The idea to thes realism part of this thread came to my while posting in the
Games that resonated with you-Thread. anandxxx made a similiar
thread earlier this year about how modern games are to clustered graphically which lead to the brown part.
So first things first. There seem to be two major trends in modern gaming. A graphical push towards more realism and a spin of the colourpalette towards brown/grey. This is further strengthened by the common consensus that colourful and non-realistic graphics (be it cel-shaded, cartoony or something completely different) are only for kiddy games.
What irkes me about this trends is that, to me videogames always were great because they were NOT like real life.
Running around as a neanderthal man riding dinosaurs that spit energy balls to defeat a huge one eyed brain/plant thing after riding a skateboard seems perfectly normal in a videogame despite the sheer absurdity of it all.
Running around as a soldier shooting terrorist/evil guys/civilians in a realistic setting seems more like watching the news than playing a videogame. (this is even moreso due to the trend of making video games movie like which sucks by itself)
Sometimes this fad with realism is taken quit a bit too far. Some may have heard of Morgan Webb and her problems with Super Mario Galaxy. She
said it is too cartoony. And I really don't know what to say to that because, it is a MARIO game. Does she really want Mario to go all out on realistic graphics with a nice touch of brown on everything?
But I'm jumping to conclusions I cannot really draw so let's start from another point of view.
I think the only reason you can play Mario games without being disgusted is because they are in a comic style. Mario would be one of the most visually brutal games ever created if you put it in realistic graphics.
Mario games only work in cartoony graphics (deBlob, the Katamari series or the Kirby series are also such games). Furthermore cartoony/cel-shaded graphics allow for much more absurd gameplay ideas because the developer can create everything he wants without the fear of it looking weird or out of place(like the scene in Heavy Rain where you
climb through the maze of electroluted cables or the scene where you can cut of your fingers, or where you crawl through the tunnel full of broken glass. Also the "hey I almost was electrified and have severe burnings but no problem I can always have sex with you idiotic codependent woman!"-scene. A wolf with a burning wheel on his back who also happens to poop flowers would be kind of weird in a realistic setting.
So to some extent I think the trend towards realism holds back the creative possibilities of developers while on the other side open a window for new stuff. For example the (now canceled) game "Six Days In Fallujah". It was set in a real war situation and maybe could have been able to transport the terrors of war without looking kind of goofy over the top like the Call Of Duty Series.
So to tackle the topic of brown greyness. This trend that brought us beautiful views like
Killzone 2,
Resident Evil 4,
Gears Of War and many more.
This trend is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just bad for the diversity in games. Maybe it's just me but when I see random pics/gameplay footage of modern ego-shooters I have problems to seperate one from another. Maybe a slide turn of the colour palette once in a while would make it easier to actually make your game stand out. Crysis and Far Cry2 did this with greeniness (if that is even a word). So maybe to change up the look that has been sticking with first-person shooters especially try out some other colours (there are quiet a few of them!) Mr.Gamedeveloper!
I don't know if this is a somewhat structured entry but nonetheless. What do you think about the focus on realism and brown stuff in the gaming world today?
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