On brown 'realism'

[Danceofmasks]

All I've got to say is, there are very few realistic games out there.
Gran Turismo maybe? Train simulator?

Incidentally, I would not consider sports games realistic.

Want a realistic shooter? Try Red Orchestra 2.
Sure, it's brown, but more important than graphics is mechanics.
It will make all those supposed fans of "brown is realistic" cry.

Or go a bit retro and see health done right.
Red Baron had you flying WW1 planes ..
Get your engine shot? Lose oil pressure and die.
Get hit yourself? Slowly bleed to death.
Because regenerating health is the opposite of realism.

 

[DrTobiasWho]

Fallout had a gritty atmosphere? I was just bored...

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Good example of a brown game: Clive Barker's Jericho
Bad example of a brown game: Mass Effect 2

Just putting that out there.

Mass Effect 2 is more of a heavily saturated game that makes me ill looking at it. The annoying lens flare doesn't help.

The art design of ME2 is so nice that its a shame that every cool looking location has to be put through some piss colored filter. Look at Jacob's loyalty mission. Its incredibly green, but you're seeing it through an ugly yellow filter that makes everything look like shit and all your characters turn orange.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Not if nature died it wouldn't. Has to be something to grow FROM, and if the fallout killed the seed, there's nothing to grow from. It'd have to be reintroduced, which, as you may notice from New Vegas, there WERE plants. Desert plants - though I'm sure the Mojave didn't have much in the way of natural greenery in the first place.
Washington DC, however, was one of the places hit hardest by the nukes. The place was torn apart. Nuclear fallout aside, the explosives obliterated everything. The radiation was just the icing on the yellowcake.

Believe me; life finds a way, somehow. After two centuries, plant life would've returned. Just look at how quick Chernobyle was reclaimed by nature. Sure, the world of Fallout is a lot harder hit, but it also had a lot longer to recover.

'sides, it was supposed to be a nuclear wasteland. Barring New Vegas's annoying use of orange, there isn't any place for vibrant colors in such a world.

I beg to differ, knowing what life can do. I never thought it made sense that, even after a nuclear strike, an area would be completely barren for two centuries. It's not like plants can't grow in the Hiroshima area, for example.

 

[CrazyJew]

OP just reminded me why I loved the original Unreal. I gotta install that again.

 

[Avatar Roku]

I see people shouting about the flood of 'brown generic shooters' and I honestly have no idea where they get that from. I can't think of that many games that have monotous, drab colour schemes. Gears of War does, but it fits with the setting. Fallout 3 and New Vegas do, and yes I didn't like that, but other than that I'm not seeing a flood of such games.

and it had a RAELLY GOOD REASON for being like that

Actually, I beg to differ. It's been almost two centuries after the nuclear apocalypse. Nature would've returned by now.

Not if nature died it wouldn't. Has to be something to grow FROM, and if the fallout killed the seed, there's nothing to grow from. It'd have to be reintroduced, which, as you may notice from New Vegas, there WERE plants. Desert plants - though I'm sure the Mojave didn't have much in the way of natural greenery in the first place.
Washington DC, however, was one of the places hit hardest by the nukes. The place was torn apart. Nuclear fallout aside, the explosives obliterated everything. The radiation was just the icing on the yellowcake.

You talking about New Vegas reminds me of the fact that it actually used color well at parts. It's kinda washed out in the main wasteland, and then you get to Camp Forlorn Hope and the color is bleached out almost entirely. Then, you go up to Jacobstown and it's one of the most beautiful, vibrant, lovely areas I've seen in any game. I really like that.

 

[StorytellingIsAMust]

All I remember is that a friend of mine told me that Gears of War sucked for not being realistic, to which I replied "Just to be clear, we ARE talking about a game that takes place on another planet, where this space marine with shoulders bigger than my lamp is fighting grotesque monsters living underground with the sheer power of his manliness and chainsaw-gun, right? Yeah, realism is pretty much a moot point here."

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Good example of a brown game: Clive Barker's Jericho
Bad example of a brown game: Mass Effect 2

Just putting that out there.

Mass Effect 2 is more of a heavily saturated game that makes me ill looking at it. The annoying lens flare doesn't help.

The art design of ME2 is so nice that its a shame that every cool looking location has to be put through some piss colored filter. Look at Jacob's loyalty mission. Its incredibly green, but you're seeing it through an ugly yellow filter that makes everything look like shit and all your characters turn orange.

Sure, that's your opinion and all (personally I liked it) but you still can't call ME2 a brown game.

'sides, it was supposed to be a nuclear wasteland. Barring New Vegas's annoying use of orange, there isn't any place for vibrant colors in such a world.

I beg to differ, knowing what life can do. I never thought it made sense that, even after a nuclear strike, an area would be completely barren for two centuries. It's not like plants can't grow in the Hiroshima area, for example.

The keyword here is wasteland. It wouldn't be a wasteland if it was a shining example of how life can adapt, would it.

I never said it was brown, I said it was saturated, which is not an opinion, that is fact. It is my opinion that it looks ugly and makes me sick, but it is undeniably saturated.

 

[Weaver]

Your post is borderline incoherent.

I agree with this. I don't really get the thesis of the post. I also got confused when the OP appeared to claim that making things more colourful was somehow more strenuous on the machine; which is entirely untrue. A texture is a texture, regardless of colour. Furthermore, the "brown" effect in many games is actually a post-processing effect which is more strenuous on the machine.

 

[Zantos]

Has anyone ever called Halo realistic? Anyone with a single semblance of sanity at least. Yeah gravity happens and things get thrown about in explosions, that's about it.

Plus it looks really nice. I like the covenant's use of purple. Some people think they maybe overuse purple, like those weird people that can't do without their purple camouflage to hide in their purple rooms, but I think they used it nicely. The Spartan armour is fairly pretty too.

 

[LordFisheh]

How on earth is Call of Duty brown? I haven't played Black Ops but in MW2, at least, the colours suited the environment. There were forested mountains, favelas, etc, all with colour. Where things were brow, it was because it made sense, such as a scrapyard in a desert.

 

[random_bars]

The problem with modern-day graphics engines is that having them do too much causes your processor to melt, which is why most developers restrict their colour palettes to brown and more brown.

But that's just... Wrong. In every possible way. Seriously, what?

No, the reason most games are brown is because Call of Duty is brown, and Call of Duty sells well, so in the minds of clueless publishers this means that brown = sales. This is a simplification, but it's pretty much true.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Realism is NOT related to the real world but the world said fiction is set in. Realism is set by the world, not by our world.

Some games are realistic despite being set in the land of the gobbos featuring a talking crocodile or a cat with big ears and clothes somehow grabbing things with a weird ring.

Some are unrealistic despite being set on earth with human characters that all have guns are in the army and shoot things for a living

Watch Fighting on the Frontlines, channel 4's new documentary series. But then again if CoD was anything like that, most people wouldn't wanna play it

 

[imnot]

I once heard someone not uderstand why Fallout 3 was brown, y'know because nukes give of rainbows and happiness instead of death.
In fact I dont get why they say that about Halo to, they are proberly some of the least brown games I've seen.

 

[Pinkamena]

I wouldn't mind "brown" games if they added vivid colors where it was appropriate.

 

[gabe12301]

Why do people care? It's a dammed color. Did the color brown hurt you people as a child or something? Did you find the color brown in bed with your mum? If a developer want's to use the color brown, it's their game and their decision. If people enjoyed the brown games then they maybe just might be doing something right. Do you wan't everyone to start using purple? Would that make you happy?

 

[Netrigan]

I really only have a problem when a game hits the same damn look over and over and over and over again. I'll use the Gears Of War games as contrasting examples.

The first Gears takes place in a lot of destroyed cities, so the washed out color fits the mood (as it did in Fallout 3). This isn't meant to be a colorful playground, the color scheme fits the mood of the piece. The problem is you're stuck with the same mood for almost the entire game.

It's played much better in Gears 3, which still uses a realistic color scheme, but it mixes up the environments, so when you enter a washed-out gray city, you feel the mood shift.

And I think we're coming out of the monotone gray-brown period for the most part. The major devs have taken the complaint to heart and you can see games introducing more and more color into their games. Modern Warfare 2 was usually more colorful than Modern Warfare 1 (which proves a more diverse color palette doesn't make a better game) and New Vegas was far more colorful than its predecessor.

Mind you, we still have Rage, which shows that id has never quite come to grips with color since going true 3D Although it's still more colorful than their previous games, so there's progress even with the inventor of the brown shooter.