Fable 2 art director wants players to appreciate the big picture

Pretty stupid comment to make. It's simply stating the obvious. There might be a small segment of gamers who are also in the industry and can appreciate what specific type of mapping, lighting effect or particle is used but for the most part we all just want to be engaged into an experience.

I appreciate his sentiment but I think it's already the way most of us view a game.

This game will have to be a huge success and praised from the media and joystiq readers for me to give it a shot. I was let down with the first iteration so I am a bit skeptical. I have a similar feeling with Killzone 2. But, in all fairness after I replayed the original Killzone I did enjoy it much more than when I first played the "Halo Killer". I should probably go back and play the original Fable without all of the hype and empty promises so I can enjoy it for what it is.

I said it was random, not stupid =P... because I agree with the man that people don't take in the level of detail games give off these days.

and the reason I think it's random, is because I wouldn't see Lionhead saying something like this..


Well actually no.. I take the first comment back.. I do see them saying this lol.

Theres nothing wrong with his comment. Generaly I don't think about the technical aspect of a game until I've been playing it for a long time. Example, when I played Oblivion I thought wow this looks great and is realy damn fun. Now after having played it off and on since it came out, I think about how there engine works or its presentation.

10 years or however long into the 3D era, and I can absolutely pick out when things are heavily aliased, or when low resolution textures have been used, or the difference between HDR and Bloom etc. I do agree with him when he says that most gamers don't notice though.

For me it's all about muddiness or blurriness. As long as the textures are properly anti-aliased, they aren't muddy (see: Twilight Princess) and they aren't blurry (see: Grand Theft Auto 4, while some may not agree) I'm fine. Playing the Little Big Planet beta (or Crysis, I guess) you realize how amazing textures can be. The only problem is that LBP can only do it because it's 2D (and thus not heavy on resources) and Crysis can only do it on an expensive computer. I'm excited for the next gen, if only because we'll FINALLY be able to say goodbye to jaggies (for good. yes I know some games this-gen have AA, but I'm talking ALL games) and hello to high res textures that look realistic.




Yeah who am I kidding. They'll opt instead to make everything 1080p @ 60 FPS without sexy Hi-Res textures.

He's not an asshat.

Most people simply don't care:
For example
http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/articles//a/1/6/1/0/7/8/Euro9.jpg.jpg

Some will be ROTFL at "true next gen grass ans AA" but most won't even see diference.

That's not what he's getting at. It doesn't take much for someone to realize that the masterpieces of the renaissance are great works of art, but they might not understand the exact techniques behind them.

When the general public plays games, they can appreciate the visuals. But not everyone is going to be saying wow, that parallax mapping is fantastic, or, I love how well the subsurface scattering was baked into the materials, or, it's good to see how they implemented ray tracing and still got a proper shadow bias.

Perhaps "illiterate" wasn't the best word to use, as many people with even a small amount of technical skill will understand or at least recognize these terms. But I agree, for the most part the general public simply won't understand the kind of technical skill and engineering that goes into making games look as good as they do.

Word.

Good to see someone gets it.

i'm not going to lie, but i love just spending time looking for wonderfully rendered scenes in the games i play.

i can't tell you how much times i got shot in the face in cod4 because i was like "wow, look at the dust particles" or some shit like that.

same in bioshock, i just loved looking in every room to check out the designs etc.

those are the reasons i enjoy games with good graphics, not to flex my e-peen that my pc can run these at high settings, but that i can spend time enjoying my experience that much more.

brian, I am right beside you..

One of the main things I love to do in games is admire the detail of the work put into them.. when GTA IV came out.. I would admire all the little things like how the water physics took effect.

I just got done playing Halo: CE a few days ago, and never noticed that the game has great dynamic lighting.. and when I saw it, I actually said "wow.. that looks really well done for it's time."

Even on Bioshock.. I would 'awe' at the effects that you would see such as when a beam of light would shine through and would cause the dust particles to reflect in it.

Though this article was somewhat blah.. and the guy sounds somewhat mean.. he is 100% correct.. and that people just don't admire the work put into the games that come out these days.

Actually, she's a famous Taiwanese artist named Jo Chen...

http://jo-chen.com/cgi-bin/main/nicky.cgi?ctgry=4

Though there were a ton of concept artists/designers with that very painterly style coming out of Korea.