PC games started out with humble graphics and simple mechanics. Even if you weren’t born in the era of games with as basic graphics as Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, you’d still be aware of how graphics have evolved to the great heights we see today.
It’s why most gamers are wowed when they see games like Forza Horizon 5. The fact that developers can make a game so life-like is quite extraordinary.
Hyper realism, then, is a technical achievement that most gamers will deservedly salute. But by no means does it guarantee a game will be fun and engrossing to play.
Hyper realism works for some games
Don’t get me wrong I’m a big fan of hyper-realistic games. There’s no denying that games like Crysis, Fallout 4, and Kingdom Come Deliverance have stunned and amazed me with their beautiful rendering and life-like mechanics.
I can’t go back to the Wild West to live the life of a gunslinger, but through this game I can get darn well close to it…
In these games the high level of graphical realism has worked to engross me a little more than some other titles.
In Red Dead Redemption 2, looking down the main streets of towns with their old-world buildings is like starring into the past — it conjures the possibility of living out my own Wild West fantasies, of having my own virtual O.K. Corral showdown — a tantalizing prospect for this history buff.
The mechanics of some hyper-realistic games like RDR2 align nicely to make the fantasy more tangible too. The fact that I can do things like stable my horse, just like I could in real life (had I actually a horse to stable) lends credence to my experience.
Red Dead Redemption 2 combines both stunning hyper realistic graphics and very realistic gameplay mechanics.
Dominic Bayley / IDG
I can’t go back to the Wild West to live the life of a gunslinger, but through this game I can get darn well close to it.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is the same kettle of fish. I can use melee weapons, faint, get dirty, and even visit geographically accurate locations and buildings, which makes the action, when it happens, even more believable. But that believability isn’t necessary in every game I play.
Why all games don’t need to be hyper realistic
Playing games like WoW, Fortnite, and Half Life has taught me that games don’t need to be realistic to be incredibly fun and engrossing. In these games realism isn’t even a goal of the developers — it’s purely about entertainment.
Apart from the fact you don’t need super high specs to play them — there’s no need for a PC with a souped-up Core i9-14900K CPU and RTX 4090 GPU when Fortnite will run well on a modest Core i5-7300U and GeForce GTX 960 — these games can just be really fun and addictive.
I think Half Life’s creator Gabe Newell said it best when he noted, “Many people don’t understand the difference between something that’s realistic versus something that’s engaging.”
Thinking on that, you could just as easily swap out the word engaging for immersive. Immersion is being completely engrossed in what you’re playing. The state of feeling like you are part of the game, which these games can achieve just as well as any hyper-realistic game can.
Blizzard
The games I just mentioned have mostly cartoonish graphics and opt for “convenient mechanics.” Their character skins, silly dances and emotes, and their player abilities are far removed from reality but that makes them no less appealing. Rather than impress me with their believability, they tap into my desire to experience the surreal, something wacky and strange.
These games take me out of my self and let me experience something that is so different from real life that I’m never going to be able to even get close to it in my waking day.
Sure, I can dress up as a cowboy, visit an Old West theme park and pantomime a scene to approximate gameplay in RDR2 if I want to, but I can’t fly on the back of a griffin and conjure up an Arcane Blast spell a la WoW, can I now?
Hurry up, already!
There are other benefits to non-realistic games too. Speed of play is one biggy.
Hyper-realistic games tend to have slower and more repetitive mechanics or cut scenes (like the skinning animation in RDR2) — who would have thought real life could be so monotonous at times? — whereas non hyper-realistic games omit the tedious, so they’re ideal for drop-in and drop-out play.
While it might take me half an hour to loot a house in Fallout 4, having to painstakingly open cupboards and pick up each item, I really like how convenient it is to simply walk over items in Fortnite to pick them up, it keeps the game moving at a comfortable pace. Fast travelling in WoW and Skyrim is another great example — it saves me hours of tromping around large open maps.
What makes a great game then?
First and foremost, it needs to have excellent gameplay. An interesting storyline or some other X factor as its premise doesn’t hurt either.
One term that’s used a lot in talking about game appeal is a game’s “stickiness” — aka its replayability. If I had to point to a game with overwhelming stickiness, Minecraft would have to be it.
This game’s blocky, pixelated graphics are anything but hyper-realistic, yet the game still hits almost universal accord with players thanks to its fun and highly addictive sandbox (LEGO-like) game mechanics in which you can build and craft just about anything you can think of out of blocks.
Hyper-realistic games, then, can be fun, but so can non hyper-realistic games too. Indeed, the old saying that goes, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” could just as easily be applied to PC games as to any book.