Well, I'm working on a text based MUD, so I guess that says something about my opinion. (or maybe just my coding skills? ;)
I do think that as graphics become more photo-realistic graphics the burden of immersing the player in the environment is greatly lessened since there is a much stronger correlation to environments already known. Of course the flipside is that as graphics become more photo-realistic, the player will intuitively expect other things to more closely mimic reality - or at least more closely mimic the complexity of reality. It's just a matter of consistency. Consistency of depth.
If you give me the original Final Fantasy with 8 bit graphics - it's consistent with the depth of the rest of the technology that the NPC's just move around town at random and repeat the same canned line until the next major event. If you give me a photo-realistic fantasy environment, those same behaviors would be completely jarring because it's just not consistent with the expectations generated.
I think we're at a point graphically where a lot more time and resources, and consequently CPU share, should be put towards supporting the other aspects of immersion. Sound has come a fair ways, but AI is still sorely lacking, IMO.
Of course, no technology inherently guarantees a better game. Superior technology obviously has it's upsides, but it has it's downsides as well."Inferior" technology often allows more rapid development (take a text based game for example) - such that the increased development allows features that may not be reasonably (cost-wise, development time, etc) implemented with the superior technology, thus negating or surpassing any of the benefits inherent to the superior technology itself.
I do think that as graphics become more photo-realistic graphics the burden of immersing the player in the environment is greatly lessened since there is a much stronger correlation to environments already known. Of course the flipside is that as graphics become more photo-realistic, the player will intuitively expect other things to more closely mimic reality - or at least more closely mimic the complexity of reality. It's just a matter of consistency. Consistency of depth.
If you give me the original Final Fantasy with 8 bit graphics - it's consistent with the depth of the rest of the technology that the NPC's just move around town at random and repeat the same canned line until the next major event. If you give me a photo-realistic fantasy environment, those same behaviors would be completely jarring because it's just not consistent with the expectations generated.
I think we're at a point graphically where a lot more time and resources, and consequently CPU share, should be put towards supporting the other aspects of immersion. Sound has come a fair ways, but AI is still sorely lacking, IMO.
Of course, no technology inherently guarantees a better game. Superior technology obviously has it's upsides, but it has it's downsides as well."Inferior" technology often allows more rapid development (take a text based game for example) - such that the increased development allows features that may not be reasonably (cost-wise, development time, etc) implemented with the superior technology, thus negating or surpassing any of the benefits inherent to the superior technology itself.