dramatis said:
He's not judging the quality of the game by its visuals, he's judging the visuals. The character models and environment objects are definitely not comparable to many games of this generation.
Wasn't saying he was. I was saying though that graphics aren't a switch, like scope isn't. They clearly made a choice.
Was it worth it? judging from this thread I'd say it's a resounding yes.
dramatis said:
The assumption that somehow future Persona titles are being delayed because Atlus is doing facial animations of all things is a bit odd. They have done facial animation before (see the Raidou Kuzunoha PS2 branch of SMT (quite well I add)), but it added life to the characters in a different way from still portraits, and those games were still quite quickly developed and released. Graphical advancement has never been a significant factor in Atlus's games.
You're being too literal about what I was trying to convey.
It's not the facial animations (and not necessarily a new Persona, I was talking about Atlus games in general, Catherine is more high profile when it comes to graphical ambition than anything Atlus before), what I'm saying is that the higher profile they get the more obliged to make those things they feel even if deep down they're a loss of time/they might even limit their creativity, yet they're not something that'll make their games necessarily better, back when P3 came out lots of games had facial animations or better graphics, and the lack of it didn't mean it was a worse game, quite the contrary. I always felt Atlus games felt they had to compensate how low budget they were by having kick ass artistic directions for instance. (not that they'll lose that now)
But I'd take that kick-ass-different-artistic-direction any day in spite of yet more graphics emphasis.
dramatis said:
What you're mistaking in the long development times of current gen games isn't necessarily spent on just graphical emphasis rather than gameplay. Japanese developers are learning the advantages of having a flexible engine with the tools to help them make games quickerbut developing these tools in the first place takes time. Atlus has baked its own engine for future games, most likely springboarding from the experience of Catherine, and still releases quality games every year.
That matter could sprout a thread of it's own. Anywho, better graphics take more time to do, stuff with more polygons take more time to model, higher resolution textures take more time to draw/apply/fit whatever.
A game like Xenoblade on a HD platform would need several times the staff it had, and that's not always a good thing.
dramatis said:
There's no particular beauty to sacrificing graphics for something bigger. If that were the case any hack can claim their shitty graphics were for the sake of higher gameplay, and have no regard for an aesthetic style suitable to the game style or story. More praiseworthy is the support graphics can give to the experience and gameplay. Minecraft's blocky style looks like a graphical nightmare, but serves the core gameplaybuildingextremely well. Journey is no magnificent tech demo, but evokes the right sense of isolation and enigma.
We disagree; I like seeing software that I never thought was possible on the hardware. Sadly this gen that's a rarity, because no one on the HD platforms is trying to do the FFXII of their generation, and who says FFXII says Shadow of the Colossus or even Zelda Twilight Princess. They're just going happy go merry at better graphics whilst sacrificing stuff.
For instance Resistance 2 had 60 players online mode, Resistance 3 has 16 players in the name of better graphics. How's that pushing the envelope? the further this generation gets the more claustrophobic stuff is getting, because unlike other generations most developers were caught in the loop that in order to achieve better graphics they have to sacrifice stuff. And they're sacrificing alright, they're sacrificing everything in order to push more juice for graphics purposes.
And it's not about graphics, it never really was.
dramatis said:
A better argument for Xenoblade's crappy visual bits would be that the emphasis is not on the characters but the world, and therefore the world's look had greater priority. It is not a sacrifice but a deliberate choice. For you to consider it a sacrifice to begin with means you acknowledge that the graphics are not on par with other games.
Never said they were, it's a sacrifice, but it's a sacrifice that takes balls, which is my point. They're pushing the envelope, and not the Wii envelope, the envelope of the whole genre. It takes balls.
dramatis said:
It's a bit presumptuous to say that something like XB's environments can't be done with high-end graphics even on the PC, especially when Skyrim is coming at the end of this year.
Jesus
I'm starting to wonder if you read what I said.
I'm saying if you tried the Xenoblade scale on any HD JRPG on any hardware the graphics would suffer, it's not rocket science and it doesn't mean they'd suddenly turn into Wii graphics or that superior hardware can only aspire to this; it's more like, this is pretty much Wii's limit pushing this scope, HD console's would have other limit and PC's would have yet another limit, but they would have a limit in which the achievable detail would be lower than doable in other scenarios/if other design choices were taken. They'd suffer anywhere, basically. Scope is a bitch when it comes to hardware and even talent resources, unless we're talking stuff like Oblivion with "random unimaginative and boring terrain generators" for the fields.
