Timeless Game Visuals

Timeless Game Visuals

Like several of the people on my buddy list, I’ve been playing XBLA gem Limbo.  The game, with its eerie settings, story, and gameplay is trumped only by its striking visual style: black and white silhouettes amidst a silent film’s grainy design.  The experience is borderline beautiful, and will probably still be beautiful when the eventual next gen and next next gen consoles debut.

It got me thinking about what other games will be just as good to look at in 10-15 years’ time.  What makes a game’s visual style stand the test, and truly be “timeless”?

I should note that this isn’t a conversation rooted in games being pieces of beautiful art, like a Picasso or DaVinci, but more about long-lasting visual appeal. Think of this as a comparison to great animation or stylized films, like Fantasia or Pi (or even Metropolis) where a purposeful visual design is executed.

Before deducing what makes a game look “timeless” I felt it would be beneficial to find out what games people think may currently fit within that description.  A quick Twitter poll yielded answers.  Among the most popular responses were Another World, Mirror’s Edge, Odin Sphere, Mega Man 2, Wind Waker, Rez and Chrono Trigger.

I felt it was interesting that the games spanned across a couple decades of hardware, with very few modern generation products mentioned.  Was this because modern games are using similar middleware like Unreal Engine or MAYA to create their visuals?  The games that were heralded most seemed to be doing more with less, such as working with sprites on the SNES, or were purposefully using technology to achieve highly stylized aesthetics.

“Doing more with less” was the theme I found to be most interesting, as I never really sat back and realized the work that designers in the 80s and 90s went through to create the visuals that I had been passing off as colored blocks and squares. Great 16-bit experiences, which were confined to now-minuscule hardware limits, were crafted by artists who had to think out of the box to create the look they wanted.

The early cel-shading of Another World (Out of This World in the US), the colorful and emotional Amano-inspired sprites of Final Fantasy IV and VI, the carefully hand-painted sprites of Link to the Past, the scribbles of Yoshi’s Island; all of these still look terrific today, though they were meant to hide the limitations of the SNES by emphasizing other avenues.  There are a few modern games that manage the same “hardware knows no boundaries” mantra, usually landing on consoles like the Wii (MadWorld) or on size-restricted download services like XBLA (Limbo) and PSN (flOwer). Hardware limitations can, by great developers, actually force creative thought and innovation.

As noted above, technology also allows developers and artists to create new aesthetics regardless of limits.  Part of the appeals of Wind Waker and Okami were their choices of cel-shaded visuals.  Odin Sphere and Muramasa utilized hand-painted art on 2-D backdrops to create cult appeal.  Mirror’s Edge used soft shading, high contrast, and lack of extensive detail to emphasize the graphic parkour cityscape.  In the right artist’s hands, the technological “paintbrush” can lead to stunning and unforgettable design.

So, after looking at all those examples, what makes a video game’s visuals timeless? Creativity, I guess. Knowing where the boundaries and limits are and how to utilize technology to surpass them. In the cases of some games, it’s about not trying to be accomplish something that isn’t technically feasible. In others, it’s the innovation of the artist and the message that they are trying to convey. Regardless, it’s all about personal taste, really. My idea of beautiful visuals doesn’t match yours, and our individual histories with gaming dictates that too, but at least the notion of a game’s style having the ability to touch us even past technological accomplishment will always be there.

I’ve put together a gallery below of screens from these games, as well as others that people have mentioned.  If there are games that you think will always be beautiful, please feel free to comment!

Some of the other games suggested: Jet Set Radio/Future, Beatles Rock Band, Curse of Monkey Island, Katamari Damacy, Bit Trip Series, Super Metroid, Little Big Planet, Team Fortress 2, Cave Story, Street Fighter II, Super Paper Mario.  Special thanks to the following individuals for supplying game recommendations: @RussWalsh, @JonKehoe, @Spizarelli, @JohnParie, @MikeJWall, @Lolztimus_prime, @Mainfinger, @LudwigK, @SheepOnFall, and anyone else I missed.

[Images courtesy PlayDead, SquareEnix, Nintendo, SCEA, ThatGameCompany, Valve, Harmonix, Capcom, Electronic Arts, UTV Ignition]