Hi everyone:

I was inspired on the Gamespot message forums to write up a truth about what people call graphics and why HD isn't as big of a deal overall.

First lets straighten something out.  Most people think graphics is the realism of a game.  As in how realistic character models, background textures, environments, weather effects, scaling, are.  The problem is this is incorrect.  Graphics themselves aren't anything to do with realism.  Graphics is about presentation.

Most gamers out there have played good games to bad games and everything in between.  It is hard to say rather a game is graphicly good or bad if you aren't in sync with what is presented.

For example let us take a look at current generation.  We will start with Okami for the PS2, anyone who has seen and played this game will say it is beautiful.  Very rich and authentic looking environments.  And its all done with paints.  It's an artistic view protrayal of paint in Okami.  But wait Okami isn't HD so it can't have good graphics like the Xbox 360 right?  WRONG!

Graphics are tools for getting the players attention and immersing them in the world of the game.  Okami which is all done in paint style is able to do this because you feel like you are looking at a portrait.  HD has nothing to do with the quality.

In a way you could easily say HD makes developers lazy.  If they can easily create basic effects and make a game out of it.  They won't be inspired to make something new and different.  An example of this is Gran Turismo HD presented at E3 2006.  Gran Turismo 4 cars in HD and for some reason Sony felt it necessary to showcase it as a bid deal.

Overall I could go on about graphics but the point I want to get across is what people are calling graphics.  I believe if you look at the style of games and the use of darker and lighter themse you will see there are more to graphics then how real it looks, more importantly does it portray the mood and feeling that you should have in the game at the time.  Graphics are presentation elements not HD slaves.  HD makes it easier but not always better.  With the next wave of consoles we will see first hand the difference between pushing the limits of the imagination and pushing the limits of raw horsepower.