"realism": ambiance, characters, etc... where has it been a blessing and where has it failed.

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Joubert

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We have seen a trend towards realism in videogames, particularly in the environments, the characters, and the maturity of games' subject matter.

But where in particular has this been really cool... and where has it been unnecessary, tacked-on, or simply executed poorly. We love it when a character earns our sympathy, but that ends when we find ourselves saying aloud "stop whining!" throughout the cut scenes.
Also, environments can immerse us... but the quest for "realism" can also leave us with landscapes comprised almost entirely of muddy colors and "gritty" ambiance, reviving the old "every corridor looks the same" effect.

So what games or particular scenes have been a blessing to the word "realism," and what games have been the worst offenders of over doing it?

feel free to rant
 

Sennz0r

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God now that you mention it there aren't alot of games where realism was actually a fantastic idea or came out particularly well.

I'd have to say The Darkness is one of the best games to deploy realism yet, since the streets of New York and the subway stations HAVE to look gritty and similar. It was great storytelling as well and the characters all looked like they could pop out of my screen (it's a friggin big screen mind you) at any moment.

Also Assassin's Creed looked fantastic and realistic enough to me without creating a very boring and similar atmosphere. All the cities looked different and they even pulled it off to make most of the districts in a city differ from eachother.
That is to say the realism ends when you warp back to the future, god that lab looks like it came out of a playmobil box.

Where realism was bad? I guess Jericho since everything looks so similar in there and the realistic feel kind of ends when you find out you can control a sniper bullet with your psychic powers, making the environment downright dull instead of realistic.
 

Credge

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Striving for realism has ruined the gaming industry. Because everyone craps themselves over how great the physics are in a game, game developers push for amazing physics engines instead of working on a quality game. Just, please, give me something that isn't realistic. If I want realism, I'll go shoot myself in the foot.
 

Lvl 64 Klutz

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Only thing I can think of is in Shadow of the Colossus, I loved how you never really took complete control of the horse when you rode.
 

Anarchemitis

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Cel shading is way less demanding on a processor, I'm sure anyone can imagine.
Team Fortress 2 is lauded for it's amazing looks, and praised by me for the incredulously simple rendering parameters. (Clamped lambertian with Blinn/Phong is way more awesome than Ambient Occlusion any day)
 

broadband

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i would love to have more cartoonic games on pc, stuff like a satire of anime or a crazy TPS but anyway.
 

Booze Zombie

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Too much TRYING to be realistic in GTA 4... I really hate the shade of gray that the game's world seems to be awash with almost constantly.

GTA games are meant to be wacky, have a lot of weapons to choose from, lots of clothing... all that stuff. There just wasn't really enough substance in GTA 4, almost like they sacrificed it to be more realistic.

Not to mention that I am confused beyond belief as to why Niko found a moany Christian ***** who kept preaching at him(Kate) in anyway attractive.

Doom 3 is another case of trying to hard. I don't need shadows everywhere, thanks, I'm good.

In a welcome depature from realism and a not-so-welcome depature from good English, Saint's Row was fun, if only because it was silly and not coloured grey.
 

Joeshie

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Credge said:
Striving for realism has ruined the gaming industry. Because everyone craps themselves over how great the physics are in a game, game developers push for amazing physics engines instead of working on a quality game. Just, please, give me something that isn't realistic. If I want realism, I'll go shoot myself in the foot.
Yeah, it's so much worse than how the 8-bit and 16-bit days were where every game needed 5 million different colors on the screen.

I have no problem with either or. The only thing that changed is that one kind of genre, platformers (which relied heavily on colors and spitting out every color imaginable in a childish way) have been supplanted by FPS as the dominate genre (which focuses on realism in many of it's games). All that has happened is we have exchanged one extreme for the other. What I would love to see is a balance between the two. Some games use tons of colors while other games attempt realism. It really just comes down to which you prefer.
 

Credge

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Joeshie said:
Yeah, it's so much worse than how the 8-bit and 16-bit days were where every game needed 5 million different colors on the screen.
At the very least we got color back then.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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Credge said:
Joeshie said:
Yeah, it's so much worse than how the 8-bit and 16-bit days were where every game needed 5 million different colors on the screen.
At the very least we got color back then.
What, you mean you're not impressed by the five million specific shades of grey we're given these days? Slate grey, cement grey, wall-blasted-by-plasma-fire grey....

Yeah, realism is very welcome in games- in certain aspects. Developers need to remember that we play games primarily to be entertained, not to enter an experience identical to real life. Gears of War got it wrong, Doom 3 got it wrong (I think; it was hard to see), FEAR got it wrong three different ways (office, trashed city, laboratory)... Half-Life 2 is probably one of the closest attempts I've seen to "right", even if half the entire series takes place in the same half-destroyed apartment buildings and streets. Where GoW wore a pallet of greys, HL2 seemed to remember that things have colors like blue and green and (GASP!) red!

Hey developers? Humans have full-visible-light-spectrum sight. That's why it's called "visible spectrum". Please keep this in mind for the future.
 

LordCraigus

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No doubt realism in games has increased over the years, but despite what developers claim, true realism is a thing only left to a niche market of games which don't appeal to the mainstream. Games like Operation Flashpoint, Armed Assault etc... as well as the many simulation games. Even in these cases they're not 100% realistic because of course they're still games, but they try damn hard.

Anyway, I have to say the best WWII FPS I've played is Red Orchestra, the realism, the grittiness, the historical accuracy, they all add up to a truly awesome experience and atmosphere. I'll admit the magic has worn off a bit in the two years I've played the game, but custom maps like Kriegstadt still get me excited because I know I'm in for a hell of a battle if I join.

EDIT: When I say realism, I don't just mean everything looks dark or drab by the way, because that's not exactly realism. I mean realistic gameplay and mechanics.
 

Joubert

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The Rogue Wolf said:
Yeah, realism is very welcome in games- in certain aspects. Developers need to remember that we play games primarily to be entertained, not to enter an experience identical to real life.
I used to wonder if the trend towards realistic blood and gore in games would get to the point that someone would make a WWII game and one of those Normandy-style beach storming levels would give some people PTSD (lol).
 

Leorex

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i understand gears of war dong the gray thing, because that as a story, was trying to get the point across that its a berron world.

and i agree about gta4, not so much about the colors, but the feel, it just 'felt' grey, almost heavy. fine some times, but not the whole game.
 

Credge

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Leorex said:
i understand gears of war dong the gray thing, because that as a story, was trying to get the point across that its a berron world.
The moon is grey because no intelligent life has inhabited it. A city is not because intelligent life has inhabited it. It's part of the human psyche to hate the same color over and over again. It can, literally, drive a person insane. This is one of the reasons why the architecture and color in ancient major cities in the middle east were colorful and beautiful.

Most cities are made the same way as shown in the picture below:



Even if this street were destroyed there would still be color. Note all the shades of red found in the picture below?? If this were done 'realistically' in a game, we'd see four shades of grey.



Hell, the only grey in that picture is found in the sky from all of the smoke.

Realism in games is only good if it is done right. So far, I can't recall a single game that has actually conveyed the mood they are trying to set via color palette... which is infinitely more important than having a slightly more realistic physics engine than someone else. This is one reason why HL2 is still considered to be an amazing game some 4 years later.
 

Asehujiko

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Actualy i'd say that GoW is one of the few games who did a grey background well. All maps have a distinct atmosphere and actualy vary quite a bit in color(for a grey game). For example the forest actualy contains traces of green and the train is pretty red.
 

Ultrajoe

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Realism is beautiful but it should be used as a tool not a standard

I love Ratchet and Clank (who didn't/doesn't?) but if those beautiful landscapes, explosions and slime balls got browned and fuzzed i would be ever so pissed.
 

Gooble

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Realism's great to an extent; when it gets to the point of over-management in games like FIFA 07/08 it becomes really crap, because there's just so much you can do that you get lost and it takes all the fun out of the game.

I guess realism is good to the point of frustrating the player, or taking away from the fun of it all.
 

Anarchemitis

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What we need is High-Dynamic Range Lighting more often. HDR [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDRI] lighting is letting the camera capture multiple exposures at once. Eg: The cowboys riding off into the sunset. Either you'd see the cowboys fully detailed walking on very brown and the sky is white, or you see a beautiful sunset and the cowboys are black and silhouetted. With HDR lighting, you'd see the lighting exposure of the sunset and the cowboys fully detailed.

[img_inline width="700" caption="Three exposures of the same image, made into a composite make HDR images"]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/HDR_example_-_exposure.jpeg[/img_inline]

This lighting technique forces colour to be vivid regardless of ambient light or distance.