The pics thread

[Der Morgenstern]

I have this above my computers at the lab.

 

[Zephyrus]

I love Rheims Cathedral! Too bad the Krauts bombed out most of the stained glass.

 

[waif]

I'm totally in support of the idea of a technological 'cap' of sorts. Aesthetics is firmly secondary to a quality storyline and playability. There are times when graphics enhance the experience, but if they were really all that essential, people wouldn't still be playing NES games. I really don't need a game to look any better than Skyrim does, for example. What more can be gained beyond what the visuals in this game capture?

Aesthetics and graphical fidelity are separate things. Aesthetics are what make Diablo 2 still look good despite its laughable graphical fidelity.
Also, while Skyrim's graphical fidelity is adequate, the incredibly poor animations really do detract from the experience. It's hard to feel immersed in another world when someone sits down and their sword clips right through the chair.

But yes, plot and gameplay are getting shafted lately. Although the reason for that is not simply that developers are focusing on graphics.
Plot is getting shafted because the casualization of gaming has led to an audience increasingly disinterested in the plot, so why bother? For example, most people playing the Modern Warfare or Battlefield games jump straight to the multiplayer, so why bother coming up with an interesting story? Or even one that makes the slightest fucking bit of sense. This even extends to something like Skyrim, which you'd typically think of as a hardcore game. The success of Oblivion brought in a much bigger audience, one whose intellectual fortitude Bethesda seems to have fairly little confidence in, so the depth of the lore and the stories the game tells have been reduced significantly in favor of a simple system that gives players bite-sized quests. Sure, all the lore from the older games is still present, but they haven't added or expanded much, and what they have added is basically just Norse myths with the nouns changed around a bit. So Skyrim is deep compared to most current games, but compared to something like Morrowind it's nothing. Still a good game, but the story has clearly been shafted to suit a more casual audience.
As for gameplay, triple-a games cost a lot to make, and the people bankrolling them want a guaranteed return on their investment. Thus they've become as risk-averse as Hollywood.
Sorry for the manifesto. I'm still kinda pissed about the new ME3 debacle.

 

[Dak]

Plot is getting shafted because the casualization of gaming has led to an audience increasingly disinterested in the plot, so why bother? For example, most people playing the Modern Warfare or Battlefield games jump straight to the multiplayer, so why bother coming up with an interesting story? Or even one that makes the slightest fucking bit of sense.

There have been a lot of articles on this now. People are content to spend hours playing "Angry Birds", so why make a Trip A game?

 

[waif]

There have been a lot of articles on this now. People are content to spend hours playing "Angry Birds", so why make a Trip A game?

Big games like Modern Warfare and WoW make shitloads of money, but a miscalculation can cost them dearly. That's probably why the mainstream gaming media is so much less reliable than it was a few years ago - companies have millions riding on their games, and a negative review can have a serious impact on sales, so they push pre-orders and blatantly pay off reviewers for glowing previews and high scores.

The markets for a game like Angry Birds and a game like Modern Warfare are very different. They may contain some of the same people, but it's like how some of the same people buy pasta and running shoes, but those products still have different markets. There's still big money to be made with AAA games. Really, though, the only thing that can save gaming is if development costs go down. If you look at, for example, Paradox Interactive, they're making complex, deep, excellent games for a very specific niche audience, and that seems to be working for them. The trade-off is a certain lack of polish and visual fidelity. But I'll take an actually creative game like Mount & Blade over some me-too bullshit like Homefront every damn time.

 

[Balls McHoolihan]

 

[Cronopio]

 

[zabu of nΩd]

dumb

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

So I've created my own D&D world. Here's the map I made...

 

[Der Morgenstern]

Mountains. Mountains everywhere.

 

[Onder]

This would be cool if a 10 year old child drew this and showed it to his mother. Not a fucking grown-up man on the internet. Seriously, this isn't normal.

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

Sorry im not an artist. But it gets the point across.
And I wanted lots of mountains. I have tons of history, and many NPCs.

 

[Onder]

The point that you act like a 10 year old nerdy boy virgin? Yeah I got that one. Nice map bro.

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

 

[SentinelSlain]

This post was edited by sentinel slain

 

[Balls McHoolihan]

When I look closely, the lines on that D&D map resemble the lines on my ball sack.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

ITT onder's a d&d hater

 

[waif]

Krig: correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not seeing much in the way of settlements - cities, villages, etc. How can you have a D&D world without a tavern on every corner?

Otherwise, looks cool.

 

[Onder]

ITT onder's a d&d hater

It's just that the picture belongs to elementary school.

 

[Balls McHoolihan]

Would you at least give him a gold star Onder?