Realism or Stylistic Aesthetic?

[Poppincaps]

Both. Variety is the spice of life.

[derpkitteh]

i much prefer realism.

[Wondercrab]

Aesthetics trump realism the majority of the time, but they both work well for specific game types. For example, any game that uses facial motion capture technology is enhanced by making those faces look as darn realistic as possible. It helps a lot with the audience's emotional engagement with the characters, and works in direct service to the core engagement of those types of games (which are, and generally should be, story driven).
It's also cool to do techy games that try to push graphics as hard as possible just for the sake of it. It's a neat little curiosity, and it's starting to work well in games that aim for a more real-world tone now that the uncanny valley stuff is becoming marginal.

That being said, if you just want a game that *looks good*, a strong art style is just so much better, both in terms of the end results and the amount of work and money needed to pull it off. No photo-realistic 3D game will ever look anywhere near as good as Ori and the Blind Forest.
Stylised art is a wonderful way to convey tone, captivate your audience, save money, make your game stand out from the crowd, and pave the way for a lot more creative freedom.

[Deleted]

Realism for cinematics, and stylistic for gameplay.

[Jester Joe]

Stylistic definitely. Realism isn't bad depending on the game, but I will usually prefer stylistic games.

[Deleted]

I rly like Witcher 3 realism(simple swords and armors) and hate WoW aesthetic with huge shoulders daggers bigger than hand etc...

[Tech614]

Both, there are both terrible and great examples of both.

For example a game like Uncharted series is realistic in style but has far more artistic direction then some crapper like THPS5 which even with it's cel shading cartoony look has complete garbage visuals with no cohesive direction.

You can mess up either, and neither is guaranteed to age well. For every JSRF or WW that ages so well with a stylized look there is a Sonic Heroes which certainly did not.

[Charge me Doctor]

Depends on a genre and what developers want to do with their game.

[Adam Jensen]

It's heavily dependent on so many things.

It's not just graphics, it's the whole package.

This.

A game's graphics need to match the theme. Like a realistic WoW wouldn't feel right. WoW's current graphics still hold onto that cartoony look Warcraft III had. Diablo III still somewhat resembles Diablo I and II. Graphics should match the theme. The Batman games feel like a gritty comic book.

Skyrim had that lolBethesda look.

[mickybrighteyes]

Realistic can never hold up for long past it's release.

give my stylized anytime.

[Afrospinach]

Both. Variety is the spice of life.

You see reality every day so the correct answer to that is stylistic

[NightZero88]

Stylistic aesthetic for me simply because the realism in games now is making it hard for me to play. I tend to get motion sickness with the newer releases and so I haven't been able to play more than hour of tomb raider. Yet I can play HotS or Diablo or WoW all day with no problems.

[Afrospinach]

Stylistic aesthetic for me simply because the realism in games now is making it hard for me to play. I tend to get motion sickness with the newer releases and so I haven't been able to play more than hour of tomb raider. Yet I can play HotS or Diablo or WoW all day with no problems.

I doubt this is anything to do with realism and more an FPS thing, have you had a play around with a FoV slider if there is one? Checked to see your frame rate is not dipping wildly? These things can make you motion sick, I cannot play far cry 2 because of the narrow FoV.

[NightZero88]

I doubt this is anything to do with realism and more an FPS thing, have you had a play around with a FoV slider if there is one? Checked to see your frame rate is not dipping wildly? These things can make you motion sick, I cannot play far cry 2 because of the narrow FoV.

I've heard suggestions on that but I've really never messed around with it. You're likely right but from what I've seen it's only ultra realistic games that cause me issues. I spoke with my doctor about it once and she said that games are becoming so lifelike your brain can't tell the difference between reality and the game and so motion sickness type issues will continue to become more and more prevalent.

I think it was Crysis 1 or 2 that was the worst for me, when you go into the space ship and it flips to 3D. Had to take a break every 5 minutes during that and yet I can play space engineers without too much trouble which is 3D. Go figure.

[Tech614]

I've heard suggestions on that but I've really never messed around with it. You're likely right but from what I've seen it's only ultra realistic games that cause me issues. I spoke with my doctor about it once and she said that games are becoming so lifelike your brain can't tell the difference between reality and the game and so motion sickness type issues will continue to become more and more prevalent.

I think it was Crysis 1 or 2 that was the worst for me, when you go into the space ship and it flips to 3D. Had to take a break every 5 minutes during that and yet I can play space engineers without too much trouble which is 3D. Go figure.

Motion sickness comes from bad FoV as well as motion blur(and a few other post processing effects but these are the main 2 culprits). It has nothing to do with being ultra realistic, and if your doctor actually said that I would find a new one as she clearly has no idea what she is talking about.