic light simulation. If you’re out there thinking games look samey you have more of a need to switch genres than devs to switch approach, I think.
By “all games look the same” I’m being hyperbolic. I mean nearly all AAA games and the majority of AA games (and not an insignificant number of indies even).
Watch this video. Maybe it’ll help you understand what I’m saying.
Lol. No. Again, I was being hyperbolic and talking mostly about the AAA and AA space. I personally almost exclusively play indies who know what they’re trying to make and use a style appropriate to it. I play probably too many games. I also occasionally make games myself, I was the officer in a game development club in college, and I have friends in the industry. I’m not just some person who doesn’t understand video games.
Well, then don’t be hyperbolic, let’s see where that takes us.
That video is still nonsensical, just eloquently nonsensical. Makes me think he hasn’t been to Bilbao, for one thing, but talking about games, not architecture, he caveats the crap out of a tautology just to end up in a tautology: AAA games look like this because a AAA game is a game that looks like this, whatever “like this” means.
For one thing, man, do I wish Detroit had never existed. It’s amazing that for a while there we had this little cottage industry of doomsters that used Detroit to show how bad anything ranging from David Cage’s games to Sony to graphics, apparently turn out to be. To such a degree that I have very rarely seen a defense of Detroit, I’ve never played Detroit, the game seems to not have done that well and Cage has never published another game. It’s a consensus entirely predicated on opposing a fanbase of defenders that seemingly never existed.
All the while this guy argues that AAA games have a look (then caveats that some don’t) while showing clips from, if you’re keeping track, a game about robot dinosaurs set in a lush jungle full of red plants (which is shocking imagery pulling inspiration from super nerdy, niche illustration work), a bleak but beautiful zombie apocalypse made out of grungy rural clothing, a superhero game and a gorgeousely unique take on norse mythology. None of those games look alike in any way that makes sense. Not more than Spider-Man 2, Transformers, A Quiet Place and The Northman look alike. Photographing people as a technique is not an aesthetic, and it certainly isn’t an aesthetic limitation. That’s like saying that only animation is creative while photography isn’t. It’s such a disservice to creativity.
But even from a 2020 video, things have moved in the direction he wants, if only because the games industry is unraveling, I suppose. If you peek at game awards in the interim, the games that got most attention in those five years include The Last of Us II, but also Hades, Elden Ring, Balatro, Astro Bot, Animal Crossing, It Takes Two, Baldur’s Gate III, Alan Wake 2 and Tears of the Kingdom. In the recent batch of first party events there was a genuine splash of discourse about which rendition of fake stop motion looked better between the Louisiana fantasy Wizard of Oz reimagining and the creepy claymation… horror FPS thing? What are we talking about again?
Let me drop the pretense for a moment and make a case for what I think we’re talking about: this narrative is part of the problem, if there is a problem. These contrarian takes are being tautological for the sake of affecting elevated taste and elitist insight others lack. The truth is games look all sorts of ways and explore wildly different art styles, scopes and concepts. But the discourse is antagonistic and narrow. People latch on to games not to praise them and explore them but to complain and wear them down, and so gaming gets reduced to whatever we don’t like, with whatever we do like being passed as a secret hidden gem or an outlier even when it’s wildly popular. It’s why there’s more discourse about Concord, which is a game that looked bad, wasn’t great and nobody played, than about Marvel Rivals, which is a game that is just as expensive but looks bright and colorful and cartoony and is extremely popular. In the games industry people sometimes refer to that look as a “mainstream look”, because so many popular games look like that. It’s the look of Fortnite and The Sims and World of Warcraft and Team Fortress, and it’s gradually going more anime as mainstream games pivot to Asia, becoming the look of Genshin Impact, and Zenless Zone Zero and Marvel Rivals.
This is a talking point people like to drop to feel fancy and elevated that implies that we’re somehow still living in an industry circa 2008 when home console single player action adventure games dominated the sales charts and smaller games were a dying breed barely kept alive by a group of plucky indies. For better and worse, we haven’t lived in that world for a while. If anything, I miss the mid 2000s AAA approach to gaming. Nobody is doing it outside of Sony and a couple weirdos like Sam Lake, and it was a comforting, creative, interesting approach that has unfortunately run out of runway while presumptuous commentators keep beating a dead horse because either they didn’t get the memo or because it’s perhaps too depressing to look at the real state of the industry.
Did I drop the Socratic pretense too hard? Got too real? We can go back to pretending we don’t know what we’re talking about if that makes everybody feel better.
Dude, we aren’t in a court room. Informal language is the expectation in a casual online forum. Get out of here.
Are you going to come here and imply there’s no similarities between different forms of art? Should I not have used painting as an example earlier because we must only discuss video games?
I haven’t either, but that was a tiny part of the video and doesn’t matter. However, I want to point out that you haven’t played it so have no basis to judge. Then you claim the dissent must only be to fight the defenders and not just because it was a bad game? How to you make that judgment. You’re speaking out of your ass just because you want to say something, but you don’t have anything meaningful to say about it.
Setting and style are two different things. They all have the same style, though different settings. Compare Monet to Van Gogh to Corbet. Even when they’re painting similar settings their styles are wildly different. If you take the style of Horizon and plug it into the Indiana Jones game it’d look almost identical.
I don’t think you’re understanding this distinction. You’re constantly on the offense saying I’m the one who doesn’t understand, but it’s you who isn’t getting it. Look at the game Sable as an example. They could have rendered it realistically, but the style they chose turns it into something totally unique while also supporting the game and improving usage of development resources. The style is not realistic, even if the setting could be. These are very different things, and I’m speaking about style and have been the entire time.
Those quotes are all asides or insubstantial to the point being made. I have nothing to add beyond pointing you back to my previous post. Except perhaps that the points about Detroit and architecture are both directly responding to statements on the video you linked (he mentions Detroit defenders and gets super stuck on using the Bilbao Guggenheim as a proxy for samey architecture as a proxy for game visuals).
Oh, and that I’m not confusing setting and style, I’m saying that you can take the idea of leaning towards a photoreal treatment of light transfer to go along with leaning into performance capture and still have style around that choice. The statement that the retrofuturistic aesthetic of Horizon is somehow “almost identical” to the 80s movie homage of Indiana Jones is baffling. I will keep repeating this until it lands: nobody would argue that Raiders of the Lost Ark looks “almost identical” to… I don’t even know anything that looks like Horizon… let’s go Conan the Barbarian just because they both point cameras at people. Technique does not dictate style (or what in movies you’d call production design). That is a purely videogame-y hangup from the historical misunderstanding that technology is the main driver for aesthetics. If that ever made sense, it certainly stopped fifteen years ago.
I suppose that’s at the core of the meme in the OP. Growing up in an era where going from beautiful pixel art to ugly lo-fi 3D was seen as the natural evolution of game aesthetics and never having figured out to distinguish the tech from the art as separate concepts.