Adventure Gamers - Forums

I am a fan of dark mystery themes, crime themes and illustrated realism-style graphics. I think that there has been recently too many “artsy-partsy” games. Not that I strickly would hate them, it’s just that they have overtaken the genre. In my games, I prefer realism over art. Anyone annoyed by this besides me?

I like the style of Black Mirror games and Secret Files-games. It’s hard to explain what I mean with “artsy-partsy” ... something like fantasy world… alien objects… just things that doesn’t make sense in the real world.

Stylized Art is where an artist takes an initiative to incorporate a specific style to an overall artistic direction. What he’s talking about is ‘Realistic’ visuals. Maybe not Photorealistic like the game you stated, Gabriel Knight 2, but not to the where everything looks like a graphic novel, cartoon, or some unusually stylized direction.

Gabriel Knight 1 is pretty realistic in its direction. Sure its painted, but it was nothing less than trying to capture the beauty of realism. Hence why Gabriel Knight 2 took the live action route.

Quest for Glory has always captured the realistic look, but it was pretty fantastical because of its setting.

Isn’t Still Life considered realistic? Bad choice probably since its a 2.5D game.

In the end, its about imitating life, not the emotional artistic outlook of it which drives such stylized visuals.

I think it would be cool to have the technological powerhouse of engines used for Uncharted and Heavy Rain to create a 2d perspective point and click adventure. It’d be so awesome.

Still Life was definitely realistic. I loved the graphics of that game.

Oscar - 26 October 2012 04:16 AM

Well, we just had Resonance, Secret Files 3, Miskatonic, Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel, Stroke of Fate and NCIS. That’s just in the last year. What games have you been playing?

Resonance is yet to be tested, but i’m certainly looking forward to it, because I really liked Blackwell games. Secret Files 3 was awesome. Miscatonic I didn’t like, because it felt so cheap and amateruish. Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel was brilliant, BUT ruined with one of the gaming history’s most horrible interface. (seriously, has using things together ever been more frustrating?) Stroke Of Fate was good. Played it through and really enjoyed it (only nitpicking is the fact that first sentence of the main character is not voice-acted in dialogues, but that was rather small issue)NCIS… was that really 2D 3rd person point & click..? If it was, I’ve missed something.

i’m with Oscar….i’m pretty difficult in being dissuaded to play a game i’ve already started….but that voice acting in DMH…..man oh man…..it’s not even amateurish…no it’s like getting people off the streets or unprepared voice actors and throwing them in a studio with a script in their hands and without any time to skim read it they did the VOs.i haven’t continued it yet..and i’ve only played like 5 minutes…i will play it sometime but now it’s at the bottom of my list.and for the record,imo A stroke of fate was better than DMH by lightyears,in general and as a book adaptation(since both of them were).i’m actually waiting on the sequel and i have no problem with Akella in general but DMH felt very rushed.at least the english localisation.it might actually be better in russian.

Not pertraining to DMH. I too dislike the use of ‘real photos’ or the like. One of the games which I changed my opinion about (I wanted to post in the opinion thread, but I didn’t find the need to discuss) was the Lost Crown. Playing it again, I found it very engaging, but the simplistic 3d models with photomanipulation for backgrounds, it just seemed like a cheap photoshop job.

Its either go for polish, or don’t go at all. Thats just my opinion, I bet everyone loved Lost Crown’s graphics, but it just isn’t all that great. Every artist I know finds the backgrounds amateurish just because of the way they were handled.

lewuz - 27 October 2012 05:19 PM

All in all - for me, in adventures the story, atmosphere etc are more important than graphics. All kind of graphics can hide a brilliant game. I’m also playing a lot of FPS, TPS and driving games, and those games have to offer nice 3D picture as that may be the only thing to impress with.

Well, you can’t have atmosphere without graphics. Graphics are EXTREMELY important for atmosphere. Graphics are meant to complement the game, not hide hideous gameplay or to overshadow the brilliance of it.

what he said ^^.though sometimes seemingly bad graphics work quite well in setting a good atmosphere.i think it’s more important to think of how you can create that atmosphere.if you see stylised art works for people then why not?i myself like both stylised and not.but it has to go well with the story,they have to complement each other like Monolith said otherwise the result is underachieving.