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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

Graphics are not the most important thing for sure but they still _matter_ at least to some extent.

For example yesterday Nintendo revealed the new trailer of the next mainline Pokemon game... and it has some insane texture shimmering and apparently zero anti-aliasing in the whole game. And that's how they promote the game in the trailer. It's not even a low budget title, it's the flagship AAA game of the company sold for $60. And the Switch is not a bad hardware so at this point they most likely just don't care which is the strange part. It's like watching a movie in 360p. Sure the story, the characters, the music matter but a low resolution can damage the whole experience, same as the intentionally low quality graphics in an otherwise good game

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For me personally, art direction is more important than technical limitations/issues with graphics. A game with beautiful stylized art will stand the test of time much longer than a highly polished game lacking any kind of style. That polished game might look "real" today, but not tomorrow when compared to whatever is the latest and greatest tech. And a game with strong unique art will always look good for what it is. You can have both, but it's usually a rarity.

Most people would agree art direction is far more important, which is where cartoon styles generally shine and age extremely well compared to their more hyper-realistic siblings.

In GP's case however, it's been pretty consistent how low effort Game Freak has gone with their in-house Pokemon games. The series practically prints money and the hardware has shown us what is possible. Even the new Kirby game looks stunning, and Kirby is one of the less big budget series.

Absolutely, with oft-cited examples being the incredible pixel art of Chrono Trigger and the cel-shaded style of Okami.

To me, graphics are like money.

Money doesn't buy happiness but not enough money causes unhappiness.

Graphics doesn't make a game great... but bad graphics causes unhappiness. Just like bad controls, no tutorial, flakey network connections, etc.

Yes Pokémon Legends: Arceus was a tipping point for me. The game does not look good at all to me, and across 3 different switches I tested, it felt like it was hitching and not loading correctly even with the low detail and resolution in docked mode. I’m handheld it’s a bit better, but that’s not really how I want to play the game.

On the other hand, my most played game is by far Old School RuneScape, which is a restore of a backup of RuneScape from 2007. The game has certainly evolved in style and content since the re-release, and I use a 3rd party client with an “HD” plug-in which adds more render distance, shadows, lighting and anti-aliasing.

I think the best way to put it is that graphics should not distract from enjoyment.

It is possible to create a visually appealing graphics with limited resolution and colour depth, just as it is possible to create glitchy and ugly graphics with the latest technology. Of course, the opposite is also true. Either way, you need people who know what they are doing in order to achieve the desired affect.

Pokemon games don't just have poor graphics, they essentially release them completely unfinished. It feels like they need two years of development each, but only get one, and don't care about designing the world above the level of detail expected by a 6 year old.

They do tend to finish the game and release it as another version of it later.

>And the Switch is not a bad hardware

It's a bit long in the tooth. It's a 5+ year old Tegra chip.

Switch is more powerful than PS3.

And the PS3 looks kinda crap by todays standards. Even The Last of Us looks like a blurry mess on the PS3 these days.

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