Graphics over gameplay: is it really all that bad?

Whether or not graphics really add all that much to video games has been heavily debated in the last few years. And once the Wii and PS3 come out to steal the 360’s spotlight, we’ll surely hear about it all over again.

Though it may not seem like it due to the clever use of lighting and camera angles, the colossus is actually only an inch taller than you.

But, if we think about it logically, is there really a difference between the two? Some would say, “Of course there is! What are you, high? You can’t play with pictures!” And yes, they’d be perfectly correct. But what people don’t think about is the complementary effect that graphics can have on gameplay.

Take, for example, Shadow of the Colossus. Not exactly the prettiest title in some respects, but one cannot say it isn’t graphically intensive. The sheer size of the Colossi and the lighting engine employed probably put a big strain on the PS2’s Emotion Engine and its separate VPU’s. You can tell by how the game’s frame-rate starts to stutter when fighting the Colossi.

SCEI used lighting in the game to make it look like the Colossi were much farther than they were. If you’ve ever looked at the Colossus’ face when on the ground, it would seem that the distance between the two was rather large. In raw 3D terms, it’s probably not, but with the added ability of a competent lighting engine, the user is oblivious to this fact. They therefore think the Colossus is hundreds of times bigger than the player.

Now, combined with the fact that the sole objective in the game is to bring these suckers down, the player starts to get excited. “You see that thing?! The thing’s huge!” This all happens before you even push a button. Graphics, in this instance, have increased the amount of enjoyment that a player has with a game. Some even say how you play SotC isn’t all that amazing, but the experience that they’ve had was amazingly worthwhile. One would therefore deduce that the graphics were the primary reason why they did.

Didn’t Van Damme do this in Cyborg?

Now, think of Splinter Cell. That series has always been at the forefront of employing good lighting effects. The stealth gameplay in the game depends on light, or rather, the lack thereof. If the lighting was suggestive (like there was an in-game meter that told you how much light was around the player, but was not evident by looking at the game) then the realism that the player wants is not there. They would probably feel somewhat uninvolved with the game’s universe. Again, graphics were one of the reasons why Splinter Cell was so much fun to play, and you can see that for yourself by reading its reviews.

Now, don’t get me wrong. We’ve had games that look like crap and become masterpieces. Pac Man, anyone? We’ve also had games that were based on stealth that had graphics that are far below Splinter Cell’s. The earlier Thief games come to mind. And those games were great to play.

What I’m trying to say is that we’ve attained a far more immersive gameplay structure when introducing more powerful graphical presentations.

FEAR has a million bullets and clouds of dust flying on screen, and it makes as if the player is in a room controlled by sheer chaos. Wind Waker’s ocean is probably the biggest chunk of open horizon in any game, and Twilight Princess promises to be even bigger. These games could not be achieved with hardware of past years. No one could imagine the types of experience we would be having when playing games on the Apple II, for instance.
Another point is the fact that people just like to look at nice-looking things. Take Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, for example. People just love to look at it. They love how the leaves on the trees sway with the wind, as well as many other graphical minutiae. Psychologically, I have no idea why this is. Maybe people like seeing how far technology has come, where they like to see fake things that look extremely realistic. Or maybe they like controlling these insanely realistic people with a touch of a button. Maybe they just like trees.

Why go outside when Bethesda has captured nature’s tranquil beauty?

But some people’s enjoyment of playing the game, i.e. gameplay, is based on the fact that they just look at it more than they play it. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve been known to ride Agro in Shadow of the Colossus just to look at the scenery.

On the flip side, if a game is pumping out insane amounts of polygons and texture effects, but is a dread to play, we can say that graphics are totally useless when talking about the experience you had with the game. This basically comes down to the fact that graphics were emphasized more when developing the game, rather than its gameplay. Look at Criterion’s Black.

One could imagine how good the Wii experience could have been if Nintendo put more money into graphics but still used the wand controller. We all know why they went the route they did, but think of playing FEAR with the Wii-mote. It would be the best of both worlds, and what’s wrong with that?

Gameplay has become a combination of graphics and basic human interaction, but people always seem to break these two aspects apart, making it almost sacrilegious to say they‘re nearly the same thing. We’re at the beginning of a new era in interactive media, where gameplay and graphics finally hold hands as the lovers they were destined to become.