The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questions are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
Graphics are supremely unimportant to me, and I think they’ve been holding back the potential of games for a long time. In many ways I believe the more limited the graphics are, the more your imagination kicks in and the more immersed you can become in the world. My favourite all time game is Dwarf Fortress and I think it’s a great example of this.
I think graphics are very important. That doesn’t mean that a game must be hyperrealistic triple-A to achieve good graphics, since this can be approached through a variety of means or art styles (pixel art, cel shading, “anime”-like, and so on).
Speaking of Pokemon, I’ve noticed that people tend to downplay the importance of graphics, while in my opinion it’s a great component of immersion. Emerald has beautiful tilesets, with rich colors and very nice details which really sell the idea of a tropical environment; BW on the Nintendo DS were absolutely brilliant with great use of perspective and 3d elements that aged perfectly.
I personally hate when it’s so unpolished and bland like we’ve seen in the switch era: hard to let the imagination work when everything has muddy colors and poor art direction (imho).
More than anything, I want a game to be fun. I think good graphics can elevate an experience but they are not the priority for me. With that said, a game that has horrible graphics can ruin the immersion. For example, I found Scarlet and Violet to be fun games but I had a hard time immersing myself in them because of all the graphical mishaps.
Z-A doesn’t have great graphics but that game was a lot easier for me to stay immersed in because it actually ran well and had less mishaps that took me out of the experience.
Not as important as some people make them seem. Pokemon shouldn’t be ultra-realistic. However, it shouldn’t feel like we’re playing on the Gamecube either.
No, but I also never played those games. I have gone back to xbox/xbox 360 games and felt they still held up. Part of the charm is revisiting the games later despite the graphical “downgrade”. Still, not enjoying them as much could merely be nostalgia blinders, not the graphics. Maybe a bit of both
That’s mainly due to modern tvs. Every n64 game on the switch looks phenomenal. Also there are options like analogue 3d or ultra hdmi for n64 that let you play old carts on modern tvs. There are definitely games that are more pixelated than others, but the gameplay/fps is quality.
As for the overall topic, I recently replayed shenmue, and realized the newest graphics are not necessary. I think a significant part of immersion is art. When you lose yourself in a painting it’s the through the artistic style or voice. World building in a game is using that voice. When the goal is being as realistic as possible, while impressive, I enter the uncanny valley more often than older games. Don’t hear this as graphics are bad, there are plenty of games I would love to see remastered. I think limitations forced creativity that can be lacking in modern games.
For the most part, graphics don’t matter, gameplay will always be king. The majority of my favorite games of all time are 10-30 years old now, and they still look incredible to this day because they were lovingly created as pieces of art. I don’t think there’s a single game in my top 20 that was made in the last decade with all of the shiniest modern gaming tech. Good Art direction will always trump visual fidelity anyways.
That said, particularly bad visual fidelity can cripple good art direction anyways. Terrible graphics and performance can derail even the best of games. Doesn’t matter what’s under the hood of your car when all the tread on your tires is gone and you’re missing both side mirrors.
I think it also depends on what was available at the time. For example, the original DOOM was super realistic to me because there was simply nothing better to compare it to back then and I couldnt even imagine the graphics getting any more impressive. Without the graphics, I dont think I would have enjoyed it as much.
Or HOMM3 for example, it had and still has such a magical charm that my imagination goes wild everytime I boot up the game. Same for AoE2, it looked so good when it came out.
So I think the graphics are important for catching your attention at first but to keep you engaged for the long run, thats when gameplay shines. They serve a different purpose.
It is interesting looking back because while people thought fondly of Crystal, Emerald, Platinum, Black 2 & White 2 and maybe Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon; they are the least sold games in the entire series. All of them made little to no improvements in graphics over the base game, and only small adjustments in gameplay & storytelling
