This is one of those things that just annoys me. I hate that people can't seem to understand the difference between Graphical Fidelity as opposed to Aesthetic. I thought that people might have recognized the difference by now, but nope. No one seems to get it. They just pile the two together.

"Woop, this has great graphix!"

"Do you mean it looks great aesthetically or are the textures really really high resolution?" I ask.

"What now?" they reply, almost always.

Just in case you don't really get the difference, here's an these two images that, in my opinion, perfectly illustrates my point.

The art style in this picture is magnificent. I mean just look at it. It's just so pretty (What? Wanted me to describe it is?Hey, I'm no art student). Course, this is pretty subjective, but come on. Look at it! You at least got to see the appeal in it. But then just look at the texture of the stone near his left foot. God, the resolution! Urgh! It's just so blocky! This isn't Minecraft, you know. Though in fairness, the game is rather quick, so you don't really notice the textures all that much, and the sky boxes are really fantastic to look at.

Now look at this

I'll admit, it looks fine. The textures are fine and it's nothing like Darksiders. But it's just so...boring...so bland. There's no real direction behind it. It's just there. And it's so bad. And people say that CoD's graphics look pretty good.

Do you see where I'm coming from?

I mean, there are my definitions, and they aren't perfect, since I'm not one to read up on it. So it's probable that they're wrong. But as far as I know, when referring to the aesthetic of a picture, you are referring to it's "beauty". And when you refer to it's graphical fidelity, it's more about the technical side of things, really. For example, the resolution on some textures..

Now, before, when people used to say a picture or piece of art looks great, you would normally have both types of graphics to be at a very high standard. I mean, take a picture of a sunset. If it's professional, if you say it's good, I can be pretty sure they're talking about the aesthetic. And not the actual detail of the picture. I mean, as long as they are using a fairly decent camera, it's bound to look decent. The same goes with movies (except animation, it's a bit different in animation). But with games, it's a different. I mean, take Darksiders II for example. Fantastic aesthetic, but awful textures. And then take something like CoD. You can have a really high standard of graphical fidelity, but just can be as bland as it gets. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible to have both or to have neither. What I'm saying, it's possible to have one and not the other.

Yet no one talks about the two, separately. They just pile it together, and it makes everything a lot more harder for everyone.

Anyways, since this is a blog, we have to talk about my life, so I might as well talk about a small fight I had with my friend.

We were talking about Vanilla Minecraft as opposed to the modded versions (and come on, we all know modded wins here. By a kilometer) and then he starts to talk about how great vanilla Minecraft looks. I was shocked. Vanilla Minecraft looks awful. It's just...awful. I know it's subjective, but come on. It does not look good. Especially once you start to dig.

Here's a picture of vanilla. It's not awful. But compare it to my texture pack.

Much better right?

Anyways, Back to the story.

As I was saying, I was shocked. And this isn't all that bad. I mean, it's his opinion. And in my opinion, I think the textures look bad, and the resolution of the whole thing just makes it even worse. This is a pretty wide consensus, considering most people I talk to hate the way vanilla Minecraft looks.Anyways, enough about life. That stuff's boring.

Let's talk about something slightly unrelated shall we?

When Indie mods say their awful textures should be excused as a "classic" looking game, so as to excuse it as an aesthetic choice.

And I hate that. That they're trying to pass of their small budget as a selling point. Now, I'm not against developers taking advantage of a low budget and using it as a mechanic to help enhance the gaming experience (see Silent Hill "fog" or Spec Ops; The Line bad shooting.) but I take offence when they say it's a "classic" texture, advertise it as such, and when you come to see it, it's just low resolution pieces of crap, with no aesthetic value to it. All because they didn't have the budget. I mean, I sympathize with their lack of money, but you can't try to trick your customers.

It's just trying to take advantage of the consumer, and I don't like that.