For fans of western-style open world RPGs, the name that generally springs to mind is Bethesda. They've made their name in this generation by releasing games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion, games that are frightening in their ability to allow the player to do things far outside the realm of traditional video game conventions. For that, I often think of them as one of the best video game developers working in North America, even if their games are just a little bit broken – that ambition is always there.
That's why their latest statements claiming that people who claim that "graphics don't matter" are just flat-out wrong is a little strange. Fallout 3 and Oblivion could charitably be called "quaint" in the technical design department.
I'm not too concerned with that little bit of supposed hypocrisy. In fact, to some degree I actually agree with Pete Hines in his assertion, though I doubt he meant it the way he wanted it to. The problem is that gamers and game critics completely and emphatically have no idea how to talk about the aesthetics of a video game, a discussion that's far more regressive than anyone wants to admit.
This is a problem of definitions. First, the assertion that video games are a visual medium is specious at best. In fact, the history of video games is built upon a foundation of completely visual-free gameplay (Zork or any other text-based adventures of yore say hello), and the interactive fiction competition is still producing some of the most daring narrative scenarios in gaming today. That's more or less on the fringe these days, but the point still stands – while video games are, essentially, a visual medium, it's not a necessity. Gaming can exist outside of its visuals, and often in my opinion, the aural qualities can be as or more important. That's why a game with a fantastic soundtrack can live outside of its lifespan for far longer than a game without. Would Mario be the phenomenon it is without that theme song? It's doubtful.
This could perhaps be read as a salvo into the "graphics vs. gameplay" debate, but I think that everyone would agree that ideally, a game would have both. I've spent a ton of time discussing what makes gameplay interesting on this site, primarily because gameplay is what separates video games from other visual media. But let's not forget the importance of aesthetics in conveying a world, in bringing a game to life.
No one is having a conversation about what makes for interesting aesthetics in games, though. The prevailing attitudes are either to create ever-upward-spiraling development towards the "future" of interactive experiences, where viewing the world and viewing a video game will basically be the same experience, or to simply make things look "cool". We see millions of dollars, billions even, being thrown at something that's essentially unobtainable, or if it is obtainable, what is the purpose? Do more fully developed facial features, the ability for a neon sign to reflect off a pool of water accurately, or millions of carefully constructed pixels that represent blood really make a game look better, or at least more interesting? No. It doesn't.
We've basically created a much bigger problem, which is that the visuals of games have hit a wall, a wall completely dictated by economics. I watched this video, which is apparently supposed to be the benchmark for "the next generation" of video games, but I couldn't really tell the difference. Sure, it must have been hellaciously expensive to produce, and it gets about as close to real life in games that I've seen, but it's still not real life – it's plasticky and just a shade or two off, and honestly it doesn't look that different from the realism-similacra that we've been seeing in this generation. It doesn't create any style – it's simply a technical exercise.
Now, technical exercises carry with them their own kind of excitement, but they don't really show off any kind of artistic vision. Being able to accurately recreate reality went out of fashion in visual art by the time that Edward Hopper died, and hasn't really looked back in any meaningful way. I'm not saying that video games need to mimic developments in the visual art community, as that's a fractured and often far too navel-gaze-y kind of scene, but perhaps there needs to be more discussions around style.
This is, to some degree, why I've always thought that so many invectives hurled at the Wii have been essentially meaningless. Sure, if a developer wants to try to recreate the kinds of experiences that have been attempted on the HD consoles, it will look categorically worse from both an artistic and technical perspective, but developers seem to take far more aesthetic risks on the Wii (well, that is, outside of things that you can find on XBLA or PSN, of course, and there are isolated incidents of interesting retail releases too – 3D Dot Heroes made me insane with want for a PS3 for the longest time). Where are the No More Heroes or the Muramasas? A game like Skyward Sword, which has such an amazingly idiosyncratic art style, is getting ripped on by the usual suspects in the depths of the interwebs, despite the fact that it, unlike so many games, actually looks like something.
At this point, I might even be satisfied with the current generation of consoles for, well, forever, because I'm not sure there's much more to be done that can't already be done on these machines in terms of aesthetics – that is, outside of the aforementioned "search for perfect recreation" that is the pipe dream of most modern developers. The only console that seems to be pushing this area forward in any way at all (good or bad remains to be seen) is the 3DS. It'll be interesting to see what developers do with the added ability to explore depth. It likely will only be done in meaningful ways in about, oh, 20% of the games, but the opportunity is there. But putting more graphical horsepower in consoles is only going to make video games increasingly irrelevant. Before we say that "you're lying if you think graphics don't matter," let's figure out what the fuck graphics even are, anyways.
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You always seem to end these articles a little angry. I really liked most of it, but you seem to blow up by the end. I agree with pretty much everything stated, and aesthetics are something that really seem to miss consideration. Perhaps this is true because games themselves have longer development times than other pieces, and as a result the aesthetic presence of the game often gets fragmented. I certainly know this to be true of many of Blizzard's productions, and this is because their development cycles are so interminably long.
My other argument for the problems of games and aesthetics today largely relates to the fact that no one really knows, to this day, how to work with 3D art and interactivity. They're just bad at it. From 3D FPSes to even great games like Demon's Souls, the art would almost invariably be better if it were 2D. The reason isn't just because of the fact that it's easier to draw in a 2D plane, it's also because the technology has, for a much longer period, evolved in that plane. It's really only recently that games like Demon's Souls have begun to really stretch the bounds of what a 3D world can produce, but it's just a beginning. Something that's truly lush and lively, while similarly being terrifying and claustrophobic, these worlds have only begun to see realization. Super Metroid was doing this too however, and it's still much more natural because an artist normally thinks of their work as existing in a 2D space and thus it naturally translates to a 2D space.
This is why all of Vanillaware's work is so untouchable. It's not just brilliant, it's taking advantage of styles and aesthetics that have, literally, millenia of work to draw upon (pardon the pun). 3D has had… maybe two decades? Fez and Demon's Souls are really the only thing I've seen that I couldn't imagine would be better as a 2D game. Games like Rez, Child of Eden, even Dragon Quarter, while certainly being great games, could probably be improved upon with 2D as their base (well, maybe not for Child of Eden, that remains to be seen).
You're right, I do end up angry at the end of these articles often. Haha. I think I just swear a lot IRL.
I also agree with most of what you say. That's not to say that I don't enjoy playing around in 3D spaces, but it's invariably more awkward and contrived than what you can get in 2D. This even applies to Zelda and Zelda has done more with 3D spaces than most games (I haven't played Demons' Souls so I can't say). That's not really something I'd thought about, actually, and you're absolutely right.
I am interested to see whether the 3DS will actually make 3D movement more natural. Miyamoto has been talking about how it makes 3D movement so much more natural and that despite the successes of Super Mario 64, it's the thing that kept the eventual New Super Mario Bros. playing masses from playing that game. We have been doing 3D movement on a 2D plane, essentially, for a really long time, and the only reason why gamers are OK with this is because they've gotten used to it – it was like learning a new language, but not an exceptionally natural one. The 3D on the 3DS will almost certainly be a gimmick in a lot of games, but I can see it really working for stuff like the Star Fox remake and the upcoming Mario game from the Galaxy team.