It seems that nearly every time someone rips apart a game, they do so by taking a poor screenshot of said title and pointing at its texture flaws.
The most notorious of these examples is Metal Gear Solid 4. At TGS 2005 when the first trailer was unveiled, nearly everyone except for the Metal Gear fans said that the graphics were CGI. When it turned out that the graphics were real-time, critics quickly changed their position by saying that the game wasn't really that impressive after all, since the textures were--as some claimed--"N64 quality." In fact, numerous comparison pictures were posted of N64 game textures against close-ups of MGS4 textures in pictures like the one below:
Is the above screenshot hard on the eyes? In some ways, yes. Is it representative of the visual quality of the game? Not even close.
What bad screenshot cherry-pickers often fail to verbalize is that there are many things that a still image cannot capture. Still pictures can convey the high detail of its character models, but many visual elements that buttress the presentational quality of MGS4 are only discernable in motion. For example, the game's destructible environments, massive firefights, frame rate performance, animation quality, and details such as dust effects following collapsing buildings are only visible when observing the game as it's running.
- Debut Gameplay Demonstration
- Assassin's Solid Gameplay
MGS4 isn't the only game whose reputation suffers as a result of poor textures. Halo 3 was criticized for both texture and aliasing issues early on in its development.
The final game is still imperfect in these respects, but it does not warrant the criticism that Bungie "lied" in its original trailer.
What remains true is that Halo 3 features some of the biggest, most visually impressive battlefield vistas ever, with dozens of battleships flying overhead and firefights breaking out across the map. The moment when a Marine airborne carrier blocked out the sun and nearly landed on my head was one of those "oh ****" moments that you just can't convey in screenshots. These moments and vistas make up for any tiny flaws that can be seen by staring at some ground or wall texture. But so often, that's how screenshot cherry-pickers try to narrowly define a game.
- Scarab Tank Battle
- E3 2007 Gameplay Trailer
The Grand Theft Auto series is another example of a franchise unjustly portrayed as visually ugly games due to texture issues. People point at GTA IV's textures and say that gamers will invariably be disappointed.
But GTA games have never been about constructing the perfect environment for a nice looking screenshot. Instead, Rockstar North has always tried to convey the best presentation in the context of a massive open world game. Staring at the textures of a single burned out car might give credence to the notion that the game is graphically ugly, but take a step back in any GTA game and you'll see the immense amount of time and energy that went into detailing a stylistically distinctive but immersive world.
- Everyone's a Rat Trailer
And remember the huge public outcry against Mass Effect following the release of these screenshots?
Fans were enraged and cherry-pickers made a festival of posting them in order to push the point that Bioware had deceived the gaming community with their initial trailers.
The final game still has some bland textures and pop-in issues, but it also features unprecedented real-time conversational animations, stunning biotic and tech effects, and richly detailed environments wrapped in a visually convincing sci-fi universe.
- Galactic Conquest Gameplay Montage
- Launch Trailer
So what's the purpose of this thread? To excuse developers for games that feature poor textures?
Not at all.
My point is that from a visual standpoint, the quality of a game is so much more than simply its texture fidelity, and gamers should be wary of screenshot cherry-pickers who try to bring down a game by defining its presentational quality strictly in this narrow-sighted way.
Log in to comment