What the hell are "good graphics" anyway?

[Llewen_Ebag]

Good graphics are pretty much everything that just looks good. It could be an art direction, the engine, the animations or pretty much all of the above. Some games fail in this because they lean too much on the engine side, so that the engine itself can render spectacular things, but the developers ruined everything else by some small decisions (looking at you, Battlefield 3). Other games like Mass Effect fail in the animations department (especially the first one, the anims in that one were horrendous even for its time). Some others fail in the art style (you’ll probably disagree with me on this, but Halo has a pretty bland art style).

It comes down to a good mix of the three (read, Half-life 2, Team Fortress 2 without the stupidity, Bastion, Limbo, World in Conflict, even Minecraft)

[Dotard]

Mirror’s Edge.

[Surplus]

In a discussion about graphics I tend to mean graphics as a shorthand for Computer Graphics. What constitutes good Computer Graphics is quiet simple. Is it on the cutting edge of Computer graphics tech or is it leagues behind? Crysis (honestly Crysis isn’t quiet amazing like it was once but there aren’t many games these days that are as graphics pushing as Crysis was in 07) has amazing graphics and Doom has shit ones. Doom had great graphics in its day. Crysis will have shit graphics in a few years.

I think a lot of people try to mix in aesthetic into “graphics” which I think is wrong, while yes graphics on its own would include art I do not think the origin of graphics as used in video games is from Computer graphics as I have said.

Aesthetic is entirely subjective. The difference between aesthetic comparison and graphics is in the long haul a game will still have a good aesthetic and will not have good graphics.

Aesthetic and graphics have to work together for the best outcome in my opinion. Examples of this are Grim Fandango and Wind Waker. Basically at this point aesthetic needs to be interesting while serving and working with graphics tech. Crysis’s aesthetic does not serve and work with the graphics tech so it rests upon the graphic’s tech ability and will eventually look awful like Far Cry is starting to now while Grim Fandango was made before Far Cry and still looks good.

The whole “Graphics” debate comes from poor wording. Its really quiet simple when you properly articulate what you want to say.

[Rex_Prime]

For me it’s anything that pleases my eyes, here are examples:

Photorealistic

Stylish

Simply Nice

[Dotard]

Yeah, pleasant to the eyes and memorable.

[Pyroclase]

Good level design is also important.

Even the most graphically amazing engine in existence won’t look very good if the game is mostly concrete corridors made of four brushes and a texture.