I will die on this hill but the more "realistic" the graphics look the less I want to play the game ever. Give me weird lil guys, give me unnatural colors, give me landscapes and environments that feel like a fever dream, give me a style that is actually MEMORABLE
Anytime a friend recommends a game they think I'll like for the worldbuilding and concepts, but the graphics are rooted in realism, I have to hold them gently before (only somewhat) apologetically yeeting that game into the void
Not me validating Infinity Nikki by confidently stating that even their most common dress is unaffordable in our real life economy 😭
Witcher 3 was as realistic as shit ever needed to get. And by realistic i mean as good as graphics needed to get. I mean the original release too. Thats as far as we needed to go!! Certain older realistic games look better than new stuff if not for lack of environment details 😭😭😭😭
Would you call Warframe realistic?
It depends for me ! I like to immerse myself sometimes . But if its a super realistic game and I CANT make a customizable character?? Im not interested anymore. I don't want something super realistic and I have to play someone else's story
"Realistic" graphics now a days seem to also become an excuse to have the worst optimization known to mankind Seriously, I don't want to depend on weird and wonky "AI generated framerates" to have the game playable
I'm a mixed bag on this. I love a silly little guy 9 times out of 10 but other times I'm like I need to see every single pore perfectly represented in a characters face, I want to see the pollen in the air I don't care if the game it self is "good" because it's more important that it's "pretty"
I could die happy seeing the sweat glands excrete liquid from Zack Fairs flexing biceps when he lifts the buster sword.
SMH
I am a girl with simple wants okay! It Square didn't want us to oggle his biceps they should have given them sleeves!
Lmao yeah that's fair.
Stylized art styles age *so* much better than realistic styles. No one is gonna look at something like Hi-Fi Rush in 20 years and be like "Needs moar pixels".
Considering how gamergate dudebros shat themselves when aloy's Forbidden West design dropped (which like. What the fuck was that for??? She can hunt down megamechafauna with a bow ofc shes gonna be built like a tank) i think that yeah we need more minecrafts and deltarunes than another soulless CoD
I love Hylics for this reason.
I constantly see people who play World of Warcraft saying things like 'omg imagine playing WoW with WITCHER 3 GRAPHICS!!!' and I'm like... that would literally ruin the game. No thank you.
I love low poly 3d and pixel art
Likewise; I'm drawn very much to smaller games that have weird and unique concepts or art styles more and more every year, and it's rare that I come away disappointing. They usually end up being my favorite game experiences overall, and even the 'bad' games are still memorable in some part.
Weird little guys are marketable and sellable and realism isnt, when will they learn smh
Whenever there are realistic graphics, I notice people overlook power ups and ammo a lot and complain about it being too hard to spot. Then devs started adding obvious markers to combat that and people complain about how unrealistic it is. Gamers don't know what they want.
A friend and I have been playing the daily guessthegame (like wordle but you get a parts of frames from a title you have to guess). We have concluded that the games which have their own style/colour/visual feel are so memorable that we get them in 1-2 tries, having never played them
And with the hyperrealistic ones you sometimes struggle even to guess how old a game is cause the shaders and textures have been good enough for so long now that it all blends together
Give me big chunky pixels! Give them to me!!
Realest shit.
Stylized graphics also tend to age better, because what was lauded as "realistic graphics" five years ago (much less 20) looks bad in comparison to current "realistic graphics." Going for a style (almost) completely sidesteps this issue.
Okay but hear me out: Silly Creatures in hyper-realistic lands, so like chowder with his normal graphics in, like, perfectly normal Amsterdam
I hate hyper-realistic games, but ngl I do love me an open world. Even then, if rather have an artistically designed world than an open world.
I am with you there. Eg I felt older final fantasy were way more endearing! Especially the characters. For myself I have come to the conclusion that it is also related to acting. The closer to real life the models are the more convincing the animations and acting has to be for me to buy it.
Whereas when it is stylised my brain can make up what I want or the exaggerated nature of the character animation is fun to watch. (And does not feel out of place)
It's ok if you die on this hill so long as you pick up a 1-up first
weird lil guys! weird lil guys!!
What I observed is that realistic games can be often forgettable. A stylish game, no matter how bad it is, will remain in your memory. A realistic game that is bad? I can forget them in a matter of minutes
The washed-out blindlingly daybright "City of Glass" aesthetic in Mirror's Edge is pretty mich my upper limit in terms of realism in game style.
I personally miss smaller, but cohesive, and well designed & thought out levels of earlier 90s platformers. A good bite-sized entertainment that doesn't overstay its welcome
I never saw the appeal of realistic graphics. It can look great sometimes but I want the aesthetics of an Okami, Cup head, Persona or anything that's stylized.
Best game I ever played Characters I became invested in. A world I could feel even outside the edges of my eyeballs. stakes i cared about. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAPD...
I love Dread Delusion for exactly this reason!
Realism in games also ages depressingly fast. Give me an art style that will withstand the test of time~
This is very true. When I first played Horizon Zero Dawn in 2017 I was like 'omg how will games ever look better than this?' and probably like 2 years later I realized just how rubbery and uncanny valley most of the characters look. Still a gorgeous game, but yeah... the visuals aged fast.
Zero Dawn looks like a *VIDEOGAME* Granted my mother kept saying CoD Vanguard's story mode was a movie so... ...hmm... ...maybe Playstation gaming is the fucked up part actually?
The 'realistic graphics that age badly' issue isn't limited to Playstation, so no.
Oh ok
Stylized designs and concepts are so underrated while they're the hardest to come up with, realistic graphic is overrated 😌
The best looking games are the ones that get experimental with art styles and really make the colours pop.