Scott Weiland on 10/5/2010 at 19:54

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I am replaying The Witcher for the second time, it's an awesome game, but as I play I can't keep thinking how much work has been put in to creating all this detail, a TITANIC work, but was it really worth it? We can only appreciate so much detail as we play. I look at the nice scenery and appreciate it for a second or two but 99% of my playtime i concentrate on the gameplay and I notice running past all this detail as if it was unnecessary. Maybe if developers didn't put so much work in to detail it wouldn't have taken them 4 (four!) long years to make this game but instead one or two years. 20 years ago there were RPG games around too and was their gameplay worse? It wasn't! (at least so I hear from veteran gamers). There have to be boundaries to the level of detail and I think modern games far exceed it. It is expensive to make them, it takes long time and it tortures our rigs. Just look at Deus Ex, it's a huuge immersive fantastic atmospheric gameworld and there wasn't so much detail and quite a lot was left for our imagination and it still worked perfectly.

Sulphur on 10/5/2010 at 20:28

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The reason Deus Ex's environments worked was because they left so much to the imagination. Before 3D graphics tech became advanced enough, that's what most games depended on: the mind's ability to brush in detail, fill in gaps, populate emptiness with imagined histories.

The moment the graphics tech becomes more advanced, however, and the moment it tries to approximate reality closer, the amount of detail required becomes exponentially large. And the more advanced the tech, the less detail you can leave to the imagination without things sinking into the uncanny valley.

What if, say, Bioshock were made with SS2-level graphics? Would people like it* as much sans the art deco, the glint and the sheen? Would its sense of place still remain?

You can of course have games with less detailed art, but the art style and direction need to support it. A cel-shaded style doesn't require too much detail, for instance - take a look at Okami. The closer a game tries to model reality, however, the more detail it will need. That's a fact.




*Obviously, people still outraged at it being SS2-lite and still frothing that KEN LIED TO US from years ago don't have to think too hard about this example.

Sulphur on 10/5/2010 at 20:33

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I dunno, man. Duke Nukem 3D's still gotta be topped, y'know

Phatose on 10/5/2010 at 20:56

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Presentation is an important aspect in and of itself. Graphics may not be everything, but they are something.

That said, extra detail does tend to create a signal-to-noise problem. When you're in a sparse world on an obvious polygon budget, there's much less that's "Just there" versus a detailed world. I wonder if the 'dumbing down' is - at least in some aspects - an attempt by designers to get clear signal through the extra noise. Things like the hated quest arrow in Oblivion/Fallout, glowy interaction auras - these are all things meant to deal with the reality that there is a lot more crap that doesn't do anything in games today then there was 10-20 years ago.

Poetic thief on 10/5/2010 at 22:49

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Are you referring to my nostalgia thread? If so, then I disagree with you.

The point that Scott brought up here is a very different one, and is a worthwhile point in my opinion.

My point was more subtle. That the impact of an experience is relative to one's previous experiences, and this makes it possible for someone to really enjoy a flawed game in 1998 more than an objectively better game in 2010.

Scott's point here is that the time spent on making the world more graphically detailed could have been better placed elsewhere. Especially since we barely notice details like squirrels running around as we're slashing up the baddies.