So Capcom has decided to include French actor Jean Reno in Onimusha 3 (or his likeness at least). Partly, it's a bid to court western audiences, but it also reflects the fact that, in spite of the cell-shading bandwagon, the urge towards photo realism remains strong in the industry. This brings up the interesting prospect of what will happen when we do inevitably get these photo realistic games.
Will you be able to tell the difference between a computer generated person and a real one? This is the way the film industry is currently going, an industry with ever increasing ties to the games industry.
An example is in the two Matrix sequels coming out this year. They use a technique called 'virtual cinematography' which basically involves taking pictures of someone with several very high-resolution digital cameras, then feeding it into a computer and animating the person.
What this means, is that sequences that previously had to be done via several takes of the same shot, can now be done artificially. So you could see the actor talking to himself on screen, without either being the actual person. It's hard to get your head around it, but there's one scene in the upcoming Matrix: Reloaded which shows this perfectly. 100 Agent Smiths fighting Neo, and none of them are real, but look it. Impossible without computers.
So what has this 'virtual cinematography' got to do with gaming anyway? Well, it shows that we can now create photo realistic copies of people. It's such a good copy, that you can't tell the difference between real and fake characters. This is the sort of graphics that we will eventually see in our games. There are two problems though, a couple of big spanners waiting to jump in the works.
The first is time and money. The Matrix sequels have the biggest budget in movie history, something games won't have in the foreseeable future. Companies just don't have the funds to develop this sort of technology yet. Time is another little problem. With the amount of detail that will have to go into every object, how long will it take to build, say, a city? Unless developers can come up with a program that can create worlds on it's own with a bit of instruction, then we're stuck where we are.
The second one is more to do with human nature, morals and ethics. Do you really want to kill someone who looks so real? It's ok with the current, barely-realistic Nazis, terrorists and drug barons, but will we want to kill them if they look just like a real person? Games are going to get more and more controversial, and some companies will have to change the way they make games.
Let's take EA. They make Medal Of Honor without blood in it to get the rating lowered so more people can buy it. The problem is that this shows that if you kill someone there is no suffering or blood, they just fall asleep. Now this isn't too bad with our unrealistic characters, but with photo realistic people, it's a whole new ball game.
It'll appear that all war isn't bloody; it's not really that bad. It'll be like watching Saving Private Ryan, but without the blood. Ridiculous if you ask me, even distasteful and dishonorable. You have to show the realities of war, the consequences of events.
Let's take Soldier of Fortune and Grand Theft Auto. Sure, they're outrageously bloody, but at least they show what happens when you shoot someone. People's limbs do come off and it is disgusting. It will become more vivid as graphics get better and better, but in a strange way it's good to be gory.
Now some people may go off on a parental outrage, saying that realistic, gory games will scar their little toddlers' minds, but those sorts of games are not available to youngsters anyway, so it erases the issue. Now, back to games.
So, should every shooting game with great graphics be pumped full of gore and be given an 18 or Mature certificate? Well, no, as long as they aren't as sanitized as EA's Medal Of Honor series. We should be given the opportunity to kill people in games, but also given a semi or near-fully realistic representation of the outcome of our actions.
Moral sermon over - back to the subject of this article. Graphics have the potential to go all the way, to represent the real world completely realistically. However, developers and publishers need to recognize the distinct difference between gratuitous violence and the necessary realism we need.
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