Where do graphics go from here?

Mark Hamill · 10-08-2012 6:50pm

hooradiation wrote: »

But by highlighting an old PC game, and two games that never came to Europe as your "games can totally good narrative, you just need to look for them" titles bears my point out more than whatever you were alluding to.
I don't have to hunt too hard to find a book or film or TV show where the plot is actually important. But I need to delve very far into the rough to turn up games where you allege it might be important?

Really? What about Portal? Bastion? Psychonauts? Brutal Legend? Stacking? Braid? The Binding of Isaac?
Many of these games have fun gameplay mechanics, but I don't know how many I could play if they where completely plotless.

briany · 10-08-2012 7:30pm

hooradiation wrote: »

Might a different way of putting that be that what you do in the game is what matters and the 'plot' is just superficial window dressing?

Not entirely. To me, plot and gameplay will both influence the gamer's experience in combination. That is, in a storytelling adventure type game. Plenty of classic games have never needed any great plot because they were an addicting puzzle game like tetris or a racing game like Mario Kart.

For me, a good game plot is just a compelling world that succinctly sets up the premise and gives a sense of purpose to the player to push the story forward by playing the game. From there, the best of this type will allow a player to feel like they've had their own particular experience and not just one laid out for them if that means going back and finding every secret, blazing through the thing as fast as possible, dying every 5 steps, conversation trees, sidequests, highscores etc.

AlmightyCushion · 10-08-2012 7:35pm

Mark Hamill wrote: »

hooradiation wrote: »

But by highlighting an old PC game, and two games that never came to Europe as your "games can totally good narrative, you just need to look for them" titles bears my point out more than whatever you were alluding to.
I don't have to hunt too hard to find a book or film or TV show where the plot is actually important. But I need to delve very far into the rough to turn up games where you allege it might be important?

Really? What about Portal? Bastion? Psychonauts? Brutal Legend? Stacking? Braid? The Binding of Isaac?
Many of these games have fun gameplay mechanics, but I don't know how many I could play if they where completely plotless.

I don't know about the others but the plot in portal is practically non–existent and pretty superfluous. The game play is what made portal brilliant.

Magill · 10-08-2012 8:08pm

Even "Mainstream" games like Red Dead, Mass Effect, The Witcher etc would be much lesser games if they hadn't got a decent plot. I know i wouldn't have played/enjoyed any of them if it was just an MMO styled set of objectives with no attachment to characters within the story.

SdoowSirhc · 10-08-2012 8:12pm

JohnMarston wrote: »

Nope, its like eating soup because i like the the veggies and potato chunks floating around in it. It enhances the experience. A spoon in your illustration would be the controller

Then how come women love controlling me but hate spooning me?

hooradiation · 10-08-2012 8:34pm

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Really? What about Portal? Bastion? Psychonauts? Brutal Legend? Stacking? Braid? The Binding of Isaac?
Many of these games have fun gameplay mechanics, but I don't know how many I could play if they where completely plotless.

People seem to be confusing "the plot is just window dressing and doesn't really matter" with "NO PLOT EVAR".
I have no idea why that is.....

Magill wrote: »

Even "Mainstream" games like Red Dead, Mass Effect, The Witcher etc would be much lesser games if they hadn't got a decent plot. I know i wouldn't have played/enjoyed any of them if it was just an MMO styled set of objectives with no attachment to characters within the story.

The skinner box says most probably.

Reekwind · 10-08-2012 11:09pm

hooradiation wrote: »

Perhaps you should try books or films or some of the other passive story telling mediums then, because that seems to be the thing you're confusing with games.
Basically, playing a game for the story is like eating soup because you like the spoon

Ugh. I thought we'd put this sort of two-dimensional conception to bed years ago. Not long after we stopped obsessing over high scores

Plot/story can't be divorced from mechanics. If it is then you're just playing Space Invaders again - completing meaningless tasks to occupy your time with. Story isn't something to be bolted on to explain why you're doing something; it should inform what the mechanics themselves are. The mechanics themselves, aka 'how you play the game', should help tell a story. How you get from A to B is as much the preserve of plot as it is mechanics. Otherwise you get dissonance (or as I call it: Carl Johnson Syndrome)

So yeah, the idea that we can neatly separate 'plot' from 'mechanics', in the same way as say 'spoon' from 'soup', is far too simplistic

Hopefully, increased graphical fidelity will give more tools for designers and artists to make more varieties of aesthetically pleasing worlds rather than more "realistic" looking ones.

They're there already. Anyone who can't build a believable, if stylised, world from the currently available tools isn't trying. The graphics technology is there, the processing power is there, often the third party engines are there. The issue is that developers aren't taking advantage of them

johnny_ultimate · 10-08-2012 11:30pm

hooradiation wrote: »

And if you think this is vitriolic I envy the fantasy world in which you live.

Dude, this fantastical world is amazing. It looks like Rayman Origins ALL THE TIME.

Overheal · 11-08-2012 12:55am

Wouldn't the story be the soup and the gameplay the soup?

Ace Combat: Squadron Leader. Now theres a game that you didn't play for the story, you played it to zip around and blow **** up. But what surprised me is the story turned out to be really excellent in it. As a result, even now that I've played newer titles in the series, I can't help but always want to sit down and play that one.

Mark Hamill · 11-08-2012 1:10am

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I don't know about the others but the plot in portal is practically non–existent and pretty superfluous. The game play is what made portal brilliant.

Portal is probably the one I'd be most likely to play sans plot, but I would still say the plot adds a lot fun in the game, especially in the second half. Do you think Portal would still have been as good if it had no Glados? You go through the same puzzles, but no story to direct you. At the end, no closure?

Mark Hamill · 11-08-2012 1:18am

hooradiation wrote: »

People seem to be confusing "the plot is just window dressing and doesn't really matter" with "NO PLOT EVAR".
I have no idea why that is.....

If the plot is just window dressing and doesn't matter, then there might as well be no plot. If this is not the case, then plots do make a difference and do matter.

C14N · 12-08-2012 11:07pm

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I don't know about the others but the plot in portal is practically non–existent and pretty superfluous. The game play is what made portal brilliant.

The plot in Portal is far from non-existent. Sure, it doesn't pile on with cutscenes likes Metal Gear Solid but there is still plenty of story and atmosphere going on as you advance and see Glados' insanity becoming more evident. It's closer to a short story than a novel (at least for Portal 1) but it's still deeply ingrained in the game

I really don't think Portal or Portal 2 would have achieved anything like their popularity without their story. If you remove Glados, Wheatly, Cave Johnsons writing on the wall from previous victims etc. and have just a barebones puzzler, it would probably be moderately popular on merit but it wouldn't have gained the legendary status it has.

hooradiation wrote: »

People seem to be confusing "the plot is just window dressing and doesn't really matter" with "NO PLOT EVAR".
I have no idea why that is.....

Well that's because you're basically saying that you could entirely remove the plot from any game with negligible difference in how much you enjoy it. That might be true in your case but not for most of us.

Take some of the most popular series/games of this generation; Assassins Creed, Skyrim, Uncharted, Batman, Mass Effect. Take away all dialogue, plot, setting etc and boil them down to their raw gameplay mechanics with an old fashioned "Levels 1-99" approach. They've all just become fairly forgettable and people would be far less attached to them, even in ones where the story is pretty weak (like Uncharted).

Reekwind · 13-08-2012 2:28pm

C14N wrote: »

The plot in Portal is far from non-existent. Sure, it doesn't pile on with cutscenes likes Metal Gear Solid but there is still plenty of story and atmosphere going on as you advance and see Glados' insanity becoming stronger

Indeed Portal provides one of the strongest examples of a good story being told almost exclusively through game mechanics: witness the connection that most people forge with the Weighted Companion Cube, something that is essentially an inanimate object

Praetorian · 13-08-2012 9:01pm

Here comes my annual long post on boards.

I use to be obsessed with graphics but as I got older I realised fun and gameplay are more important. Saying that, graphics are still important. I am very worried that the new consoles are not going to push the limits of technology in terms of graphics. This will limit what the developers can achieve. It will slow down progress. I rarely have to upgrade my pc these days because the consoles have held back the pc market so much.

I have been delighted to see what some of the devs have managed on the limited current gen consoles. Games like uncharted 2 & 3 etc are astonishing looking. But imagine what they could do with 10x or 20x the processing power.

With products these days coming out with high bandwidth connections like thunderbolt, it would be feasible for microsoft or sony to add this connection or a similar connection to their future consoles. The consoles periodically could be upgraded with faster graphics etc. The important thing would be to make sure the games still work on the base system. The addon graphic card or apu or cpus should just optionally increase graphics fidelity for those who can A) afford it

want it. Making the addon a requirement would not work well. It has failed in the past.

If either of the big console manufacturers go for "upgradeable console" idea. I said it first, ask Retr0gamer. I have been saying it for years!

Regarding VR. Several people high up in the games industry that I totally respect have said that Carmacks VR hardware is pretty amazing. I believe he has given up further )development and is now backing the Oculus. But that guy (Palmer) could be just in it for a quick buck, and who knows what he will do with the $1,000,000 he has raised . AR and VR are coming big time. Will they succeed? Possibly not (again).

Holodeck sort of visuals will be possible in my lifetime. But being able to touch the stuff is not likely.

briany · 13-08-2012 9:24pm

When the next gen of consoles is coming down the line, they're always touted on the amazing realism they'll be able to achieve but games will probably not achieve anything like true realism in our lifetimes because the physics and the artificial intelligence will never be there in the way we'd like. It does get to point as well where it becomes a question of why opt for a simulated experience when you could just as well go do it and perhaps have more fun and exercise? Obviously there's a case to be made for the simulation of experiences where you could be shot and killed but maybe not for, say, bowling. Ok, in real bowling you'll probably have to pay each time but in v-bowling you'll always be slightly divorced from the experience because it'll only be a pale simulation at best, physically speaking.

The games that always have the realism angle pushed to the hilt are sport sims but there's some franchises that haven't really made any in strides towards true realism or fun and challenge. PGA has been terrible for this, even for all it's fancy mechanics of recent years, it doesn't offer anymore satisfaction in posting a good round than the old games on the megadrive.

JohnMarston · 14-08-2012 10:49am

briany wrote: »

When the next gen of consoles is coming down the line, they're always touted on the amazing realism they'll be able to achieve but games will probably not achieve anything like true realism in our lifetimes because the physics and the artificial intelligence will never be there in the way we'd like.

Who plays video games because they want to experience realism?

C14N · 14-08-2012 11:57am

JohnMarston wrote: »

Who plays video games because they want to experience realism?

Flight Simulator fans?

It depends on the degree of realism really. If the game is set in the real world, we generally want some realistic physics and realistic characters. At the same time, games have to depict extraordinary people and events. It's a case of choosing which aspects to make realistic. If you're going to play a WW2 shooter, you want the dialogue to be appropriate and the destruction physics of a building you just blew up and you might even want the deaths of your enemies to be realistic but you sure as hell don't want the player character to have a realistic experience.

Nobody wants to spend the hours of downtime in between battles. Nobody wants to get shot in the leg and then get sent home until the war is over or get captured by Germans and work in labour camps until Hitler is overthrown. If it was realistic, most players would just die, a lot of them without even killing an enemy.

Tl,dnr: Some aspects of games need to be unrealistic, but realism is still often important in others.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar · 14-08-2012 12:15pm

C14N wrote: »

. If it was realistic, most players would just die, a lot of them without even killing an enemy.

****ing red faction

Where do graphics go from here?

Comments