Why "Good" Graphics Don’t Matter

I've been saying this for ages! My main big reason is that as games get more and more "realistic", they become less and less accessible, requiring more and more expensive machines to run on. I'd MUCH rather have a new AAA Game Release with a fantastic artstyle that can still run on old-gen consoles and less high end PCs than have a photorealistic experience that only people with $700 to spare.

Very well said, art direction is FAR more important to a game than photorealistic graphics

I recently played the original Half-Life for the first time and felt completely immersed. It's almost like your imagination fills in the gaps where the technology falls flat.

Batman: Arkham Knight looks like a game that came out in 2025.

The point about spotting enemies etc is very important. Overly detailed graphics will often make gameplay actively worse, and although art direction can alleviate this somewhat there's no real way around the fact that clutter is clutter and noise is noise.

Art direction over graphics has always been my go to. Like Sifu which isn't the most graphically pleasing game but its art style and art direction make the game something you'll never forget. In The Museum level, my favorite level in the game, you see all kinds of pieces of art that tell you something about the boss you will fight. And then before you finally get to her, you're surrounded in a red room with statues fighting each other to show her state of mind.

So many games from 2013 - 2015 look better than games today. The Witcher 3, Arkham Knight, Wolfenstein the New Order. I just started replaying Alien Isolation and I am blown away by how incredible it looks. The lighting, the atmosphere, the unique, hand-crafted assets, the sound design. It makes you feel like you are trapped in Ridley Scot's classic horror film. Studios can't be bothered to put in that level of effort any more.

There is a massive difference between graphics and art style. I will take a excellent art style everytime. Love hand drawn games such as Hades, Skull girls, Cuphead, hollow Knight. I feel like more effort goes into the game. It means more to me. I am usually more into the game play rather than the graphics anyway! Have we reached the cap then gone back to better times?

Damn, I was really hoping he'd bring up Hi-Fi Rush. It's a perfect example of Art Syle taking precedence.

Visibility is such an important key point. There are so many games that feel incredibly overloaded with details and effects that it is often hard to focus and if everything "pops" than there are no real highlights anymore.

Some games which held up exceptionally well are A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Zelda Wind Waker, Metroid Prime trilogy and Super Mario Galaxy. I'm glad Nintendo has always put gameplay and art over graphics, as it makes their games so much easier to go back to and enjoy than ones from other systems.

This explains a lot about why older titles are just easier to get immersed in, thought it was just a personal preference. Can't believe borderlands was left out of this essay though. When speaking about distinctive art style those games I've always felt stood out.

The Source Engine always feels special to me. Games created in it have a timeless look. The facial animations in particular have actually aged better than a lot of recent games.

exactly what i thought about game developement these days. Pursuing realism is going to limit your ability to get creative in a way. Games like Elden ring stands out because of the incredible art styles and the perfect portrayal of the fantasy element, plus the attention to details in building the environment. Games nowadays are more like art pieces to me. The more elements of exploration and uncertainties there are, the better the games

My thoughts exactly. As a bit older person, playing Final Fantasy 7 when it was new, those very simple graphics the game provided were all your brain needed to create the 'movie' inside your head. Characters on screen didn't even had mouths or noses, only eyes. But the emotions they went through were felt is they were my own... Then in newer games, more detail and realism kicked in. But the more realistic the game tries to be, the more irritated it feels when still something isn't. Like they spend tons of time to make the characters' hair react to gravity when the person bows down, but you see the necklace he's wearing still glued to it's chest. It's been said by your grandparents, but remains true: Books are better then movies. Nothing can beat your own imagination and put it in words. Ofc, this is only 1 part in games. Gameplay is a whole diferent story and can easily make or break a game as well.

I'm only a hobbyist, but what always gets to me is that the game engine is actually separate from the graphics. The engines tells the model to "follow these instructions when event happens", but what it doesn't quite do is actually create the assets. That's what something like Blender, Maya, or ZBrush does. So, you can actually produce great graphics in Unity and trash graphics in Unreal. It really depends on the skills of the artists and coders.

What makes this even more frustrating is that game characters will never look "real" no matter how advanced graphics get. Our eyes/brains are literally programmed to recognize faces and instantly pick up on even the slightest unnatural movement or feature which results in that disturbing uncanny valley feeling, so this whole quest for realism is a wild goose chase. Props for mentioning the demon's souls remake, that's an excellent example of art direction absolutely eclipsing graphics fidelity. What's funny about that game is that even though they had the opportunity to have like 100 times the detail they ironically didn't seem to pay much attention to said details, Latria prisoners having perfect pearly white teeth and looking like they're in perfect health, the blacksmiths lacking the scales of the original etc.

They always get brought up in discussions like this (for good reason) but Deep Rock Galactic and Valheim don't have the "best photo-realistic graphics" we've ever seen, but I'd still say that Valhiem is an absolutely beautiful game to look at and Deep Rock has an incredibly charming art style. A game with "the most photo-realistic graphics" will eventually become dated as technology improves, while games like Valheim, Deep Rock, even Minecraft and TF2 will stand the test of time because of their unique art style.

I think its very interesting how at the same time, the animated movie industry is also in a shift from prioritizing photorealisitc animation to more sylized animation

One example I think you missed out on is Ghost of Tsushima. It showed that you can do both great art design while also having really good, readable graphics.