Beautiful Visuals
Some individuals feel a strange sense of shallowness when a subconscious part of their brain starts to scream about how important graphics are. If it’s a great game, who cares right? If the gameplay is challenging yet entertaining and a solid story is unfolding, are the visuals really that important? Frankly, yes. In order to play the game, you have to look at it… for a long time… over and over again. The game needs to look good. NieR: Automata puts players in the middle of a beautifully decrepit world that is filled with so many stunning visual moments that the game becomes mesmerizing.
Visuals also help games find their sense of identity both within the game itself and throughout the community. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild allows Link to travel a map far more massive and exploration worthy than any map the franchise has seen before. It could have easily looked like a Horizon: Zero Dawn-esque game that happened to just feature Link as the protagonist. Instead, Breath of the Wild strays from realism and crafts an entire universe in a unique art style that allows it to stand out in the current crowd of open world games. Technical talks about resolution can take a back seat to gameplay and storylines but most successful games will have every screenshot you take looking like a digitally rendered masterpiece.
