Graphics: Do they matter?

You've probably heard it everywhere "Graphics don't matter to a game" "Graphics don't make the game" "FCK TESE GRAPHX ARE TEH SHITZ0RZ" and so on. Question, do you think graphics matter in a game? As in, would the graphical quality of a game affects your judgement on whether it's good or bad? No flaming, please.

edited 6th Feb '12 3:44:01 PM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

All other things being equal, I would prefer more detailed graphics over less. That said, I think how you use the graphical power available is more relevant to a game's quality.

Absolutely not.

My only concern is good gameplay. Everything comes later. Voice acting? Meh. Dialogue? If needed. FMV's? Leave 'em out for dialogue that we gotta read.(Golden Sun did this very well) Story? Sure, I'd like to have it, if you can enjoy it with the gameplay.

So, yeah, if the gameplay sucks, doing anything else is next to impossible.(and I don't mean meh gameplay, I mean unplayable)

As for Graphics, I want them to be nice. They don't need to be super awesome special, just good enough.

Story and Gameplay come first for me. Graphics are nice, but I couldn't care less about them.

Pleasing aesthetics are always a plus, but graphics shouldn't be a make-or-break factor for a game. There are various other elements that take priority over it. I'd rather take a shoddy-looking game that controls well and has a good plot, etc. over a visual beauty that plays like Rigor Mortis: The Game.

I'd have to say that art matters a lot to me. If all the environments and such are boring and samey I could see myself losing interest pretty quickly regardless of anything else. When people talk about "graphics" there's a tendency to think in terms of technology, but that's not really the same thing as how visually engaging the game is.

edited 6th Feb '12 4:29:33 PM by Clarste

That last poster talks a lot of sense. Still one of my favourite games in terms of art (and gameplay too, but that's not this thread) is Vagrant Story, and it's over ten years old. I go on about that game a lot, but I love it. Final Fantasy XII comes a close second, but since it's set in the same world, it's more or less the same thing.

I can't even think of any current generation games that have particularly stuck in my mind because of their graphics.

As everyone else says though, gameplay first. Good graphics are a bonus.

I believe that game is Oblivion.

Graphics are important, but not in the way a lot of people say that they are. To me, "great" graphics are those that express the game's intent most fully. Something like Okami, where the visuals are an integral part of the experience, has "better" graphics, in my eyes, than any run-of-the-mill HD whatever that pushes the system's limit for no reason other than that they can.

It really depends on the game and the kind of visual feel it's going for. Okami is a good example, as is pretty much anything Vanillaware has cranked out.

edited 6th Feb '12 4:46:15 PM by X2X

Yes. They do. Gameplay of course the MOST important, but the way graphics, gameplay, story, and music can come together is what makes a game an experience. Everything matters.

Art design is more important than technology. There are games made 20 years ago that are more visually appealing, and are better at establishing mood/tone, than most games made today. So while graphics are somewhat important, it shouldn't all be about lighting effects, polygon counts and the latest pixels.

For me it is Story>gameplay>graphics. I agree with the above post, art design is more important. Some old games with crappy graphics can still generate immersion.

Depends on game I guess...while I do think gameplay comes first if the game is designed heavily for immersion then graphics play as much role as other things for immersing yourself in...

Graphics are important, but not moreso than gameplay, sound, art, and story.

Videogames are an ensemble of all those elements, and thus all are important in some way.

I tend to put gameplay, art, aesthetics, style, and sound, over graphics. That said, story is usually the least important thing to me. As long as I know what my goals are, I couldn't care less about story. (Unless we're talking about JRP Gs and some other games.)

Here's my two cents on the subject:

Sometimes people tend to forget that Video Games are a graphic medium, as such the way it looks is very, very important. Bad visuals, low-res textures are immediate immersion breakers, but at the same time I couldn't see myself playing something that felt like throwing paper planes into a wind tunnel full of rabid coffee drinking flying squirrels listening to Dubstep on car speakers next to a couple of kids playing hungry hungry hippos on backstage of a Dragon Force gig. Wearing a hot-dog suit on fire.

The best example I can think of is Medal Of Honor 2010. The campaign is amazing, it's fast paced, the level design is excellent... but the textures look like absolute rubbish, everyone looks like how I run the source engine on my computer. The textures are awful and every particle effect looks fake as hell, like if it was made for 800x600 display. That plus the fact that details take a while to load, effectively breaking the game.

Or at the opposite end of the spectrum, any of you know Final Fantasy VII? I hated that game. But I kept playing it because it looked so damn pretty. Same thing with Baten Kaitos.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not some incredibly gullible man who will just swallow everything big name corps throw at you. Some of my favourite games look absolutely nothing like a modern one (say, Dwarf Fortress, Ultima, XCOM, Syndicate, War Craft II, Star Craft, etc.), and it always made me cringe when my classmates would immediately dismiss a game as shit if it didn't look like fucking Modern Warfare.

SO, in recap: Graphics: Just as important as every other aspect of the game. A chain is as weak as its weakest link. CUE FLAME WAR.

edited 6th Feb '12 5:27:15 PM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

I'd say art style is widely more important. No matter how good the game looks, it won't matter if the rest is bad.

Let's say Final Fantasy VI had terrible graphics.(or atleast much worse than it is) Would this make the game any more unplayable? Nope. But if they took out the gameplay, story, dialogue, it would severely hurt the game.

Art style =/= Graphics. I agree that art style is just as important. Graphics are basically the quality of how it looks, but does not reflect the key crux of what makes the game interesting. Games are an art form, but they're still not a movie.(...I wish this statement was fact, but we all know they're making them like movies. *facepalm*)

Of course they're all media, no denying that. But having realistic graphics that are just shades of brown isn't always the most popular artstyle. It's mostly because it doesn't feel like the artist put much into it. The presentation does matter, respectively, no denying that. And actually, FFVII has the worst graphics in the series, bar none. It's only those cutscenes that even look good. The rest is just bad. The artstyle was good, though.

FFVII, for me, while it looked like ass, it was a great game with, well, everything else. Great story, characters, gameplay, etc.

The problem with "graphics" is that people tend to see them as an endlessly-ascending ladder. To most people, High-Def is better than Standard-Def 3D which is better than PS 1-quality 3D which is better than SNES 2D which is better than NES 2D, and so on and so forth.

But really, that's like saying Renaissance Art is better than Ming Dynasty or Egyptian Hieroglyph. It's just a different artistic style preference. And within those styles, there is shit and there is giggles. I mean, Action 52 and Double Dragon III are both on the NES, but nobody who isn't desperately in need of new glasses would honestly say that one looks just as good as the other.

So, "do graphics matter" from a Retro vs. Current Technology viewpoint? No, that's kinda B.S.

But, "do graphics matter" from an artistic perspective? Hell yes.

Your mileage may vary a lot on this. I enjoyed Morrowind even with the piss-poor graphics it has, and I couldn't get into a game that I think has a crappy story (unless it's a multiplayer game).

I don't know if the comparison is right for me. I believe graphics are like an ascending ladder, the only thing that would be different is art-direction, but graphics as in technology are fairly linear.

edited 6th Feb '12 6:04:26 PM by Anfauglith

While I do think that graphics can add to a game greatly, having good graphics isn't what makes a game fun.

There are some very fun games that have very primitive graphics, and some game that have incredible graphics but are utterly frustrating to play. It's not that hard to figure that out.

Playing Skyrim right now and honestly one of my biggest gripes with the games are the graphics for the snow on certain surfaces, as they look like PS 1 quality graphics. Graphics aren't the most important aspect of the game but if they're flawed enough to take away a sense of immersion or beauty of the game, then they do become a noticeable factor on the game experience. Like in Skyrim's case, where at one point it'll be very pretty with auroras, crystal caves and whatnot but then you go into say Windhelm or Dawnstar and...eck. It's like the developers didn't finish rendering the town or something. I actually want to punch Todd Howard in the face for bragging about the new snow layer system, considering how awful it turned out.

edited 6th Feb '12 6:56:22 PM by VertigoHigh

What's wrong with the snow? It's err white and snow-ish.

It only affects certain surfaces, like if you're in the mountains it looks fine. But in towns on wooden steps and stones, it's awful and looks like a white sheet of paint, or like Alduin came on everyone's porch lol.

I never noticed that, but what I hate in Skyrim is the Dreaded Triangle: sometimes in the snowy mountains there is like a small triangle of shadow (very small, and appears very rarely) that has the same shape every time in appears (and it appears randomly in different places). My theory is that it began appearing when I edited the ini file about shadows and with all the mods I installed, but I hate seeing it because it immediatly draws my attention, making me think it will somehow gain sentience, a sort of triangle-shaped Void; that it follows me, watching.

By the way, sorry for the derail.