Well, you have a point there esky.
I play at the utmost me machine allows, which is pretty high on some games. I had my Gore settings Maxed out when i played SoF II, and enjoy the View (for reference, some on these forums know how sick I can be when it comes to certain things.) But your point of a totally realistic environment and graphical realism has a point, allthough this would seem far from achievable in the coming 2- or so, years. second you cannot have a focus on Graphical detail too much, as the game gets worthless without any depth and story, and would basicly a tech demo on graphical realism. but when it does get achievable, ohh boy, hold your socks on, as then the Graphix engine would be nearing the end of its evolution and will be buyable for an apple and an egg, so people can dig more into the story and be able to make games bigger and yet smaller in compound sizes, as they will probably optimize the code to take in less space at the Disc, so they can make bigger Levels. Plus, this means that the games will be more immersive, like Morrowind, I simply enjoyed that Game (still play it by the way) The way you could immerse yourselves into the story and do anything regardless of the story.
Add the Immersion, to the simply stunning graphix, and I think that will be the next game of the century

The upcoming revolution in Graphical realism, would be the HL2 Engine by my guess. So if you could add that code with say, the graphical detail that SoF II has. You'd have a game thats worth sucking the fingers from your hands because licking wouldn't be enough

On a sidenote, I have yet to see if Half-Life 2 will be that good, there is a lot of time put in the engine, and in gaming terms, that usually doesn't mean the game will be good Gameplay wise. My expectation of the Game is that the Graphics will be simply stunning, but the game being FAR too short to be actually gripping, I am not really a fan of Half Life, but that aside, I think the best expectation you can have of the HL 2 Engine, is the upcoming game by Troika, Vapire, The Masquerade 2: Bloodlines, and thats a game I will certainly buy.
(And it ain't 'cuz I am a Big Fan of anything that involves Vampires)

Edited by - Locutus on 4/19/2004 5:22:59 PM

It is more advances like the Unreal 3 engine, and further into the future that concern me, rather than the HL2 engine. I imagine that in the future, we will go "arcadeish", in that there will be few games that will have normal people, but probably just undead or monsters, etc. That way, people will not be offended, but there will still be an element of "realism". Technically speaking .

Edited by - esquilax on 4/19/2004 5:29:46 PM

Yes, absolutely. To make a game look as true to life should be the holy grail of every game designer. I've always used games as a medium with which to live out fantasies that are never going to happen to me in real life, I'm never going to captain a 17th century galleon, win the F1 world championship or be highly trained special operative. To make those experiences as real as possible would be a means to fulfill those fantasies a little better.

However with excessively gory games, I can only hope that designers don't feel the need to do detailed models of brains splattering all over the wall.

Mustang - I agree completely, but with the advent of games such as SOF2, etc, it is entirely likely that gore will become even more flagrant. You know how the system works; the old "if we do THIS, then we''ll sell more games!" sort of attitude.

well, Musty, where Photo-realism has its boundaries of common Sense, Anime style does not, you could easily fill in all the Gore in the Anime Realism, and still enjoy the Gore, as you know its being drawn, rather then thinking "is this for real???"

I must admit, all that Blood and Gore, is kind of Relaxing to me, I can sit back and relax while seeing all the insides of a body, inside out, and turned over three times if Necessary, but one Thing I cannot watch is Rancid eating behaviours. Next to seeing someone spilling his breakfast/lunch/whatever, that just makes me sick and also want to vomit. when in Pain, I close myself off, I do not Vomit because of the pain, also when in pain, I let my body remedy the situation, rather then taking pain-sedatories. Its not because I like pain, but rather because I think my body would be able to handle itself against any pain.

From a more humurs pont of view, I prefer the Serious Sam type of blood, Hippy. But, the way games and gammers are going, It will be interesting in another 2 to 3 years so see almost life like games. The Movie, Final Fantasy, is what they could look like real soon.

I think that making a game realist doesn't mean having to put in gore, You can have awsome phisics and enviornment interavtivity and not put lots of gore in.

BEvilR says: always remeber to Check that the toilet flushes at a friends house before decideing to throw up at a party.

BEvilR says: remember to bring your own bottled water when you visit mexico.

BE - True, but there is always the temptation to add more "realism", and I am curious as to exactly how far it will go. Even if it does get that far, they will probably have alterable settings anyway to reduce the amount of realism when you shoot someone, etc.

On a related matter, I was in a computer game shop, and I saw a cheap copy of a game called "Severance"., The back of the box said something along the lines of "Unbelievable gore! Cut off an oppponent's limb and then beat thenm to death with it!" or words to that effect. If THAT is a major selling point, you can see why I am interested to see the directions that graphical realism takes.

As long as Game Designers don't :

a) Destroy gameplay for graphics. And/Or
b) Make the graphics TOO gorey

For example, Final Fantasy 7 has blocky-okay graphics, but it had a kick-ass story and gameplay, so people often use it (the game) to compare graphics to gameplay. Final Fantasy 8 however, had VERY good PSone graphics, but the storyline and gameplay sucked - big time. You need *JUST* the right balance to succeed, but getting that balance is the hard part.

Edited by - Neo_Kuja on 4/19/2004 6:28:11 PM

Not yet available on PC but.... I thought I read somewhere that Pixar actually had to back down from too much verity as it made the cartoons it produced for Disney too creepy, at least regarding the portrayal of human characters.

I think that games need to go past graphical realism to some kind of surrealism or hyper-realism to underscore the point that it is a game and not a depiction of reality.

There must be an unwritten rule somewhere that says that games have to be preceivable obviously as a game by the player who, once that basic starting point has been established, may then demand as much graphical awesomeness as possible.

Neo - The plot has always been the most important part of a game in my view, but if things continue the way they're going... well, plots will be a thing of the past (more so) .

Indy - Exactly, but who will write the unwritten rule? More importantly, who would stick to it if they could make more money by breaking it?

@Esqy

Well, as far as plot goes......how many recent Hollywood productions actually had a plot?

Breaking the rule makes money? I think the only reason why Pixar had to scale back is because Disney didn't think they'd make money with too much graphical fidelity.

As soon as the public becomes jaded enough, the rule will be broken but by then, it won't be a rule ---or--- in fact the rule will be intact but our perception of what obivously is a game and not reality will have been honed to a new level of awareness.

Wouldn't ultimate realism be like virtual reality or something? Like the Americans and Canadians would - instead of playing together in an arena - go dress up in some virtual reality suit and play online. The next step would be the senses. Supposedly I guess they could have patches the can send electrical charges on them. Not sure what I'd do for everything else though.

We go for victory!

me again...
@Neo: the reason for FFVII's Blocky graphics was cos it was originally for Nintendo, but they decided not to use the Cartridge system, and went to CD (FFVII was the main reason i bought a PSX, along with Gran Turisimo.)

Viator

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i used to be a guy called jake_langley