more realistic graphics?

please read to the end before responding...

I've played and enjoyed the original Settlers for many years, it is one of my favourite games of all time. It runs on winxp and the graphics look.. um... ok. I've recently been playing Settlers II - 10th Anniversery on the pc. Now this is just a remake of the title with much much better graphics and some very minor gameplay tweaks. I realized today however that I did not enjoy this game nearly as much as I should have. In fact, this game made me fire up the old one! After playing for 5 mins on the old one, I realized why:

In the old game, you can see at a glance how your resource flow is, whether they sent the wood to build the new barrack or whether the fisherman sent his fish to the mines or whether the iron mine is sending his ore to the correct building. Every item is very cartoony BUT instantly recognizable.

In the new game, I cannot see what is going on. Is that a bread from the bakery or is it iron. Is that stones or a metal bar? The graphics are much better, but...

I had the exact same problem with Caeser 4. I went and bought it with enourmous enthusiasm after having played Caeser 3 for many years. It had the same issues. With the 3d camera viewpoint, the buildings all looked similar to one another and I could no longer identify things at a glance.

Does anyone else know what I'm talking about?

Oh I know what you mean. Burnout 3 was graphically lesser than Burnout Revenge. But the more real graphics in Revenge made it grittier and bland, while although not as real or detailed as Revenge, 3 was colorful and more eye pleasing.

So yea there are sometimes where devs can make games that look real but also make them look worse.

The most important aspect of graphics is polish. If the polish isn't there then no matter if the graphics are better it's not going to be as pleasing to the eye.

Also you'll see devs a lot make a style for a game but it doesn't fit. Giving a game a realistic art style when it doesn't fit will make the game feel awkward. Such as with Burnout Revenge giving it that more real look really took away from the premise of the game which is unreal battle racing. Really all ya needed is a nice polished look wiht some good colors.

When doing graphics you need to first note that you have it well polished and secondly that the art style fits the game. Realistic art style isn't good for the majority if games. I don't want to see all games have it. personally I'd rather most not as it really doesn't fit wiht most games. Games were meant to be unreal in the first place.

Well, I prefered Age of Empires 2 to 3 and I preferred the old style tycoon games to the newer ones.

They just seem to loose their magic in the transition from sprites to models, but I don't understand how or why.

Roller Coaster Tycoon 3... what a disappointment...

I don't really understand the reason. I mean for some games like GTA, I would prefer the more realistic the better. But for the examples I gave, it just doesn't seem to happen. Is it just because the developers of the newer games were not as good with the art style or is it that realistic graphics just don't suit those games?

Take Super Mario Galaxy
Give it realistic graphics

just think about that for a couple of minutes, and you'll realise that realistic graphics have their place, but are certainly not desirable for every game.

 Yeah but SMG is by definition not realistic. On the other hand, Settlers, Caeser, Roller Coaster Tycoon etc. these all have environments based on reality. So yeah, I agree that realistic graphics are not for every game, but I don't get why these don't work. 

FYI, "baiting" thread titles are not allowed on VGC. It's not a big deal but please try to post your entire topic header in the title of the thread.

You tricked me into coming in here cansan. You're a master "baiter"!!!

I know what you're taking about. Like the difference between Starcraft and Warcraft 3. I prefer the bitmap of Starcraft rather than the polygons for Warcraft 3. Hopefully Starcraft 2 will look awesome.

I second AOE2 over AOE3.  A lot of that can probably be chalked up to different gameplay, though.  I think AOE2 with 3D graphics would've been just as good.