From the year 2000 onwards video games saw a leap in graphics with the introduction of the Sony Playstation2 in 2000, Nintendo's GameCube in 2001 and Microsoft's Xbox in 2002. Games started to look less like implied versions of what they're supposed to look like and more like fairly realistic representations of what they're supposed to look like. And then with the release of the Xbox 360 in 2005 and the Playstation3 in 2006 the visuals of games as a whole started to successfully represent realism. And now with the current generation of consoles realism is something that appears to be often achieved successfully with Infamous Second Son and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes.
Prior to the PS2 era when naturalistic looking games were much more of a challenge to look good due to hardware limitations it made sense to make a more stylised game such as Mario 64 (1996) and Banjo-Kazooie (1998). Creating realistic organic shapes with limited polygons was difficult, and complex values and colour in textures was hard to create with such small texture sheets, so making caricature like characters with a saturated colour pallet was the way to make a good looking game. So now with advancements in technology and the ability to make very naturalistic looking games, why do we still see simple and stylised games?
The thing that draws me towards naturalistic looking games is usually how impressive they look games like Crysis (2007) and Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004) both examples of very good looking games for their time, and it's great to see this and watch it continue to improve. But as of late the rate of how the looks of games are improving in terms of realism is plateauing off, having more triangles in a model just isn't improving the looks that much. For example Kotaku reported that the protagonist of Infamous Second son's character model consists of more than 60000 triangles, 7500 of which are in his beanie hat, this number seems highly unnecessary considering it's a simple hat, I wouldn't be surprised if the triangle count of that hat was halved the majority of players wouldn't bat an eyelid. My point is that naturalistic games are becoming stale, soon it's not even going to be a talking point weather a game looks like it's portrayed realism well.
Recent games that don't strive to look naturalistic tap into a visual communication of atmosphere and emotion that is rarely seen in most modern naturalistic looking games. I think the best example for this is Limbo (2010), Limbo's visuals are very simple: monochrome and silhouetted. The game possesses this eerie feel about it, you can tell that there's something not quite right about the game, this almost makes it feel like a horror game not horror like jump scares, blood or fear of playing the game, just a strange fear of the unknown. The game really doesn't tell you much hence the fear of the unknown, which presses you to progress in the game. Other examples of recent games that use it's visual style in this way to create atmosphere and emotion about the game include Journey (2012) and Outland (2011).To conclude the reason I think we have stylised games on the market today is because these games posses an atmosphere and emotion in their visuals that naturalistic games cannot do in the same way. I think we will continue to see more and more stylised games in the future as the novelty of games which are a carbon copy of real life will wear off and consumers will want these visually exiting experiences.
Bibliography:
http://kotaku.com/how-infamous-second-son-manages-to-look-so-good-1553220653
Images:
http://www.culturegeek.tn/la-next-gen-tech-lincroyable-evolution-de-lara-croft/
http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/03/25/infamous-second-son-the-magic-behind-the-beauty-explained-in-depth-awesome-concept-art-revealed/
http://uk.ign.com/images/games/metal-gear-solid-ground-zeroes-ps3-141058/523b36ce967084c470e94a81
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/super-mario-64-virtual-console-review/1100-6162119/
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/viewer.php?id=187912&mode=article
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/22/the-after-math-playstation-4-special/
http://www.gamesradar.com/limbo-review/
http://www.giantbomb.com/outland/3030-32552/
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