Too much realism can ruin a game...

K12gamer

Member
Especially with games that feature a lot of blood and guts...
Next Gen games like Mortal Kombat, The Last of Us and DOOM Eternal etc...have graphics that are too violent / gory for me.
I can only imagine how gory they'll be on XBOX Series X and PS5.
Imagine Next Gen horror games that have you going into dirty / nasty bathrooms and sewers...or rooms littered with diseased corpses
Who here wants to see that?

I personally prefer games that use Pixel Art...or are more cartoony in nature.
Example: Zelda Breath of the Wild, or old school games like Castlevania Symphony of Night.

Example game where the gore doesn't bother me:

 
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pixeltroid

Member
Especially with games that feature a lot of blood and guts...
Next Gen games like Mortal Kombat, The Last of Us and DOOM Eternal etc...have graphics that are too violent / gory for me.
I can only imagine how gory they'll be on XBOX Series X and PS5.
Imagine Next Gen horror games that have you going into dirty / nasty bathrooms and sewers...or rooms littered with diseased corpses
Who here wants to see that?

I personally prefer games that use Pixel Art...or are more cartoony in nature.
Example: Zelda Breath of the Wild, or old school games like Castlevania Symphony of Night.

Example game where the gore doesn't bother me:

Yep. Gory games (or for that matter, gory movies, gory comics and album art) are desensitizing. It's not worth losing that part of me over a few hours of entertainment.

Although I have enjoyed violent games like MK, Quake, Doom and a few others, I find that modern games take violence to a whole new level, that I know is not something for me.
 

ElectroMan

Jack of All Shades
Realism serves the game's aesthetic, not the other way around. Never the other way around.
So you have games that do not look good with too much realism, and you have games that do not look good with less realism. Depending on tone and mood.

For example, Silent Hills would never be a good series if it was set in a cartoony environment. (At the time the fog was actually a hardware limitation, but that actually served to up the game's horror factor). Not to say that cartoony games can't be scary, but it needs a whole different aesthetic to work. (Yume Nikki comes to mind.)
 

K12gamer

Member
@ElectroMan I can only imagine how gross Silent Hill will look on next gen consoles...
Some players may be into that... but it's too much for me.

Here's an example of a hyper realistic Mario game... I honestly prefer the cartoony look of the real Mario games instead.

 
Z

zendraw

Guest
okey boomer.

on a side note, what do you think about the splatterhouse games?
 

K12gamer

Member
okey boomer.

on a side note, what do you think about the splatterhouse games?
I don't mind the old 2D versions...then they released a 3D one for PS3...that got too gory.
This game on Series X or PS5 might make players puke...I'm not into 4k 120fps ray traced gore...
Would like to see a 2D remake of Splatterhouse...with graphics as good as the 2D game in the original post.

 
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I used to love violent games when I was in my late teens/early twenties but they bore me now. There seems to be an oversaturation of FPS games and on top of having motion sickness when I play them, I just don't care for them anymore. There's something particularly wonderful when a video game becomes art. The designers have enough of an idea how realism works but still stylize it in a way that is interesting to look at and opens up more possibilities. Despite my vast distaste for FPS, I do enjoy games like Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch.

Nowadays, I just want a game that provides its usual challenges but allow me to sit down and just soak up the environment for awhile. Games like Legend of Zelda always kept a balance between action and zen moments.
 

Roastedzerg

Member
I love violent gory games, but that doesnt mean its desensitized me to the shock of violence or gore in real life. The fact that its real puts it on a different level. I still cringe seeing these things in movies and games, yet ive been watching and playing gory games and movies since i was a kid. I feel in most cases desensitization comes from detatchment from whatever youre seeing. I used to know guys who would watch garbage on 4chan of people killing themselves or others and freaking laugh about it sometimes (disgusting). Either youre missing empathy from mental conditions, or its a choice of mindset. I just dont think violent games or movies are to blame entirely for desensitization to the stuff.
That said, i agree with @ElectroMan that some games realism works great and others it ruins the mood if pushed too far. I cant imagine a game like the Last of us or Dead space working without realistic graphics and gore. Its not that we fans get all hot and bothered seeing isaacs guts pouring onto the floor after getting cut in half by a grotesquely morphed walking corpse because we get off to that kind of stuff (ok maybe some do) Its that it sets the mood for terror and dread, and gives you a great reason to want to survive encounters, you dont want to see the poor guy get turned into a pez dispenser!

Edit: last thing, i personally love that games are getting more real looking. I remember always wanting my games to eventually look like im playing a movie and we are finally there.
 
S

Sybok

Guest
Edit: last thing, i personally love that games are getting more real looking. I remember always wanting my games to eventually look like im playing a movie and we are finally there.
I always thought the same thing growing up. But now that we are there, I'm not feeling it as much as I thought I would.

It's a massive achievement. But for me, it seems like a lot of visual noise that takes away from the game.

In the less capable times our minds did a hell of a job filling in the blanks. We may have only actually seen a few pixels on the screen, but what we saw was a whole universe.
 

tetris_mess

Member
I want to see a video game that has the action of life and truth, somehow displayed back to us. I want someone to face all the real-time events and mods the players have to go up against. I think that would generalize a lot of interaction and reaction in general and give the player a lot of useful feedback about what is going on in their lives. For instance, I want to see how their performance goes into an emotional drive and the player isn't expressing a clear motive, and I want them to see how the game responds to how they perceive real-time events, needing emotional/biological strategies to get through a level.

@ElectroMan - I'm safe and yeah, standard divisions are statistically significant, unfortunately.
 
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Roastedzerg

Member
@sitebender Dayz used to be much like that, it was so frustrating lol I remember coming home from work to play Dayz just to be disappointed that it was yet again night time in the game and i would have to play my entire 4 hour session in the pitch black.
 

Gamebot

Member
@ K12gamer that guts and gore game looks awesome!

What get's me is how so many people say that games look like crap if there NOT real. A good game is not defined by realism but an enjoyable playable game with aesthetic. I'd still take Donkey Country 1, 2 and 3 over any 3d shoot em ups. Except Resident Evil 4.
 
@ K12gamer that guts and gore game looks awesome!

What get's me is how so many people say that games look like crap if there NOT real. A good game is not defined by realism but an enjoyable playable game with aesthetic. I'd still take Donkey Country 1, 2 and 3 over any 3d shoot em ups. Except Resident Evil 4.
What about Twisted Metal 2? Best FPS there ever was haha.
 

Gamebot

Member
@Lance Klepp

Okay maybe a few games. Including: Twisted Metal 2. I would take any old game with "cardboard cutouts" like Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, Rise of the triad ( ROTT as we ued to call it) over many of the newer games. I think it was the fact there were so many hidden passages/secrets that you had to find. Most shoot em ups are just that. Yes you can upgrade, maybe find a chest....it doesn't feel the same to me.
 

Sedgwick2K

Member
I don't play games with gore so much (my maximum interaction with blood and gore is GTA3 and San Andreas :D )
However, I want to show a different perspective. As @ElectroMan mentioned "hardware limitation", I'll set and go from that.

"Photorealistic" graphic is achieved with high amount of polygons (over 100k with ease), lots of effects, shaders and all kinda things. Of course, more polygons = more space taken (ex. if 30k polygon takes 1MB then 60k polygon takes 2MB). If you imagine over a thousand objects modeled with much high amount of polygons, that is hella space taken. When we add effects, shaders and all other things used in everywhere of game, all models used for a game takes gigabytes of space easily.
There is another dimension of the point, codes, I don't enter into there.
Of course, a level of great graphic is not bad (like the one in GTA4, for example). But, as I dig into beta stuff of GTA: San Andreas for a while, I realized how the desire of high graphic can be a problem for the game itself. Because, that is where "hardware limitation" occurs, hard enough to cut a game by almost half for final version. Developers cut lots of assets because target platforms (mostly consoles) have a "hardware limitation". When you consider that assets are mostly working, it is kinda frustating (non-functional assets are unmentioned there).
For a long time, major developers only target "photorealistic" graphics just for "money" and cut gameplay for "hardware limitations". They just focus on "photorealism", leaving all those gameplay assets behind and unloved. I don't play 2010s games (because my computer can't handle them :( ), but I still agree with this title when I think about this.
 

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
Too much realism ruins a game. True, with no exceptions.
Because a game is a game, and why do we play games? To escape or go away from reality.
I wouldn't want controls for me to have to move the entire arms of my character to pick up an item for example, just touching it and instantly getting it is just fine.
That kind of realism ruins a game, and some others.
But realistic graphics or gore don't ruin games in my opinion. In this aspect, a game can be as realistic as possible with no problem or ruining it.
But context is key.
If these aesthetics choices fit the gameplay, themes, demographic, intentions, etc of a video game, it's fine! If it doesn't, it's not fine!
I personally am not a gore guy at all..... I'm not a fan of bloody gore or extreme violence. But I put my personal bias away to say that it's just fine if fitting to the context.
About graphics, "too much realism" isn't possible in some games hahaha. The Last of Us II is as realistic as possible but it fits! If it would've been developed 5 years later, it would have even more realism, and it wouldn't even bee too mutsh!
But if Mario Oddysey would have this level of realism, it would ruin the game for sure.
 

Niels

Member
Red dead redemption 2 is a good example about a game that is not fun because of their attention to realism
 
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