Leave it to the imagination

Having been around as a gamer for many years now, I have played and seen many different types of games, and it's no surprise that with the advancement of technology come the advancement of visual fidelity. Playing a game like Crysis I am sometimes awestruck by the near photo realistic renditions of a virtual world. And other times I feel as though someone has missed the mark with trying to emulate how the world looks.

What is it about photo realism that we as artists and developers find so interesting? Is it because we want to create a new world while retaining all the qualities of the one we live in? If that's the case, would the location have the same sort of impact if it was set on the surface of Titan, or Venus? Two areas that are covered by thick clouds, dimly lit, and a landscape that is unlike anything we've seen.

Maybe it's because I've been involved with making games for so long, but I can't help starting to feel that the better the visuals, the more we're being spoon fed all the information, leaving little to the imagination. Maybe its why, as with my previous post, canned scenes are as intriguing as they provide mystery and only fragments of information. There is no denying that old first person shooters such as Unreal, Half-Life, SIN, System Shock 2, and look pretty dated these days, and with their simplicity the player really has to fill in the blanks themselves, for better or worse. But back in those days in the mind's eye those games looked just as good as Crysis looks now, except they had a lot more atmosphere.

Unreal 1, for example, was a game that really pushed the visual limits in 1998, and I was blown away by the fact that I was now playing in huge outdoor areas, and seeing structures like the sun spire that I had never seen before. It truly was an alien world, even though it was made up of city block sized flat planes :) But what I remember most is the progression of time from level to level, and the sounds and music. The fact that it felt like an adventure across an uncharted alien world, it truly was, Unreal. What else was there to explore? How did this area come to be?

Other games such as SIN also had very unique level locations, but the atmosphere and the sounds made it come to life, despite it looking very primitive. But again, it too took the player on an adventure through the world.

And the two games that probably give me the fondest of memories are System Shock 2 and Deus Ex. The two games where visuals were sorely lacking (Even when they were released), but I would play them again and again and again. What did those games have that modern games don't? Even Bio Shock doesn't hit home as well as System Shock did. Deus Ex 2? Good, but not quite there. Unreal 2? Hmm, I'd have to give it a separate article!

In System Shock I remember the sounds; walking through the corridors of a dying ship with an ever present rumble, alone in space. And when the rumble wasn't there it was an echoy wind noise, or a groaning of a giant organic being. Something was always there even though I could not see it. Add to all that faint whispers from pipe wielding mutants walking around, talking to themselves. Was it a voice that I heard? Or was it just my imagination… eep! Are those footsteps coming towards me? Or are they leaving? Maybe if I hide in this corner it will all go away!

Deus Ex, while being grounded on earth, was completely different than SS2, but still left its mark like a brick in the face. At the time it didn’t run all that well, the AI was kind of silly, and all textures were 256x256 max, thanks to 3dfx's limitations. But I was so drawn into the world that it didn’t matter, I just wanted to explore and figure out the best way to get past those guards or those turrets without being spotted. Would someone really NOT have noticed a vent shaft leading from the outside directly into the top secret lab? Probably not! But with low fidelity visuals, everything took on a characterization of the real world, and the mind took care of the rest. It really did allow me to personalize the experience I was given.

There are more games that I found just as exciting that I didn’t mention here, even older SNES and genesis games. But this article focuses more on first person shooters of what I could consider the golden era of shooters: from about 1997 / 1998, to 2001 / 2002. Games that might have looked simple by today standards, but really gave me incredible immersion and made my mind fill in all the blanks about the experience. I'm a shooter fan at heart, so I'll talk about what I know and love.

It’s all about the gameplay and the experience after all, right? They always say to “keep things simple” and “less is more”. The problem is “how little” and “how simple”, because we’re no longer living in the 90s, expectations have changed and people won’t stand for cubes on the screen anymore.

Up next I’m going to focus on more modern games that really hit home; games with more modern visuals!