Entroper said: stof said: ummm. That's because both those games have some of the best art direction in gaming. Okami on the PS2 can stand next to most games on the 360 and PS3 for that reason. However, with the same level of art direction, a PS3 or 360 game could blow past anything on the Wii. I understand this, but I guess I worded my post badly. I guess my question is, what is the value of spending more on graphics hardware, as Microsoft and Sony chose to do, when you can produce games this stunningly beautiful on lesser hardware? I guess it's hard to raise this question without sounding like flamebait.

 The easiest way for me to think of it is to think of two different painters.  One has your basic supplies while the other may have all sorts of fancy things on top of their basic supplies.  No wait, that's not very good.  One has a basic canvas while the other has a bigger...no, still no good.  Fuck I'm tired.  Ignore me today.  This made sense in my head! :-p

I get what you're saying twesterm. :)

The Wii can do 720p but it wouldn't be worth it unless it was something like a CSI game were frame rate and other data can be limited without harming gameplay. However it doesn't have any means of rendering at 720p anyway so it's more theory than anything.



Obviously the graphical fidelity between Wii and X360/PS3 titles will never match. Games like SMG and MP3 show that good art direction and clever programming can blur the fidelity gap to a decent degree but this has been true for decades. Recall how Donkey Kong Country on SNES pushed into 32 bit territory graphically. This wasn't brute power of the SNES but a new rendering technique from Rare.

Consider that on the opposite side of things, a turd rendered in 1080p is still a turd and can be considered graphically inferior to last gen games that had great art direction.

I get what you are trying to say twestern.

Ok, let's put it like this: 

Let's think of two painters. One is your average Joe and the other is Savador Dalí. Joe has Photoshop, Maya, 3D Studio Max, Flash, what not. Salvador has only some canvas, oils and pastels.

Joe creates this:

 

And Dalí creates this:

 

So, who's the best artist? As you can see, it's not always about available resources. 

And yeah, the Wii could do 720p, but at the expenses I said. If Nintendo ever unlocks it, I don't expect anything above 30fps unless heavly toned down. But it would be uber nice for the Internet Channel, don't you think?

CHYUII said: As Gotchaye X said in a post on "Metroid Prime 3 Reviews" IGN took a half point off for graphics for no reason, after raging on about how great the game looked. Now Don Wii says that IGN says if you compare the graphics to those of the 360 or Ps3 you will notice the gaps in technology... SO! I don't think the Wii should be compared to the 360 or PS3 when it comes to graphics. The best looking Wii game... that takes the Wii (graphically) were they didn't think it could go, should get a 10. If the art direction is on par with the big systems what is the problem? What do you guys think?

I would rate all non-multiplatform games vs their consoles contemporaries and what can be expected on that console only. So yeah, though while the graphics are the best so far.  They may feel that the graphics can get better.

 

Which they can...

If another Wii Metroid was to be made in 2 or 3 years, it would surely look better...

fazz said: I get what you are trying to say twestern. Ok, let's put it like this: Let's think of two painters. One is your average Joe and the other is Savador Dalí. Joe has Photoshop, Maya, 3D Studio Max, Flash, what not. Salvador has only some canvas, oils and pastels. Joe creates this: And Dalí creates this: So, who's the best artist? As you can see, it's not always about available resources. And yeah, the Wii could do 720p, but at the expenses I said. If Nintendo ever unlocks it, I don't expect anything above 30fps unless heavly toned down. But it would be uber nice for the Internet Channel, don't you think?

 Ah yes, that's what I wanted to convey.  Curse days when I can't form coherent thoughts.  I stayed up until I don't know how late last night trying to beat Bioshock and then got to what I thought was the ending and then it kept going.  >_>

@ stof

I agree, art direction is very important. IMO also regarding God of War 2 on the PS2, if the resolution would only be upped to 720p or 1080p it would be a worthy PS3 title, actually even upscaled the game IMO looks prettier than most of current XBox 360 and PS3 titles. It's obvious a lot of effort and care has gone into the game.

IMO Mario 64's art direction still looks great, IMO the game looks better than Sunshine on the GamCube. Some game types (mostly games with cartoon-like art direction) don't benefit as much from more detailed gaphics. Simplisity can be appealing as well. Donald Duck or the Simpsons with Toy Story-like graphics would IMO result in a very different feeling and not per se better.

Technically the PS3 and XBox 360 can do any graphics the Wii can do, IMO their power is far more relevant with regard to more realistic looking games. For example for a game to truly look scary, life-like graphics surely can help a lot.

Phalanx said: I don't think the Wii has a large enough framebuffer to run at 720p, but I could be wrong.

I can't find the article on IGN but I do recall reading a short news story about a drunk Nintendo official telling IGN at some conference that the Wii can do 720p but Nintendo has locked it (presumably because the performance hit isn't worth the higher resolution).  If I'm not mistaken the PS2, Xbox, and PS3 don't have specialized frame buffers like the GCN, Wii, and 360 so not using the Wii's shouldn't be a major problem.

I think twestern was saying what the Sega guy said many months ago, a dedicated artist with 16 colors could make a far more beautiful painting than an average artist with 1,024 colors.  Of course it would stand to reason that a dedicated artist with 1,024 colors could make an even better painting with than he could with 16 colors.  However, odds are probably better than even that the painter would become lazy and unimaginative.  Humans being human we often need to be under the gun or with a severely limited budget to come up with the best ideas, methods, and inventions (as much as we hate it of course).

rocketpig said: CHYUII said: As Gotchaye X said in a post on "Metroid Prime 3 Reviews" IGN took a half point off for graphics for no reason, after raging on about how great the game looked. Now Don Wii says that IGN says if you compare the graphics to those of the 360 or Ps3 you will notice the gaps in technology... SO! I don't think the Wii should be compared to the 360 or PS3 when it comes to graphics. The best looking Wii game... that takes the Wii (graphically) were they didn't think it could go, should get a 10. If the art direction is on par with the big systems what is the problem? What do you guys think? To keep things even, the Wii needs to be compared to its contemporaries. After all, back in the day the Saturn was slammed for its poor 3D performance while the PS was slammed for its poor 2D performance, completely ignoring the strengths of each system. It's just the way things work. The graphics for MP receiving a 9.5 was probably just IGN hedging their bets. Right now, it's pretty hard to give a Wii game a perfect score in graphics when you just finished playing Bioshock and are bombarded with screenies of Halo 3, Lair, Heavenly Sword, Assassin's Creed, CoD4, and Mass Effect on a daily basis.

They could have also put the loading problems down as graphics related.  Apparently, some doors can take a very long time to load, and maybe this is a result of graphics.  If that's the case, it certainly deserves to be knocked down half a point.