The Video Game Critic

To showcase technical prowess, games strive for realism. To try to be all serious and grown up, games try to be realistic. As we move to VR, its "virtual reality", not "immersive 3D" or some other term.

On the other hand, Nintendo, with a family friendly brand, keeps a cartoony look. Pixar has its artificial family friendly look. Anime, meanwhile, has a heavily stylized look - possibly to help convey emotion and the fantastic.

Here is a quote by Walt Disney working toward Snow White

Disney in 1935 wrote:The first duty of a cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as they actually happen - but to give a caricature of life or action - to picture on the screen things that have run thru the imagination of the audience to bring to life dream fantasies and imaginative fancies that we have all thought or to bave pictured in various forms during our lives.

Later, Disney would make live action fantasies, such as Mary Poppins or Herbie the Love Bug. Some live action movies were full of the fantastic, others more mundane comedies. Some cartoons had talking animals, but some were quite realistic, like Black Cauldron.

Where are you and video game realism?

The best I can do is to say that it all depends.

For instance, I love the racing genre. Yet I can happily go from F-Zero one moment to iRacing the next. I appreciate arcade racers but I also love realism as well and find myself even in iRacing wishing for features to be implemented like the ability to stall your vehicle in order to take it even a step further towards real-life.

It all depends on the game and what I'm looking for out of it.

Fun definitely outweighs realism to me. I can understand trying to be realistic when you're creating a sim game or something else along those lines, but I feel as though being overly focused on realism in most other games tends to kill the fun. It's a video game after all; there's tons of potential for creativity.

It doesn't matter too much whether it's realistic, but considering how I don't like my games too big, it seems impossible to find a game that projects realism that is the size of Goldeneye for example. I feel like in the late 90's 3D got pushed to be more and more realistic at the expense of imagination. I thought the Jaguar had some 3D games that looking stunning while obviously not portraying "real life". I'll use I-War as an example. It was totally crazy and I think it looks fantastic. I'd like to see how imaginatively unrealistic a 3D game can be while being the size of gen 1 PS1/N64 games.

I got to say, it depends for me too. If I'm playing a military shooter, yeah I'd want it to be pretty realistic if for no other reason than because it's mirroring something that brave men and women go through every day, and it'd be wrong to, uh, cartoon-ify it, you know? Likewise, if I'm playing something like GTA, I want to feel like I'm playing in a real city, with real people, even if I'm doing things that I'd never do in real life (on a side note, I've never cared for the mods that give you superpowers because I think that lessens the experience). The Elder Scrolls obviously isn't going to feel realistic since you're fighting orcs, elves, and dragons, but it needs to at least LOOK realistic since the world is such a huge part of what makes it what it is.

Other games like JRPGs, though? Go wild. It's called Final Fantasy for a reason. In that case, it's more important that characters act realistically during the cutscenes rather than having the world and the storyline itself feel realistic. That doesn't mean you can go and do anything, of course. Rule #1 for writing fantasy is that everything has to make sense in your given setting. Like, it was realistic for Frodo and the gang to have to take the Ring to Mordor before Sauron could take over Middle Earth because that kind of conflict is normal Tolkien's world. It would be unrealistic, however, for Gandalf to ring up his Martian buddies on his cell phone and have them throw the Ring into the sun because that doesn't fit within the parameters Tolkien set up for his own world.

Ehh, I'm rambling now. I guess what I mean is that I always want there to be some form of realism, but what kind I want depends on what game I'm playing.

DaHeckIzDat wrote: If I'm playing a military shooter, yeah I'd want it to be pretty realistic if for no other reason than because it's mirroring something that brave men and women go through every day, and it'd be wrong to, uh, cartoon-ify it, you know?

To be fair though, most military shooters are not simulations, they are games. People don't self heal like in many games (let alone 'respawn'), and the gameplay mechanics don't echo real life physics. So, if you are okay with fantasy biology, why hold the line at photorealism?

While video games about police are not as common as crooks, does that need realism? Would a video game about firefighters, doctors, coast guard rescuers, etc have to be held to a higher standard of realism out of respect?

Was Battlezone a better game because it was more realistic than Combat? Is Combat a bad game because you have fantasy elements like steerable missles and invisible barriers or tanks? Is Combat disrespectful to the military? Food for thought.

DaHeckIzDat wrote:Rule #1 for writing fantasy is that everything has to make sense in your given setting....Ehh, I'm rambling now. I guess what I mean is that I always want there to be some form of realism, but what kind I want depends on what game I'm playing.

Rambling is fine by me. Rule #1 is indeed vital for 'willing suspension of disbelief' in all sorts of media. I think movies like The Revenant failed, and I feel its overrated because of that. Had it been a movie about Batman or Wolverine, I would have been more willing to accept the bodily harm.

You say it depends on what game you are playing. I will say that realism can help immersion. For instance, as much as I like Star Trek, part of the franchise is that people get along, things work smoothly, everything is so clean, there is little vice, etc. That's nice and all, but it makes it seem unreal. Star Wars is a universe of vice, filth, dysfunction, and people not getting along. Of course, Star Wars has 'hyperdrive' which seems like a rabbit to pull out of the hat as plot demands, many very silly aliens, magic monks, etc. So, which is more realistic? Does it matter?

I think realism is nice and all (and on same games it is amazing) but I like how a lot of games don't shoot for realism and instead go with cell shaded graphics or artistic designs. I think in a lot of ways those types of games are far more impressive and really help define the feel of as game. We're now at a point where graphics can add a lot to the feel of the game and I like how a lot of game designers choose a certain design to add to the game's overall feel and presentation.