Remember when a castle was a big block with smaller blocks on top of it? Dragons were blocky creatures that looked more like ducks than anything else, and you were a simple square holding a horizontally-facing arrow by its point. Remember Adventure for the Atari VCS? That game was so far removed from anything approaching realism that it was very nearly an exercise in imagination just to play it. Yet that made it no less engaging or fun. Sure, one could argue that if we'd had the choice between the rudimentary graphics of the time and something more like, let's say, Dragon's Age, players would naturally flock to the latter. That seems to be a given, as long as the gameplay is identical. But that's never the case; no one will ever release two versions of a game; one featuring amazing graphics and the other displaying dumbed-down visuals.

It's natural to want things to look as good as they possibly can. As consoles become more and more sophisticated, and PCs continue their constant upgrading dance, we're going to see greater fidelity in the kinds of environments, rendering, and animation we can produce. I just tend to take issue with people who argue that all of this graphical prowess results in better games.

There was a huge uproar when The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker arrived on the scene with its cel-shaded look. Part of that uproar was caused by nothing more than dashed expectations by fans of the series who were expecting a more "realistic" Zelda for the next game in the franchise. I'll admit that seeing the superdeformed, over-large-eyed Link must have been quite a shock to those who thought they'd be looking at a normally-proportioned, post-puberty Link. But that should never have produced the wild rantings that quickly ensued.

What we ended up with was a much more expressive character, with tiny flourishes that absolutely gave more life to the little elfin kid. For one thing, those gigantic eyes would glance toward items of interest, subtly letting the player know what to pay attention to without having to create a more contrived and immersion-breaking on-screen element. If normal proportions had been used, the visual cues from the eyes would have been much harder to read. Another interesting effect of the smaller body is that you quickly learned to ignore it in favor of paying attention to your opponent's actions, or the environmental puzzles. Remember Adventure's little block with an arrow? The same phenomenon applies here. Honestly, what the player's body looks like shouldn't be so prominent that it competes for attention with all the other on-screen elements.