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While this is completely amazing, a caveat: graphics are way less important than we think it is. I still remember every nook and cranny from Tomb Raider 3's jun

While this is completely amazing, a caveat: graphics are way less important than we think it is. I still remember every nook and cranny from Tomb Raider 3's jungle level, and when I think about it I imagine being deep inside a real jungle. It didn't matter that everything looked jagged; my imagination could go wild. This is probably a flawed opinion, but sometimes I think the more realistic games become, the less work for our imagination. I don't mean to say that we should stop upgrading graphics. What I do wish to say is this: if you have to choose between optimizing gameplay or graphics, choose gameplay. If you can do both, do both. Having access to a ridiculously powerful easy to use engine does not automatically mean you can do both by just jumbling high detailed props, foliage, terrain together and be done with it. It's counterintuitive, but it takes even more skill and a keen eye to create beautiful and immersive environments in a nearly photo realistic engine than those used 20 years ago. Why? We live in a perfect photorealistic real world, so we immediately spot things that just look weird and unnatural in game. Whereas in old engines our imagination corrected for all those things.

antonios 6y ago
Exactly why I find good roguelikes to offer the most immersive gaming experiences. Just the input you need to let your imagination go wild. But not many friends share that sentiment, unfortunately.
hutzlibu 6y ago
Yeah, when all graphic is blocky, your imagination does the rest. But when you have blocky graphics together with shining water animation like in Morrowind (I think) it breaks immersion. Still though, that demo was impressive (even though there were maybe some tiny things not perfectly balanced with the shining other effect) I want to play games that look like that, now.
rland 6y ago
I have a sister opinion to this take, which is that artstyle is far more important than graphics, and there is a very important difference between the two that is often ignored by large game studios. \* Your graphical capability can push a hundred million triangles, but choosing the color, composition, and visual coherence of those triangles is more important to how people interpret your world than anything else. Humans have an extremely attuned visual processor that infers so much about the way the world behaves solely by the way it looks. The reason that classic games can be immersive despite a low poly count is because the artists have made the visuals behave in a way that is coherent with our internal model of the game world. An example of this is Portal. The portal gun is an interesting gameplay tool, but the game was able to fully take advantage of it because the artstyle of the game was very tightly coupled with the mechanics. They did a great job of making sure that the visual environment offered clues to how the game mechanics worked, which made it so easy for people to quickly grasp how the portal gun operated in complex environments. Had the artists failed, Portal would have been "oh yeah, I remember that game -- the portal gun was a neat gimmick but it felt clunky." The easy way out is to just try to make your environments and game mechanics as realistic as possible, essentially borrowing that creation of intuition from the real world. But the most creative games have worlds whose completely novel or alien mechanics are coupled with art direction that preserves this coherence, which makes the world just "click." Putting more triangles on screen makes for much prettier art, but the true substance of a game is something completely different. \* not on purpose; it's just extremely difficult to pull off.
- throwaway17_17 6y ago
  I am super late with this reply, but it can not be stressed enough that artsyle is far more important than ‘graphics.’ You referenced Portal, which is an excellent example. I’d cite ARC Stystem Works’ Guilty Gear and Dragonball Fighter Z as equally excellent. They don’t follow the real world intuition principle you mentioned (which I think is a great point) but they put 100% of their ‘graphical’ effort into ensuring that the art style of the subject matter is conveyed consistently and as envisioned.
audleman 6y ago
In a post about a new piece of graphics technology might not be the best place to have this conversation, but I'm glad it popped up. I recently decided to start playing Dwarf Fortress, a game with such terrible graphics it literally takes an act of will to get past them. Seriously, people post a screenshot full of commas and equal signs and say "epic battle, lol!" Yet, something anazubg happened once I dedicated myself to deciphering the ascii characters: my imagination sprung to life to fill in the gaps. From those bland a-z characters came vaulting ceilings with intricate wall designs. Epic twisting caves. The oddest looking characters. I compare it to a game of RimWorld, where the graphics make a lot more sense, but turns out limits my need to imagine it being different.
- detritus 6y ago
  > my imagination sprung to life to fill in the gaps That's pretty much exactly what I've said for years about 8-bit and 16-bit graphics when I was younger - there was so much more invested imagination back then, necessarily. The last time I experienced this in a 'contemporary' game was when Minecraft came out. I'm in awe of the tech demo here, but bluntly I'd rather see all those billions of polygons being used for actual game-relevant elements, not just mostly background eye candy. Not complaining though!

antonios 6y ago

Exactly why I find good roguelikes to offer the most immersive gaming experiences. Just the input you need to let your imagination go wild. But not many friends share that sentiment, unfortunately.

hutzlibu 6y ago

Yeah, when all graphic is blocky, your imagination does the rest. But when you have blocky graphics together with shining water animation like in Morrowind (I think) it breaks immersion. Still though, that demo was impressive (even though there were maybe some tiny things not perfectly balanced with the shining other effect) I want to play games that look like that, now.

rland 6y ago

I have a sister opinion to this take, which is that artstyle is far more important than graphics, and there is a very important difference between the two that is often ignored by large game studios. \* Your graphical capability can push a hundred million triangles, but choosing the color, composition, and visual coherence of those triangles is more important to how people interpret your world than anything else. Humans have an extremely attuned visual processor that infers so much about the way the world behaves solely by the way it looks. The reason that classic games can be immersive despite a low poly count is because the artists have made the visuals behave in a way that is coherent with our internal model of the game world. An example of this is Portal. The portal gun is an interesting gameplay tool, but the game was able to fully take advantage of it because the artstyle of the game was very tightly coupled with the mechanics. They did a great job of making sure that the visual environment offered clues to how the game mechanics worked, which made it so easy for people to quickly grasp how the portal gun operated in complex environments. Had the artists failed, Portal would have been "oh yeah, I remember that game -- the portal gun was a neat gimmick but it felt clunky." The easy way out is to just try to make your environments and game mechanics as realistic as possible, essentially borrowing that creation of intuition from the real world. But the most creative games have worlds whose completely novel or alien mechanics are coupled with art direction that preserves this coherence, which makes the world just "click." Putting more triangles on screen makes for much prettier art, but the true substance of a game is something completely different. \* not on purpose; it's just extremely difficult to pull off.

throwaway17_17 6y ago
I am super late with this reply, but it can not be stressed enough that artsyle is far more important than ‘graphics.’ You referenced Portal, which is an excellent example. I’d cite ARC Stystem Works’ Guilty Gear and Dragonball Fighter Z as equally excellent. They don’t follow the real world intuition principle you mentioned (which I think is a great point) but they put 100% of their ‘graphical’ effort into ensuring that the art style of the subject matter is conveyed consistently and as envisioned.

audleman 6y ago

In a post about a new piece of graphics technology might not be the best place to have this conversation, but I'm glad it popped up. I recently decided to start playing Dwarf Fortress, a game with such terrible graphics it literally takes an act of will to get past them. Seriously, people post a screenshot full of commas and equal signs and say "epic battle, lol!" Yet, something anazubg happened once I dedicated myself to deciphering the ascii characters: my imagination sprung to life to fill in the gaps. From those bland a-z characters came vaulting ceilings with intricate wall designs. Epic twisting caves. The oddest looking characters. I compare it to a game of RimWorld, where the graphics make a lot more sense, but turns out limits my need to imagine it being different.

detritus 6y ago
> my imagination sprung to life to fill in the gaps That's pretty much exactly what I've said for years about 8-bit and 16-bit graphics when I was younger - there was so much more invested imagination back then, necessarily. The last time I experienced this in a 'contemporary' game was when Minecraft came out. I'm in awe of the tech demo here, but bluntly I'd rather see all those billions of polygons being used for actual game-relevant elements, not just mostly background eye candy. Not complaining though!