Should Mario become photorealistic or go the photorealistic route?

Should he?

  • Yes, it's about time Mario should move on from the cartoony style and have realism to keep up with m

    Votes: 3 6.5%

  • No, the cartoony style is fine as is.

    Votes: 41 89.1%

  • I don't care if it's cartoony or realistic.

    Votes: 2 4.3%
  • Total voters
    46
Luigi already ruined the game. me and xandalf know each other so don't sweat it

I agree, but I think they should just not do it unless Nintendo really wants to make their fans hate them (although they do want their fans to hate them when it comes to Youtube management).
 
I definitely agree. Photorealistic Mario belongs to the fans. They may butcher him as much as they want.
 
Fans have butchered the Mario series a lot of times. So I have a lot of faith in them to butcher him as much as they want.
 
Magikrazy said:
Huh, never knew Shenmue was a QTE game.

Always assumed it was action adventure.
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shenmue is everything

it's weird

E: okay im not leaving myself open to be made fun of by zae.
 
Now this makes me wonder how does a game tries succesfully to remain a 2D platformer and to be photorealistic at the same time. I'm sure this have been tried, but it seems to me that zooming kind of forces you to look at things closely or the illusion is easily broken.
 
Bentley said:
Now this makes me wonder how does a game tries succesfully to remain a 2D platformer and to be photorealistic at the same time. I'm sure this have been tried, but it seems to me that zooming kind of forces you to look at things closely or the illusion is easily broken.
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You can do that. Photorealism is just graphics anyway.
 
Now this how a photorealistic Mario game would be like.

 
I thought it was interesting that Wario is the first to go to the "photorealistic" route, and I am using the term lightly, because it's more like a person in a Wario costume and not his body type. If you see Wario Land 4's CD section (play one of the CDs if you have them), you can see what I am talking about.

Anyway, count me in as one of those who would prefer Mario to stay cartoony. The HD Mario artwork did a great job at adding detail to Mario while still maintaining the characteristic Mario is known for. A photorealistic Mario would have been too uncanny.

Thanks for reading.
 
The photorealistic route is a deliberate style choice that fits with Wario because it's considered strange and weird (like Weird Mario....) so I wouldn't mind seeing photo-realistic Wario in WarioWare, just as long as that style isn't WarioWare's overall theme and just some visual gag.

Although I think realism being used as a joke can apply in Mario stuff in general. Like below. I don't even know the context, and I find the drawings amusing. The latter one is from Super Mario Adventures.

tumblr_nf3poqim891rrftcdo1_500.jpg
tumblr_n18qh8ddAy1rrftcdo2_r2_250.jpg
 
I know that the Mario characters in Super Smash Bros. Brawl did kinda look realistic and I think it worked out and looked amazing.

There are realistic looking details on Peach.

516px-Peach_SSBB.jpg
 
Mario games still need an ounce of realism such as lighting effects, but in terms of model and character designs, yeah.
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Lighting and shading, yes, they need a bit more realism and effort. Trying to fully apply photorealism to the cartoonish Mario series would turn into a disaster, though.

Seeing those photorealistic, gritty artworks by fans online can be enjoyable, but turning the whole series into that would remove the friendly, cartoony visual appeal.
 
I didn't like the Brawl designs at all. I remember characters like Bowser looked really ugly and I was glad they went back with the colourful designs in Smash 4. If only Mario still didn't look so pissed though...
 
^ This, pretty much. I much prefer colorful, simple styles.
 
y u litl

No. Just no. Mario is, and should always be, a cartoony kids' game with no storyline. It's what fuels our imagination.
 
i don't know why people consider "photorealism" the same thing as "gritty, post-apocalyptic and dark"

take a look outside. it's bright, colorful, and complex, something that can be easily adapted into the cartoon style without altering the hues of realism.
 
I think they're trying to make the difference between some photorealism and complete photorealism. If you look at the primary image used in the Wikipedia article of raytracing, a technique used for photorealisitc images, it's hardly what you call dark and gritty. I think people are thinking about realistic proportions and textures on characters and overall realistic textures.
 
Also, I think the main reason you see more....like, less stylized environments is because stylizing things is far more difficult to do in the first place. Because if you need to stylize something into cartoony proportions, you need a great understanding of nearly everything about the object you're trying to transform into a cartoon caricature in the first place.

But these graphics are considered "photorealistic"

250px-Recursive_raytrace_of_a_sphere.png


The Mario series would most certainly benefit from this style of rendering.
 
I predict that within 5 or 10+ years, Mario games will kinda start having elements of realism and that would be part of the more advanced graphics technology in the future.

The art style of Mario may start to evolve as graphics technology evolves.
 
They already have elements of realism. Look at the Mario Kart 8 renders.
 
That's some bit of realism in there. But more realism could be added. Hair details and facial details would make things more special. Things in Brawl seemed to have realistic looking details. I think games are evolving as time goes by really quickly. We are in the HD era and things do get better as time progresses.
 
Mario and other characters don't need too much details, at least, not to the point where it becomes, er, hairy, like Mario's hair (the Kongs seem fine though). It just doesn't work that way. Not even Brawl has that amount of detail. But I'm open to hair being pulled off that way, but just as long as it look good and not distracting.
 
Striker Mario said:
Mario and other characters don't need too much details, at least, not to the point where it becomes, er, hairy, like Mario's hair (the Kongs seem fine though). It just doesn't work that way. Not even Brawl has that amount of detail. But I'm open to hair being pulled off that way, but just as long as it look good and not distracting.
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It's funny that we ended up mentioning the hair, since we have a nice case here:

Super Mario 3D World (pre Marza Animation Planet involvement)

Mario_Artwork_-_Super_Mario_3D_World.png


Mario Kart 8 (Marza Animation Planet involved)
Mario_MK8.png

The changes are even more obvious with Ludwig:

New Super Mario Bros. U (pre Marza Animation Planet)
LudwigNSMBU.png


Mario Kart 8 (Marza Animation Planet involved)
Koopalings_Artwork_-_Mario_Kart_8.png


Actually, since the most detailed in-game models of Nintendo characters found so far are those of Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (Wii U version and probably even arcade version) we might be in a curious situation in which SEGA has the most detailed models of most, if not all the Mario universe characters... are we soon going to see a "[character] 3-D model provided courtesy of SEGA" like in Mario Kart: Super Circuit?

To return on topic, I think the acceptance or not of photorealism depends on what it is applied: Mario's outfit and gloves being more realistic is nice, because the character doesn't lose his distinctive traits while still having very pleasing to see details, same with proper lighting (the artwork of Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash had nice lighting, in my opinion). Furthermore, I'd say that realistic looking locations can work, as Isle Delfino showed.
In my opinion the problem starts when you significantly change the character's distinctive traits in order to achieve realism, real actors are often used in commercials (remember the GLA Mario Kart 8 commercials?) but this looks to be more an attempt at obtaining a comical effect in trying to recreate a cartoon character in real life, so I'd say it's not a smart way to evolve the characters' appearance, unless you want massive memeing.
 
I'd say no. Stylized art ages much, much better than photorealistic art, just compare how Zelda WW and Zelda TP have aged compared to each other.

Not only that, but making characters and textures in the Mushroom Kingdom photorealistic would send them straight to crossing the uncanny valley, they'd look horribly creepy tbh ;-;

It's much better to keep the cartoony art, ofc, using better rendering techniques for prettier visuals.
 
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