Real Games Have Curves

First, let’s take a look at the Fallout 4 trailer released today. Let’s look more specifically at Fallout 4’s graphics as demonstrated in the new trailer. Did the textures look less than glossed over? The models lacking a few polygons, extra animations and nuance? Are you disappointed that each reflection wasn’t glistening in ungodly amounts of luminosity? If so, you’re contributing to a major issue in contemporary game development.

Game development studios are faced with a major fundamental choice when it comes to creating games. There are two paths, two schools of thought when it comes to game development. You could focus a massive amount resources on the graphics, the look and feel, of a game, or put the emphasis on actual gameplay. In the current gaming climate, with game budgets exceeding a hundred million dollars, studios tend to focus on the immediate pizazz and selling point of flashy graphics. In putting so much emphasis on the visuals of a game, the actual “fun” can sometimes get lost in the mix. Graphics run only skin deep, prettiness does not necessarily make a great game. Also, like beauty, graphics fade with time. “Ocarina of Time”, once hailed as the pinnacle of achievement of the graphics world, has aged into a bleary textured mess by today’s standards. Game graphics generate buzz, and buzz generates money. At the end of the day, the video game industry must oil it’s gears with cold hard cash, and a visually groundbreaking game will turn heads even if it’s gameplay leads much to be desired.

This is where Bethesda, the company behind the Fallout series, has broken apart from the pack. I believe they’re making a statement by releasing a trailer to a hugely anticipated game that focuses on actual in-game visuals. The gaming audience is used to the concept of flashy, over-promising trailers. One famous example being last year’s Watch Dogs, which looked incredibly promising and visually groundbreaking in every promotional video released for it. Watch Dogs was going to take the open world genre onto the next generation of consoles, with a heavy emphasis on next generation graphics. When Watch Dogs was finally released, however, all the hype turned out to be completely unfounded. The game committed one of the most heinous crimes imaginable in the world of video game-dom; a once E3 darling proved to be another generic GTA clone in a world full of generic GTA clones. I don’t think that anyone was actually surprised, or shocked for that matter, the video game community is a typically skeptical bunch. With at least two successful franchises under their belt, Bethesda has gained our trust, and is focusing solely on what is best for the games it produces.

Graphical development both eats away at, and develops the gaming industry like a digital ouroboros. On the one hand you have graphics as a gold standard of video game progress. One of the most obvious trackers of change and growth from year to year, generation to generation in the gaming world is graphics. Graphics define entire eras of video game history. You’ve got your early arcade pixels, your 16 bit sprites era, your early 3D graphical consoles on up to the more clearly defined textures and shapes on today’s gaming world. Graphics have always been on the forefront of videogame-craft, which makes sense until you get the modern day. Vectorman for Sega Genesis used to be a graphical achievement, but the developers of Vectorman never had to realistically recreate a forest floor, complete with hundreds or mossy trees rendered in real-time. The develops of Vectorman never had to worry about weather effects, shaders, complex particle physics; they only had to worry about a 2D sprite composed of dangling green balls, shooting projectile balls at other sprites. The core team behind Vectorman was no more than 30 or so people. At some point, probably around the 3D era, the time, and man-power, it took to create a graphically competitive and marketable big-budget game became immense. This meant that only larger game studios were able to put resources into developing games, and, as the teams involved in each aspect of a game’s development became more specialized game-making as a whole becomes less cohesive. In mainstream gaming, it’s no longer about a small group of 30 people, a few programmers, a few artists, banding together to make something they believe in, it’s now hundreds of developers being pushed and pulled in a million different directions while trying to meet unrealistic deadlines and expectations.

Bethesda has managed to do something special in this era of big box games. They’ve kept the dark and satiric soul of the Fallout series intact while building the franchise both in terms of popularity, and expanded gameplay. I believe this is partially achieved through a reduced emphasis on Fallout’s graphics. Don’t get me wrong, Fallout is not an ugly game by any means. It has all the basic bells and whistles to visually pass by today’s demanding standards. Graphics are still important, but they don’t need to be the end-all-be-all of video games. By putting focus away from graphical elements, Bethesda allows Fallout to breath a little more. Its appeal is crafted by it’s captivating gameplay, and bizarrely imaginative setting, not by how shiny they can make every puddle of water. Bethesda knows what they’re doing by putting out a trailer with true gameplay graphics. They’re inviting the prospective player into the world, knowing full well that it’s a video game, not a tech demo. We’ve seen, specifically with Watch Dogs, what can happen when a game puts all it’s eggs in the “next generation visuals” basket. Typically, once these “groundbreaking” games are released, the gaming community quickly bores of the visuals, and finds that the gameplay is nothing to write home about. Bethesda is well aware of these valuable lessons from the past, and it seems they seek to release the exact opposite of Watch Dogs in Fallout 4.

It must be scary developing a big-budget mainstream game these days. You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t. It takes courage to stand out, and carve out a unique identity when hundreds of employees, millions of dollars and a tight deadline are all involved. Too often gameplay is thrown out as secondary to the immediate feedback, and the flashy appeal of cutting-edge graphics. Let’s hope that Bethesda is bucking the trend, and sticking it to the system in true Fallout fashion. Let’s make games fun before the nuclear apocalypse.