Raw Graphics vs Artstyle. What is really the difference?

[SubiyaCryolite]

JazzB1987 said:

I would not say that realistic games are harder to pull off
It totally depends on how you look at it.

Realism is much harder to accomplish from a technical standpoint but the laziest designer can make games look realistic.
E.g today you can just scan rocks and wood and whatnot and then just reduce the polycount until it fits. Or even if you dont scan the stuff you just have to to copy existing design.

Making good art style is pretty hard and requires talented designers even more so when you want everything to fit together in a plausible way. Its less demanding from a technical standpoint (most of the time) but more from an artistic one.

Its like saying designing a completely new car and then producing it is not as hard as using an existing car design and then just printing it with a 3D printer.

So saying a realistic game is harder to pull off than a art-style focused one is not really correct. I mean I am pretty sure inventing stuff like the Eifel Tower was harder than just copying it for Las Vegas right?


Edit:
Stuff like Killzone tho is exactly inbetween. Its realistic but has so much art style stuff going on (all the futuristic designs) IMO this belongs more into the art style category that into realism.

Do you think modelling a stylised rain forest is harder than modelling a photorealistic one? Taking a look at crysis, it requires tons of different plants, shrubs, rocks, animals, insects and trees. It needs actual blades of grass and not flat grass textures. All textures have to look crisp and clean and fit in as well. Different surfaces and materials have to look and respond as they would in real life

With things like subsurface scattering, tessellation and physically based rendering Id say realistic is much harder to pull off, no questions asked. There's a reason most indie/budget games opt for stylised visuals over photorealistic ones.