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Sakaguchi: HD graphics are “excessive” for videogames

S

shinobi602

Member
The Last Story director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, believes that developers worry too much about high-quality graphics, when their attention should be given to other aspects of their games.

A Sakaguchi game has always been about story. The “Father of Final Fantasy”, who worked on the series from its inception to Final Fantasy X, has little interest in high definition graphics, despite the industry’s current fixation with them. For him, they’re unnecessary – an indulgence we could do without, so that developers could focus on other aspects of game design.

“Now that high-quality graphics rule supreme, you can reproduce what you want to communicate visually, but at the same time, I don’t know how to put this, but there’s an element that’s slightly excessive about it all…” he said in an Iwata Asks interview. “You end up communicating too much to the player.”

With this in mind, Sakaguchi has gone back to the drawing board with The Last Story, forgoing these graphic expectations in order to find the best way of telling a story in a game.

“This is why I now feel that we’re at a turning point. With this title, I pressed reset and returned to the basics of what a game is. I started by spending a lot of time considering just what it means to tell a story in a game. But it went beyond simply considering the story side of things – I looked again at the fundamentals on the system side too.

“That’s why we repeatedly experimented with the system side at the prototype stages of the game’s development. We knew that we wanted something that differed from the way things had been done before. We wanted to express the gameworld and story in a whole new style, and I feel that we gave it absolutely everything we had.”

Since leaving Square in 2003, Sakaguchi set up Mistwalker where he wrote and produced Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360. His experience working on those two titles on a HD console has shown him that too much attention is wasted on HD visuals, which games do not need.

“To be honest, I think that the HD images which have become mainstream in the TV industry are, for me personally, still rather over the top for the world of video games. There’s a tendency for developers to allow all their energy to be diverted into maintaining the high quality of the graphics.”

Despite this, Sakaguchi was determined to get The Last Story looking good and not blame any graphical shortcomings on the Wii’s lesser capabilities – something he feels he and the team achieved. And going on the images we’ve seen so far, the game looks glorious.

“I was really averse to allowing the quality of the graphics to drop just because we were working on Wii, which doesn’t have HD graphics. I do really think that, in the end, what we’ve created can hold its own against other hardware.”

http://beefjack.com/news/sakaguchi-hd-graphics-are-excessive-for-videogames/
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Apparently....graphics and good game= mutually exclusive. lol.....
 
A

AbsoluteZero

Banned
I agree. Developers should be spending their time making a good game, not spending their time making a good looking game.

I realize you don't necessarily have to pick one or the other, but you can only pull off both well with a large enough team.
 
R

Reuenthal

Banned
I don't see anything wrong with some developers not focusing on HD graphics and caring more for other things. Not everyone should be focusing on the same things and have the same priorities.

At the same time I also don't have a problem with those who want their games to have great HD graphics.
 
A

AAK

Member
I somewhat agree.. Games just take too damn long to make in this HD era. I don't mind if games like Dead Space 2 or Uncharted is the cap on graphics. Just keep it at that level of detail and spend that time designing more content for the game itself or releasing the game sooner.
 
Alex

Alex

Member
I don't care if asset work grows stunted, I just don't give a shit beyond art direction anymore but I do want to see image quality and resolution keep growing for consoles.
 
S

shinobi602

Member
Kazerei said:
Mutually exclusive? That's not what Sakaguchi is saying...
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He's saying that developers focus too much on graphics and not gameplay or game design. With enough effort and talent, why can't any developer achieve the best of both worlds? He's acting like it's either this, or that...
 
U

Uncle Rupee

Banned
It was going to happen sooner or later. Get with the program, Gooch!

Also: LOL'd at these statements coming from him of all people
 
K

Kazerei

Banned
shinobi602 said:
He's saying that developers focus too much on graphics and not gameplay or game design. With enough effort and talent, why can't any developer achieve the best of both worlds? He's acting like it's either this, or that...
Click to expand...

He doesn't actually say it's an either-or situation. I think you're taking his words to the extreme.
 
D

Derrick01

Banned
He must be high as fuck if he actually thinks that it's not important. It's a shame because he was a god at Square.
 
E

Eusis

Member
Riposte said:
This is coming out of Sakaguchi's mouth?
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Does remind me of Monolith Soft's (or at least Tetsuya Takahashi's) change of tune about focusing on story absolutely, though I'm not sure they really changed THAT much.

Still, he has a point (resolution aside anyway), too much console development has become risk aversive and/or takes a lot longer to release a game, and unless I'm getting larger experiences like Skyrim out of it it doesn't really matter, not compared to a solid frame rate and good art direction anyway.
 
Pyrrhus

Pyrrhus

Member
Guys, he said this shit in 2010 in an interview with Satoru Iwata at Nintendo Headquarters while promoting a game he made for the Wii. Consider the context here. It doesn't mean he doesn't like HD graphics. Hell, do you remember him talking about how amazing and liberating it was to be able to do graphics of the caliber of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey back when those were his latest projects?

He was playing the part he was expected to play in a promotional capacity with Nintendo. If anybody lets Mist Walker make another game, it will be HD and it won't be excessive.
 
F

fernoca

Member
shinobi602 said:
Apparently....graphics and good game= mutually exclusive. lol.....
Click to expand...
Nope. Even the summary in the link you provided explains it better:
The Last Story director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, believes that developers worry too much about high-quality graphics, when their attention should be given to other aspects of their games.​
:p

But just because they think that way, doesn't mean that they actually feel an will enforce it form now on. Even Square-Enix talked about how working on WiiWare games and the 40MB limit forced them to think out of the box and look for ways to make good games around limitations like old times, instead of making everything first..and then try to make a game out of it. Now, see if "they" got their lesson? :p
 
E

EatinOlives

Member
Kind of weird of him to say that considering that, when a game communicates "too much", it's not the fault of the graphics, it's usually the fault of the narrative and direction.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
This is a way to spin The Last Story... that's it.

It's not like he didn't do Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey in HD years ago.
 
C

colt45joe

Banned
Cartman86 said:
I want high picture quality, not necessarily realistic graphics.
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yeh, seriously I'm fine with PS2, and wii graphics when it is at least high resolution, with anti aliasing... Pcsx2 and dolphin emulator make all those old games look great. and uncompressed audio and video cinematics are nice as well.
 
L

les papillons sexuels

Banned
I have to agree, it seems like a lot of memory budget(and time and money) goes into the graphics department, if that same budget was spent evenly across things like audio, ai, etc. I think games in general would have a more cohesive and better experience.

I would rather see games like those emulated through the dolphin then many of the blurry, shiney and brown we saw so much of this generation. More time spent on creating nice art in games then creating a bunch of assets, better image quality over more post processing effects, and more time spent on creating a whole package then a graphics demo with a weakly veild attempt at a story.
 
E

Eusis

Member
EatinOlives said:
Kind of weird of him to say that considering that, when a game communicates "too much", it's not the fault of the graphics, it's usually the fault of the narrative and direction.
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Technically true, but lower quality presentation really can iron out the weak points. I imagine if you had a very faithful conversion of FFVI to modern HD it'd be a lot harder to enjoy the story compared to the SNES, especially if FFXIII-2 is any indication of what we can expect from Mog (and without the option to throw him around balancing it out).
 
T

Teknoman

Member
Meccanical said:
More like Sakaguchi cannot into HD games.
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Whats funny is that Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey looked great imo.

Eusis said:
Technically true, but lower quality presentation really can iron out the weak points. I imagine if you had a very faithful conversion of FFVI to modern HD it'd be a lot harder to enjoy the story compared to the SNES, especially if FFXIII-2 is any indication of what we can expect from Mog (and without the option to throw him around balancing it out).
Click to expand...

Nah. Sakaguchi would have probably done things much differently.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
It's like the Gooch has taken a page right out of the Nintendo fanboy handbook, circa 2006.

"Who needs dumb HD graphics when you have teh innovations!!?"
 
O

Orayn

Member
Though I do find myself annoyed at devs who cut corners when it comes to visuals, I agree with him in principle. No shiny-pretty-grafics can ever make up for poor gameplay mechanics.
 
V

vareon

Member
If we're not interpreting his words as "hurr you graphics whore sucks", he has a valid point. It's about using the best artstyle to deliver your game.
 
K

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
soxinthebox said:
Old man's out of touch
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People are going to say this without considering his context.

His specialty is creating large, sprawling RPGs with dozens of locations, real world maps, tons of NPCs, large bestaries, etc etc.

Things that are very hard and expensive to make look like Uncharted 3 due to the cost of modern game asset creation.

It is inarguably true that game design has gotten scaled way back in a lot of cases due to the cost of making games this generation. Games with large worlds, like an Elder Scrolls title, do not have the same pretty graphics as games that are basically short 6 hour guided tours through a few linear stages. And they still cost as much to make as those 6 hour tours.

The industry has pushed "beating hollywood" hard this generation. It's the obsessive goal of both publishers and avant garde developers who want games to be the entertainment medium of the new century.

There is a cost for the time being though, and it's bankrupted publishers, and killed developers this entire generation. It has also resulted in a lot of games being scaled back to the point that they are little more than tech demos sold for $60 bucks.
 
njean777

njean777

Member
Orayn said:
Though I do find myself annoyed at devs who cut corners when it comes to visuals, I agree with him in principle. No shiny-pretty-grafics can ever make up for poor gameplay mechanics.
Click to expand...

You sir are correct, give me worse graphics if it means the gameplay is badass.
 
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