Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

I have been really enjoying the way games are being stylized nowadays. We reached a level of fidelity that is really expensive to maintain I think, and so game studios are leaning in on really solid art direction instead. It makes for much more interesting worlds and longer lasting art.

For example, LA Noire looks dated (though still excellent in many ways), while Borderlands looks as good as when it was released.

LA Noire while it feels a bit dated, the characters don't really hit uncanny valley thanks to the facial motion capture technology. I am still aware they are a video game character, just a very emotive one.

It makes me think there is a peak realism we should chase, after which improved graphics wouldn't really add much. I wonder if maybe we aren't already there.

Many games suffer from high detail but lack of clarity. We are still working with a 2D screen with limited dynamic range after all. So that means when there is higher detail it can get overly busy. Lacking contrast, making it hard to decipher what you are looking at quickly, especially if it is moving. Stylized games can add visual contrast in their lighting and art, improving clarity overall. Having said that, I think games could leanr some tricks from cinema in this regard. Just capturing what is real doesn't make good cinema, you have to engineer the scene and the shot.

IMO even games that go for realistic graphics end up stylized, mainly because the technical limitations do force those styles (e.g. many PS2 games tried to be realistic but the lack of pixel shaders means they had to paint the lighting on the textures and the low resolution meant that they had to exaggerate some thinner shapes and both of those nowadays give a more cartoony look). The closer to "today" you go, the harder is to see this, but it becomes apparent when you see games from the 80s, 90s and (to a lesser extent, since they are more recent) 2000s. If you can say that a game looks like a $X game (e.g. a NES game or ZX Spectrum game or SNES game or PS1 game, or N64 game or PS2 game or PS3 game) that is because its appearance has aspects that are common with other games on $X - which is exactly what make that a style.

So with that in mind, "dated" is simply a realistic style that isn't old enough to have become distinct from the current peak.

Also FWIW "stylistic" doesn't necessarily imply cartoony or exaggerated, this is just a kind of style you can have but certainly not the only one. And of course the "styles" i mentioned above are treated as just guidelines, many NES-styled or ZX Spectrum-styled or PS1-styled games wont work on real NES/ZX Spectrum/PS1 (or even even strictly follow the visual limitations - e.g. many ZX Spectrum-styled games use single colored chunky sprites with bold outlines but they do not do attribute clash and similarly many NES-styled games use the resolution and palette of NES but ignore sprite or VRAM limitations). After all it is giving the impression that matters, not adhering to strict hardware limitations (though for some that may also be part of the appeal).

Did that facial capture technology end up anywhere? I still remember how amazing the facial animations looked in that game and can't think of any other game since where it's been that noticeable. Although maybe that was just because of how much better they were than anything else out there at the time?

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