Emotional Games Require Time and Expertise, Not Photorealism

Games are still a very young medium, and their perceived inferiority when it comes to telling stories (and evoking emotions) as compared with film -- whether true or not -- is an unfair comparison to make as a result. Hartmann said it would be difficult to recreate the emotions of Brokeback Mountain in a game; if we accept that as being true, does it really matter? Do we need to duplicate everything that film did, but with a game?

[Machioto]

It may not need photorealism but the characters animation and facial expression should or you miss that subtle connection.

[PoSTedUP]

story, voice/conversation or text is technically all you need for a game to be emotional. books are emotional. a lot of emotional games from back in the day don't have any animations, just screenshot and pictures in the cut scenes.

[Xof]

In addition to PoSTedUP's response, I should also point out that well-crafted animation--even facial expressions--do not require photorealism.

And, in fact, in many cases--particularly with games--photorealism is more of a hinderance than a help.

[No FanS Land]

Agreed with both PoSTedUP and Xof

Still think MGS1 is one of the finest example in storytelling and emotion, and as far as I know, we don't even see their faces move.

[Gorbenshore]

more like no compromises;

good graphics + good gameplay > bad graphics + good gameplay

Basing off `Journey`, that game doesn't need to focus on spectacular/groundbreaking graphics but there are many games than can benefit from that advancements of graphics. Speaking in the same context, take film for example. In `The Dark Knight`, where CGI was used for Harvey 2-face, or what ever his name is, `graphics/CGI` was needed to convey a proper feel for the movie that face paint could not match. I don't think `The Last of Us` would be getting as much attention if it were a side scroller.

[DigitalRaptor]

It seems that the upcoming games focusing most on character development, emotion and storytelling (Beyond: Two Souls and The Last of Us) are also 2 of the best looking. Both facial animation and the quality of the performance are quite important to gauging an emotional response to human actions.

The Last Guardian is going for realistic animation for the bird-cat creature who's movement and artificial 'performance' will need to be convincing to provide the emotional response that Team Ico and Fumito Ueda are going for.

Although emotion is not that simple, and peoples' emotions are triggered by a number of different things.

[bnaked]

Not many games are more emotional than Secret of Mana.

[Triscy]

I am generally more attached to games with unrealistic graphics and interesting worlds that don't mimic the one we live in. Psychonauts has characters I care about. Final Fantasy Tactics back as an isometric sprite PSX game had a brilliant world and characters that I could feel for. Alice: Madness Returns is a beautiful and very unrealistic world that I love.

Realism in games is fine, but for myself and others like me, it gets tiresome to see every game trying to hand me photorealism.

I'm a cartoon kind of guy. I want to be attached to fun and quirky characters, not gritty testosterone clone #897.

[Edito]

Music and story is what drive emotions in games or movies and thats it not photorealism... FF VIII, FF VII, FF X are the best examples i could find... and Nobuo Uematsu (The man of the musics) and Ironubo Sakaguchi were the soul of FF thats why FF XIII sucks big deal cause the plot isn't there and the sound too...

[Hicken]

Music is a massive part of that, something I think gets overlooked.

Story, dialogue, character interaction, all these things are more important than photorealism. In fact, I don't think photorealism is necessary AT ALL to bring emotional depth to a game. Great animation will help, but it doesn't have to look lifelike.

[Edito]

If someone can write good stories thats half path walked sadly in modern games its hard to find the good stories because of that i will give props to the developers who give importance to write, atmosphere, etc instead of just looking for grate visuals...