Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

I don't buy it either.

No one was expecting Crysis or Skyrim graphics from a JRPG like this. And everyone knows SE tends to go too far, which is why the guy in the article picked them. In another console (or even PC) Xenoblade could get better waaaaaaay better looking just with after effects, Anisotropic filtering for the textures and a native rendering resolution higher than 480p.

FFXI is a huge proof of that. Gameplay-wise XI may be stagnant, but no one who has actually played the game in PC or 360 can say the graphics are bad. On the contrary, we are still amazed a PS2 game can still look so good after all these years. And we are still talking of PS2 models with no HD textures whatsoever and a shoddy port, just with a better hardware to run it. Which is what this game is really, a PS2 game like XII, only maybe larger.

And considering what I've seen making mods I'm very doubtful better quality textures on the exact same models wouldn't have done a world of difference for pretty much the same budget. No to mention making higher quality textures is no different than doing crappy ones unless the hardware is so bad you have to keep retweaking stuff to make them as small as possible, which does indeed take some extra time.

So no, I don't buy it. The game was definitely doable on a better console without sacrificing content and without having to spend that much more on "fancy graphics".

Then you and Mal need to explain why these kinds of JRPGs are so uncommon on consoles, then. Not just uncommon, its the only JRPG like this this gen. Apparently developers know something the both of you don't because they don't make them.

[Raydeus]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

Because they went to the console that would sell the most units, and if it was also the one with the lowest production costs then all the better.

So there's no question what console these developers will prefer, even if it just stagnates technology.

Remember past generations, the great RPGs went to the PS2 and the PS. While Nintendo had to stay afloat with first party titles for the most part. Difference is the Playstation (and the Xbox I guess) encouraged technical innovation along with genere improvements. While the Wii gets them completely off the hook from that, which is why we know the Wii's cheapness is what has not only delayed the next generation but also lowered the quality of HD content all around.

[Malacite]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

Uh no, MAG was scaled down because it wouldn't work otherwise. Resistance 2 took a slight hit to allow 64 players, but MAG had 256 - and it still looked pretty good.

[Raydeus]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

We are talking JRPGs though.

The Wii doesn't even appear on the radar when it comes to FPS (obviously can't handle them), which is why no one ran to it for cheap development like they did with games like RPGs.

[Icemage]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

Let's back up for a moment and talk about the underlying techniques being used.

Xenoblade does two things very well - long terrain draw distance, and great art direction.

Art direction you can get in other games, and there are tons of games in this generation have equally if not better art direction.

So let's talk about terrain draw distance. What Xenoblade is basically doing is some sophisticated LOD (level of detail) optimization on level geometry. It's a neat trick, but it mostly works because of the low resolution that the game runs at. It takes a lot less processing power to do everything at 854x480 versus 1280x720.

You could easily duplicate the trick on either the Xbox 360 or PS3, with power to spare if you wanted to keep the resolution at 480p. If you make the decision to go to 720p+, however, the amount of memory for textures goes up, the processing time for shaders goes up, frame rendering times go up, and you suddenly have a lot more problems. The closest anyone has gotten to solving the performance issue in HD is Rage, which does a reasonably good job at long draw distance + 60 frames per second with non-repeating textures. As it is, the game does have some frame rate problems in certain scenes, and especially in combat situations.

So no, Xenoblade could "technically" be replicated from a technical standpoint on any current console, IF you left the resolution alone.


Icemage

[Raydeus]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

PS > Although you can see the same phenomenon occur when you compare Console FPS games and PC. The gap is smaller but it's still there.

---------- Post added at 02:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:10 AM ----------

PPS > Icemage broke my combo.

---------- Post added at 02:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:11 AM ----------

Let's back up for a moment and talk about the underlying techniques being used.

Xenoblade does two things very well - long terrain draw distance, and great art direction.

Art direction you can get in other games, and there are tons of games in this generation have equally if not better art direction.

So let's talk about terrain draw distance. What Xenoblade is basically doing is some sophisticated LOD (level of detail) optimization on level geometry. It's a neat trick, but it mostly works because of the low resolution that the game runs at. It takes a lot less processing power to do everything at 854x480 versus 1280x720.

You could easily duplicate the trick on either the Xbox 360 or PS3, with power to spare if you wanted to keep the resolution at 480p. If you make the decision to go to 720p+, however, the amount of memory for textures goes up, the processing time for shaders goes up, frame rendering times go up, and you suddenly have a lot more problems. The closest anyone has gotten to solving the performance issue in HD is Rage, which does a reasonably good job at long draw distance + 60 frames per second with non-repeating textures. As it is, the game does have some frame rate problems in certain scenes, and especially in combat situations.

So no, Xenoblade could "technically" be replicated from a technical standpoint on any current console, IF you left the resolution alone.


Icemage

What level of HD-ness are we talking about here BTW? Are we talking about how the game would behave with HD models, say XIII style. Or are you talking about the basic PS2 XI world the game has on the Wii?

[Malacite]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

I don't see how they couldn't do it in the same vein the PS2 HD remakes have been done so far. That's essentially what Xenoblade is, a PS2 game.

[Icemage]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

What level of HD-ness are we talking about here BTW? Are we talking about how the game would behave with HD models, say XIII style. Or are you talking about the basic PS2 XI world the game has on the Wii?

I'm talking about all of the above. If you made a game on a 360 or PS3 or PC that renders at 854x480 like Xenoblade does, you wouldn't have too many technical hurdles to jump over to duplicate the same trick. The problem is when you try to upgrade the models, level geometry, textures, shaders, etc. for a larger display resolution because now all of a sudden your memory requirements go way up and your processing time per frame increases dramatically as well.

As I mentioned above, however, Rage (from id Software) comes very, very close to this trick on the modern consoles, running at a silky smooth 60 frames per second with megatexture tech that looks brilliant in HD and repeats very little, if at all.


Icemage

[Armando]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

If anything the Wii's cheapness was what actually hurt RPGs and gaming in general because it told developers and publishers that you can go on developing low res RPGs and people will buy them and even make excuses for you.

I have to respectfully disagree Ray. Technical limitations are the driving force for innovation and creativity. Look at Doom, which had a pseudo-3D world with very slow processors and no graphics cards. Look at FFVII, which used images for the game world instead of true 3D environments. When you have more processing power than you need, you don't need to innovate anything, because you're not going to have technical problems to solve. You can do whatever you want and the hardware won't get in your way.

Most of the problems RPGs have had in the past had nothing to do with technical limitations anyways. Practically all of the real problems are purely a matter of a game design. You could already craft a game with characters that moved you back in the SNES and PSX days with a pitiful 256x240p resolution. You had fun games back then too. If your only gripe with an RPG is that the resolution is too low, the devs must've done a good job.

Besides that, I think half of the blame falls squarely on our current HDTVs. They don't scale low res images gracefully.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

Not just RPGs, either. The REs everyone loves also sported prerenders, tank controls, steep ammo restrictions and a near useless knife. Yet people tell me you can have running and gunning, gobs of ammo and still be scary.

Nope, Demon/Dark Souls proved the limited approach works. It's narrow corridors, darkness and vulnerability of characters brings the dread. Every step you take must be cautious and calculated. It might be an action RPG, but it knows how to scare and threaten you. It mostly comes from the limits it sets out.

[Malacite]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

Actually the knife in CV was unbelievably OP in skilled hands as you could rather easily kneecap zombies and then either run or just continue to slash them while they're down rofl. I'd often drop 2~3 zombies in a single slash.

And those are all design limitations, not technical/hardware. I still think running & gunning is just fine, if not necessary for a good survival horror - it was badly needed in RE5 with how often you got completely surrounded. It's the enemies dropping items and ammo in an arcade fashion that ruins it (that and the newer RE's save for Revelations lack good atmosphere). The only thing tank controls ever did was frustrate people, myself included. Having to decide if a monster is worth the bullets or not though is fair game and something I miss dearly.

It's also why I absolutely *hated* SH: Shattered Memories. The game wasn't scary at all, because it was completely devoid of danger during the "real world" segments and then during the Other World all you did was run for your life. It was tense, but not really scary. The only games I've seen that even remotely make that particularly limitation (no fighting back) work have been Pneumbra/Amnesia.

[Raydeus]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

I have to respectfully disagree Ray. Technical limitations are the driving force for innovation and creativity. Look at Doom, which had a pseudo-3D world with very slow processors and no graphics cards. Look at FFVII, which used images for the game world instead of true 3D environments. When you have more processing power than you need, you don't need to innovate anything, because you're not going to have technical problems to solve. You can do whatever you want and the hardware won't get in your way.

Most of the problems RPGs have had in the past had nothing to do with technical limitations anyways. Practically all of the real problems are purely a matter of a game design. You could already craft a game with characters that moved you back in the SNES and PSX days with a pitiful 256x240p resolution. You had fun games back then too. If your only gripe with an RPG is that the resolution is too low, the devs must've done a good job.

Besides that, I think half of the blame falls squarely on our current HDTVs. They don't scale low res images gracefully.

If that's the case why did we ever leave the NES?

Hardware Limitations only encourage better use of system resources. They have no bearing whatsoever on innovation nor on creativity.

You may get creative about how you go around the hardware limitations to make your original idea happen despite them, of course. XD

[Armando]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

If that's the case why did we ever leave the NES?

New hardware means new possibilities. Still, the lessons learned under heavier restrictions form the basis for the new possibilities. People didn't stop making tile-based games or reusing sprites just because the SNES had more power. The lessons learned when developing for the NES were just as applicable to the SNES.

Hardware Limitations only encourage better use of system resources. They have no bearing whatsoever on innovation nor on creativity.

They encourage better use of system resources but also force you to think about different possibilities when a certain idea just can't be done yet. The limitations shape the games:
* Miyamoto wanted to have Yoshi as early as Mario 3, but the NES just couldn't handle that. Instead, we got different suits for Mario, which has become a staple of most Mario games since.
* In A Link to the Past, the developers wanted to have lots of items to find and collect, but they had limited space on the cart for that many unique items. Miyamoto came up with the idea of splitting Heart Containers into Pieces of Heart, so you could have four times as many health power-ups to find without actually introducing more items.
* Super Mario 64 takes place in Peach's Castle because the N64 couldn't support a massive, continuous world (they were almost going to do the same thing for Zelda 64 but found a lot of workarounds that let them pull off the overworld.)
* Doom's engine isn't a super-efficient 3D engine. It actually makes a fake 3D world out of 2D data. The techniques behind that probably wouldn't have been developed at all if powerful graphics cards had been available.
* Pokemon's battle system would probably be very different if it had been developed on a console with higher specs than the Game Boy.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

Hardware Limitations only encourage better use of system resources. They have no bearing whatsoever on innovation nor on creativity.

You don't think optimizing takes creativity or innovation? lol

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Why Xenoblade would have only been possible on the Wii

Remember Donkey Kong Country? It was pushing the envelope for graphics on the SNES back when other developers insisted that they had done everything that could be done. Then they did it later on Game Boy Color and Capcom even had a version of Resident Evil they were planning for GBC, which was pretty crazy.