Are You Afraid of the Dark?

The next-gen consoles on the market today are always capitalizing on their amazing 32 Million p HD+ Deluxe display for their games, showing how realistic the graphics can be, but does this hyper-realism matter? Without a doubt this technological advance is incredible, but what does this mean to games?

Art-style is incredibly important for creating a mood for a game. Aside from games, looking at the artwork of Tim Burton, it is easy to tell he wants to create a creepy kind of mood, even for something as light-hearted as The Nightmare Before Christmas. Games can have moods created for them in the same manner, an example of this would be BioShock. At the end of the day, BioShock is a shooter, but so are Halo, Call of Duty, and Battlefield. However, BioShock gives a creepy atmoshere, complete with dark scenery, characters with distorted faces, destroyed environment, etc. These all combine to give BioShock the "feel" is has. If the game had more sunshine and everything was nice an orderly, the game would feel far less dark, and the exerience of the game wouldn't be the same.
While BioShock is still rather realistic in its graphics, this helps compliment the mood. If an object is more realistic, people can relate to it more, making actions, such as turning their head backwards, far more creepy.

Another example of mood creation is Conker's Bad Fur Day. Despite all of the innapropriate themes, the game still gives a light-hearted atmosphere thanks to the art style. With Conker's cartoony appearance, the bright and sunny evironment, and the upbeat, cheery music, it's hard to ever take any of the profanity and swimming in feces seriously. If the cast of Conker's Bad Fur Day was replaced with the cast of Uncharted or God of War, the threats may be taken a bit more seriously. They may cringe when their charater has to swim through realistic sewer water, etc. This game was meant to be crazy and off-the-wall, so it only makes sense that the characters are bright and cartoonish. (This may sound like it completely contradicts my arguments about Conker's appearance in my post "Are You Sure You Belong Here?", however, mood and theme have different attributes, so while a Cartoon squirrel shouldn't be in a game with mature themes, it can certainly be in a game that is meant to be absurd and off-the-wall.)

Some games, however, have moods that don't make sense for the game. Re:Kinder, for example is meant to be a horror RPG, so it would make sense to have some realistic creatures that have sharp teeth or otherwise look scary. A game like this could use a realistic and darker art-style, similar to BioShock. However, the game gives an art-style that suited more for a children's cartoon. There is very little "horror" feel in this game, as enemies include an evil teddy bear (on left), and the environment still has a lot of color. The gameplay itself may not be bad, but the experience of the game is greatly decreased due to the art style.

Even with the advances in technology that allow for incredible definition, sometimes that isn't what's best for the game. The mood desired is incredibly important when creating characters, evironments, and music.