What the hell are "good graphics" anyway?

Technology and Gaming
#1

I just thought this would be a cool discussion to have, especially since this community (at least the vets) are pretty diverse in terms of platform experience. Lots of different POVs to share, all that.
So, too many times have I been scouring the internet for some game I’m looking forward to, just to find some pixel counting tryhard rip it’s visuals apart for reasons that actually have very little to do with anything visual. You know, the “subhd=sux” crowd. A few hours ago, I was reading Polygon’s review of Halo 4. Of course, the counters were down there in the comments. I impulsively wall texted a reply, and then it hit me. What the fuck are good graphics? Yes, there was that whole thing about Graphics vs aesthetic from Penny Arcade: Extra Credits, but my question is a bit different than the typical one to which that could be considered an answer to.

Let me quote a bit of my diatribe.

That’s it really. Why, if it came out almost two decades ago, does the reveal of the secret flying level entrance in the first level of Spyro The Dragon more of a jaw drop moment for me than the collapsing building in Battlefield 3? Is it those god forsaken rose tinted glasses or me being desensitized by collapsing buildings because of the current generation of action movie tropes? Is it both? Do graphical restrictions that affect a game’s style actually inform that style? is that a bad thing?

plz discuss…

#2

Personally, I consider “good graphics” to mean anything that’s visually appealing, usually fairly rich in detail and color, but more importantly with a distinct visual impact and theme.

That could mean a modern game with tons of shaders and particle effects and polygons, or it could mean an older game that had unusually good textures and skyboxes.

But I’m sure someone with more knowledge than me can put together a much better answer.

#3

I see no point of criticizing graphics unless something is bad enough that it hurts the aesthetics. The first Crysis wasn’t gorgeous because it had the amazing engine, it was because the artists knew how to utilize it. Same with earlier games like Unreal, Thief, or most of ID’s games.

Aesthetics need some form of graphical capability to make them come to life, whether it be faked or done in real time, whatever, and the Graphics are useless without the art to work with them.

#4

People get too hung up on the objective measurements. Oh, I can see macro blocking and/or pixels in some of the textures if I look really closely. Oh, I noticed some aliasing, therefore the graphics must be bad.

Halo 4 manages to use clever art design, smart optimization, and some kind of soft lighting voodoo (which they also seem to be using to cleverly mask jaggies) to make really pretty scenes. It’s smart design rather than high-end processing capability.

Compare it to something like Human Revolution, which has all the fancy AA, 1080p native resolution, tesselation, and other bells and whistles that no Xbox game could ever have…yet it looks significantly worse to me than Halo 4, despite some of the latter’s necessary technical shortcomings.

People like to demote a game’s visuals to whatever the thing they do worst happens to be, rather than looking at the whole picture.

#5

Yeah, and then it gets really weird when you try to change the aesthetic to conform to new tech. I was looking at some screenshots/ footage for Sly cooper 4. Dude does not look right with current gen details. Not at all.
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what

#6

Obviously it’s subjective a lot of the time. You need both good art style and good technical graphics for the most part as well. Blurriness from upscaling and aliasing out the ass hurts too.

#7

To me, “good graphics” means “realistic”. As in, powerful enough to simulate or at least emulate a realistic environment, down to very good detail, or at least faking it well enough to be convincing.

If a game has an art style that is not meant to be realistic, then I disregard the term “good graphics” entirely, since it is not a concern to me.

#8

to me good graphics are all about making it photorealistic but also about smoothness(animations, lighting, shadows, clipping of physics objects) and speed optimization

if a game looks photorealistic on some fictional 8-GPU setup but only works on low-detail on my PC without massive lag, it’s bad graphics

#9

What qualifies as good graphics is really subjective and for me the what qualifies as a game having good graphics is consistency and art direction.

The best games manage to maintain their quality consistent throughout the entire experience in all technical departments and a good art direction goes a long way towards keeping that true.

You can have the most advanced graphics engine in the industry but if your team of artists and directors are inept, then you probably get a game that looks no better than an early crappy PS2 game.

Once again using Halo 4 as an example, they were able to overcome the graphical limitations of the aging 360 hardware by using consistent high-quality art assets, modern programming tricks and a strong game direction.

Sure, using state-of-the-art graphical features is necessary for that but if you don’t know how to use them, you create ugly things.

You can build the fastest racecar in the world but if the guy behind the wheel doesn’t have any driving skills, he’s just gonna crash and burn.

#10

the technical graphics are always improving, but a game does not need up to date/nextgen graphics to be good. i think bad graphics does not exist, just old graphics or bad art style.

#11

I mean, I still think the PS2 Metal Gear Solid games look pretty good today because they were able to maintain a consistent high-quality art direction throughout the entire games.

#12

I think we are a FAR ways from being photorealistic, but graphics are and will continue to improve on things like lighting, smoothness, shadows, distance views, etc. As long as the technology that allows more power to be harnessed continues to improve, and it will, then so will the graphics.

It’s hard to tell though, because regardless of what the best graphics out there today are, they will be nothing compared to what is out there in, say, 10 years, and so on. I can remember playing PC and ps2 games thinking to myself how incredible they looked. Now looking back it’s funny to think how impressive and realistic they looked, when in reality they weren’t at all. We will always be thinking those same things about the games of 10 years ago, no matter what year it is.

But it’s interesting to wonder, are we getting to a point in graphics where imagination is becoming less important to the player in terms of immersion? Part of the reason games 10-15 years ago did look so amazing to us I think, is our imagination letting us enter these new worlds. When you have kids nowadays complaining about pixel numbers, it’s not about the letting yourself escape into the game anymore, it’s about what game has the shiniest reflections off the guns they are holding.

#13

Personally, “good graphics” is anything aesthetically pleasing. If the art style is good, and the engine the game is built on keeps up with it, it’s good. If you have a really good art style, but the engine chokes on it and you only get to really see it in pre-rendered cutscenes because ingame it’s full of low-resolution textures and jagged edges, I won’t consider that good.
However, if the engine is capable of rendering 9500000* polygons at once, all fully Anti-Aliased, with advanced shaders and runs at 143* frames per second, but the art style is crap (such as really brown/bland for no reason), then the graphics aren’t good. They’re powerful, but crap.

*denotes an arbitrary value

Of course, there are variables in this. For instance, I hold aesthetically pleasing (not necessarily high resolution) texture work and animation over the amount of polygons on the average model or how shiny things are. (Shiny does not apply to refractive surfaces, those are always a plus for me when they appear) Call me nostalgic, but I preferred the fluidly mocapped, lowres textured, blocky guards in Goldeneye and Perfect Dark to, say, the characters in Prototype; They had more polygons, higher resolution textures, but the textures were less artistically optimized (and thus more blurry) and the animation was… well I don’t think their motion-capture budget was very high.

An engine can be powerful, but if the aesthetics are crap, the graphics will be too, and a less powerful engine with good aesthetics built to fit it will always have better graphics.

#14

Good graphics? Valve games.
I don’t like any Cryengine 3 or Frostbite 2 games… it’s ULTRA detailed and all, but somehow lifeless and shady.
I prefer a mediocre semi-realistic graphics (50/50 believable-cartoonish) that can fake it thanks to good art style and other clever techniques.

#15

Metroid Prime is a triumph of both innovative game design and fantastic art direction. It’s still just as fresh now as it was in 2002. Jet Set Radio Future also aged quite well in the visuals department, if not entirely in the controls department.

#16

My idea of “good graphics” are features, which can vary hugely. Max Payne 3 had “good graphics”, the animation system was AMAZING, the blood effects and bullet wounds were well done and done uniquely, glass broke realistically, and the environments had stuff. Stuff like the clouds clinging to mountains in Skyrim, blowing snow and snow drifts, etc.

Interactive features or environment features like that are what I consider “good graphics”. Stuff that doesn’t add to the story, just the atmosphere.

#17

“Good” graphics are any graphics that supplement the overall aesthetics of the game without going overboard. I think my problem with many of today’s games is that they’re trying to do too much and making things look too “busy”. For instance, look at this pic from Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

In my eye, that is just horrendous. Yes, it’s ultra detailed and highly “realistic”, but, in my opinion, it’s not “good graphics”. Way too busy, way too “brown”, way too much everything.

What “good graphics” means to me is that it’s easily digestible and aesthetically pleasing. A single glance at the screen gives you a lot of information and ability to discern just what the heck you’re looking at. Mirror’s Edge, made 5 years ago, is a good example, in my opinion, of a game with “good graphics”. Black Mesa is a game with “good graphics”. Jade Empire is a game with “good graphics”.

Heck, the original Portal, while needing a bit of ramping up on the texture quality, still has “good graphics”.

Games today, by and large, are trying to do too much and make things look too “everything”, if you catch my drift. And it loses something.

Again, all in my opinion.

#18

^ Mirror’s Edge also had fantastic art direction. It’s not so much the quality as much as how the game uses the art. Morrowind looks like the best Elder Scrolls game to me despite how it’s the oldest of the games I’ve played, and that is mostly because of how different it looks compared with Oblivion/Skyrim.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution had a great look to it as well, very cluttered and realistic. And obviously Half Life 2 did a great job on their art as well. Dishonored also looks like the art will stand the test of time (but in these latter two cases, this IS Viktor Antonov we’re talking about here)

#19

I really enjoyed the vibrant, contrasting colors Mirror’s Edge used. It gave the world an amazing, clean, sharp atmosphere.

#20

I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but I think a game has good graphics it when everything meshes nicely. A bad example for me is a game like Mass Effect 3. I love the game, but despite all the cool art and sound design, the graphics look bad to me. Blood is a shiny, low-res jam that collects in squares, certain textures are horrendously pixelated, and any attempt at pouring liquid looks like some kind of bizarre magic trick. Juxtaposed next to the hi-res faces and such, it looks weird sometimes. On the other hand, with a game like Half-Life 2, despite the fact that it’s much older, I often feel it has better graphics simply because (almost) everything looks like it belongs there.

I think when a developer goes out of their way to conceal the flaws of their engine and highlight its strengths, and focuses on blending their visuals into a seamless, aesthetically pleasing experience is when a game has good graphics. So I’d say it’s around 2 parts tech, 3 parts work and creativity. I mean, I’d much rather play a game with today’s graphics than those of 10 years ago, but it’s more important that it’s done thoughtfully, rather than just being like, “Well this is the easiest way to do it on this engine, let’s do it that way until we can think up a new engine.”

EDIT: Of course, that goes for the animations and such as well, since they are part of the visuals. I hate seeing characters do that little pause when the game switches their animations, or when they talk to you with expressionless faces.

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