Sorry if this has been done to death, but Among my partners and I we''ve had many a long discussion about cell-shading graphics. Personally I am a fan of them, but others seem to think they''re obsolete and an insult to games (A la Zelda). What are you''re opinions? Do you support or discourage Cell graphics?

I''m fine with it, so long as it suits the style of the game. I haven''t played the latest Zelda, so I cant make comments on that. But the style did come as a shock after the N64 versions.

I would typically say that it''s best suited to games that have a more cartoony feel in story, content, and play. Elsewhere it''d seem out of place.

They are far from an insult.. cel-shading makes games look good, give them the cartoon-y feel that the designer might want them to have (which I think is what Zelda was going for).

That is a critically important point that seems always to be ignored.

Like many have already stated, the use of cel shading depends on type of game. A game based on some kind of cartoon, or comic book property might be a candidate. Or if the designer is going for that feel for some other reason, then it makes sense.

Using cel shading just for the heck of it, does no good.

Personally I''m glad that game companies are using different types of rendering now. For a while I was getting the feeling that all 3D games were beginning to look alike graphically. I think it''s good to mix it up a little.

Marcus

Hello Everybody.

I am in aggrement with most of the people here. It is a nice change to see someone go against the how close to reality can I make it.

Infact, because of this change Zelda is really quite amazing. Now that its a cartoon they had the opertunity to really use some creative faces and expressions. They truly did a fabulous job of that.

With that said I am also a big fan of Final Fantasy and there amaizing art work (although its Japan Animation and not photo realistic).

Its really all about your intended audiance and your ability to use the technology effectively. FF does a great job using japan animation to really make the senimatics look great (I don''t need to go into details as everyone likes the girls in that), zelda did an amazing job using the cartoon look to really show off links expressions.

You have to keep in mind that FF is aming at the 16+ male market (I am sure there are younger people but thats the classic category) while zelda is aming more for 8+ male and female market. Everybody can play the new zelda.

For all the people that think that (13+ males) the FPS or MMORPG with the nice disturbing death scenes are the biggest genres well they are not. To this day tetris has sold more copies they any other game and as far as I can remember Zelda64 (Orcana of Time) sold more copies then any version of quake. I would hassard a guess that Wind Wakers is one of the biggest selling games as well due mainly to the fact that they opened up such a huge market with the cartoon look.

Ben

You guys need to check out Viewtiful Joe. The graphics in that game complement the whole feel of the game perfectly. Kudos to Capcom for doing such an amazing job.