ARCHIVE: On "Realistic" Graphics

note: any post that starts with "ARCHIVE:" is something that I wrote either for an older blog or in some other location, but deemed worth of copying over to this.

I see a lot of people arguing back and forth about the merits of "realistic" graphics versus more stylized graphics (such as in Borderlands), and the main reason I see people arguing in favor of the "realism" graphic style has to do with immersion. The arguments make sense; something that looks realistic is easier to relate to than something that seems unreal. It's easier to suspend your disbelief. However, there is a glaring flaw in that argument.



In theory, it makes perfect sense. In actuality, "realistic" style graphics haven't progressed to the point where they are actually realistic. The most notable distance from reality is in facial movements. It's possible to animate realistic facial animation, but it's rarely (if ever) done in video games other than in cutscenes (which can be even more immersion breaking, but that's a discussion for another time).

For example, Fallout 3--often compared with Borderlands--used a realistic style. In a lot of ways, it worked well. But when it came to watching another character talk, the completely unreal facial animations were extremely immersion breaking (at least for me).

Now, on the other hand, anyone who has ever watched a Disney animated film, a Pixar film, or Anime can tell you that it is definitely possible to feel an emotional attachment to an unrealistic character. Anyone who has seen a Pixar movie and says they didn't feel even a little bit of emotional attachment is lying to you--either that, or they have no soul. There are several video games that I can think of off the top of my head (Okami, No More Heroes, Psychonauts, Team Fortress 2, etc.) that used very stylized graphics, but still managed to be immersive.

So, that leads me to my main point, which is that immersion isn't dependent on realism; it is dependent on consistency and believability. When a world is created and shown to us, it doesn't need to be reminiscent of our own world for us to feel an attachment to it. At this point in time, games that are attempting to mimic reality simply fail. They can be beautiful and some parts can indeed come close to reality, but there is always something keeping it from really achieving realism (like I said before, usually facial animation). We all have the "rules" of what reality looks like embedded in our minds, and present-day graphics simply can't achieve our natural, unconscious standards for what real things look like.

However, a game that is not trying to be realistic can create its own rules for its world, and it is easier for our minds to accept that we are in a world completely unlike our own than it is to alter the rules of the world that we live in.

I understand that, for some people, that realistic graphics style is simply a personal preference, and that's fine. On occasion, I do enjoy a game that utilizes that style. I just don't think that "it's more immersive" is a very good argument.